More speculative traders are bearish on U.S. 10-year Treasury futures than bullish for the first time since August, data released on Friday showed.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Friday traders slashed their long bets that 10-year T-notes will rise by 93,847 contracts to 143,975 on Tuesday.

Speculative short bets that T-note futures will fall rose by 1,089 to 211,630, according to CFTC's Commitments of Traders data.

It was first time that there were more speculative short positions in 10-year T-notes than long ones since late August. The net shorts at 67,655 was the highest since 191,152 on Aug 3rd.

This was a dramatic reversal from two weeks ago when net longs on 10-year T-notes hit their highest since March 2008.

The Treasuries market has floundered since the Federal Reserve announced its $600 billion bond purchase program, known as QE2, a month ago in a bid to support economic growth.

U.S. government debt prices have fallen, as traders cashed out of earlier bets tied to QE2 and reduced their positions on a string of better-than-expected economic data.

In the wake of disappointing jobs data on Friday, the Dec T-note contract closed up 8/32 at 122-22/32 late Friday, while the yield on the cash 10-year U.S. government note edged up 1 basis point to 3.01 percent. See

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Andrew Hay)

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