Oil prices are poised for a pullback after hedge funds and money managers raised their bullish bets on energy futures to record levels, analysts say. Speculative bets that U.S. crude prices will rise have surged since September as OPEC and Russia hammered out a deal to continue capping their oil production. The deal has helped to balance an oversupplied market and drain global stockpiles of crude oil. Hedge funds and other money managers raised their long positions, or bets that crude prices will keep going up, to the highest levels in 2017, according to data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission covering the week through Dec. 26. This financial positioning represents the biggest risk to oil prices in the near term, according to Matt Smith, director of commodity research at ClipperData.

"Everybody that wants to be long is long, and so all that can be done now is that it can be sold," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday. "And so we should see those net long positions unwind. That could present some downside risk." However, the market is now finely balanced, so supply disruptions such as last month's U.K. North Sea Forties pipeline outage can boost oil prices, he said. Geopolitical tensions such as the unrest rocking Iran this past week can also push up prices, according to Smith. Oil prices rose to their highest levels since mid-2015 on Wednesday as the protests continued, even though analysts said there was little risk of a supply disruption from Iran, OPEC's third largest producer. @JKempEnergy: HEDGE FUND long positions in petroleum hit a record 1,329 million bbl in week to Dec 26 While long positions have surged, short positions, or bets that prices will fall, have dropped to the lowest levels since February in recent weeks. The last time short positions fell to these "extreme" lows, the oil market saw a more than 20 percent correction, said John LaForge, head of Real Asset Strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. "On the professional side, everyone's long. Everyone's into this trade already, so sentiment-wise, I think we're going down from here," he told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Friday.