* Short bets highest in Thai baht and Philippine peso
    * Thai baht bearish bets highest in six years 
    * Ringgit short positions highest since March 2020
    * Yuan maintains marginal bullish bets

    By Rushil Dutta
    July 15 (Reuters) - Investors piled bearish bets on most Asian currencies, with the Thai
baht and Philippine peso taking most of the heat, as the economies struggled to rein in the
pandemic and recent dollar strength undermined the local currencies, a Reuters poll showed.
    Sentiment for the Philippine peso turned bearish, the poll of 11 respondents showed,
with short bets most concentrated since October 2018, after ratings agency Fitch downgraded its
outlook on the Southeast Asian nation to negative.
    Fitch cited growing credit profile risks from the impact of COVID-19 for the country's
negative outlook but maintained its investment grade score.
    Commenting on Fitch's decision, the Philippine central bank chief, Benjamin Dionko, said
fiscal and monetary policies were in place to support recovery and that the drag caused by the
pandemic was transitory. The peso has eased 0.4% so far this week.
    Short positions in the Thai baht nearly doubled to their highest since mid-August
2015, as the country suffered its worst incidence of infections yet and recorded 98 deaths on
Thursday. 
    Earlier this week, the tourism-reliant nation's central bank said it might miss growth
forecasts and that recent containment measures were seen having a bigger-than-expected impact on
the economy.
    Meanwhile, Malaysia's public health systems continued to be pummelled by record rises in
COVID-19 cases this week, mainly due to the highly infectious Delta variant, dragging down
investor confidence in the ringgit.
    Bearish bets on the Malaysian unit were at their highest since March last year.
    Investors also raised short bets on other Asian currencies, which fell against a firmer
dollar, thanks to concerns over high infections across Asia and a spike in U.S. inflation
last month that had investors' ears perked up for any guidance on tapering by Federal Reserve
Chairman Jerome Powell.      
    Powell eventually doused such speculations by saying the economy was still far from levels
the Fed wanted to see before squeezing monetary support.
    Bearish wagers on the Indian rupee and Singapore's dollar grew, while soft
bullish positions on the Taiwan dollar and Korean won reversed over the past
14 days.
    Only the Chinese yuan maintained a marginally bullish interest, though trimmed
significantly from the beginning of June. 
    The Reuters survey is focused on what analysts believe are the current market positions in
nine Asian emerging market currencies: the Chinese yuan, South Korean won, Singapore dollar,
Indonesian rupiah, Taiwan dollar, Indian rupee, Philippine peso,
Malaysian ringgit and the Thai baht.
    The poll uses estimates of net long or short positions on a scale of minus 3 to plus 3.
    A score of plus 3 indicates the market is significantly long U.S. dollars. The figures
included positions held through non-deliverable forwards (NDFs).
    The survey findings ASIAPOSN are provided below (positions in U.S. dollar versus each
currency):

 DATE   USD/CNY  USD/KRW  USD/SGD  USD/IDR  USD/TWD  USD/INR  USD/MYR  USD/PHP  USD/THB
 15/07  -0.15    0.27     0.53     0.23     0.13     0.68     1.06     1.06     1.56
 01/07  -0.29    -0.29    0.02     0.36     -0.19    0.5      0.49     -0.04    0.85
 17/06  -0.63    -0.36    -0.49    -0.5     -0.58    -0.21    -0.05    -0.31    0.2
 03/06  -1.34    -0.51    -0.55    -0.4     -0.44    -0.71    0.32     -0.66    0.37
 20/05  -0.33    0.43     0.37     -0.06    0.33     -0.03    0.26     -0.22    0.81
 06/05  -0.52    -0.39    -0.58    0.31     -0.59    0.86     -0.04    -0.35    0.5
 22/04  -0.17    -0.23    -0.44    0.56     -0.38    0.75     -0.03    -0.37    0.58
 08/04  0.72     0.48     0.3      0.59     0.77     0.2      0.46     0.36     0.91
 25/03  0.3      0.65     0.46     0.45     0.5      0.05     0.54     0.11     0.54
 11/03  -0.06    0.55     0.55     0.22     -0.1     -0.37    0.5      0.09     0.49
 
 (Reporting by Rushil Dutta in Bengaluru; polling by Anushka Trivedi; Editing by Subhranshu
Sahu)