About the COT data
The CFTC Commitments of Traders report: the two report formats, their trader categories, and the terms used on every COT market page.
What the report is
Every Friday at 3:30 pm Eastern the CFTC publishes who held what in US futures markets as of the previous Tuesday. Large traders are grouped by what they do, not who they are, and the report shows each group's long, short and spread positions. That's the Commitments of Traders report, published weekly for futures on currencies, rates, equity indices, energy, metals and agriculture.
Financial futures use the Traders in Financial Futures format: dealers and intermediaries, asset managers and institutional investors, leveraged funds, and other reportables. Commodities use the disaggregated format: producers, merchants, processors and users; swap dealers; managed money; and other reportables. Positions too small to report are shown as nonreportable in both.
Report formats and trader categories
Disaggregated (commodities)
- Producers, merchants, processors and users
- Swap dealers
- Managed money
- Other reportables
- Nonreportable positions
Traders in Financial Futures (financial markets)
- Dealers and intermediaries
- Asset managers and institutional investors
- Leveraged funds
- Other reportables
- Nonreportable positions
Terms and timing
- Publication
- Weekly. Positions as of Tuesday, published by the CFTC on Friday at 3:30 pm Eastern and added here the same evening.
- Net position
- A category's long contracts minus its short contracts. A negative number means more short than long. It describes positioning, not a price prediction.
- Open interest
- The total number of contracts outstanding in a market at the report date.
- COT Index
- Where the speculative category's current net position sits in its one-year range: 100% is its highest net position of the year, 0% its lowest.
How to read it
- Look at the net position of the speculative category (leveraged funds or managed money) relative to its own history, not its absolute size.
- When speculators and the structural side (asset managers or producers) sit at opposite ends of their own ranges, the two groups are positioned against each other.
- Open interest is the denominator. A net long that grew while open interest shrank is a crowd getting smaller, not more confident.
Analysis of what the data shows, not advice. XOOMAR does not recommend buying, selling or holding anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does this data update?
What does a negative net position mean?
Which categories does a COT report use?
What is the COT Index?
Every market, with its latest positions, is on the CFTC positioning (COT) hub.