How to Read the COT Report: Commitments of Traders Explained

Key takeaways

• The COT report is a weekly CFTC breakdown of open interest in US futures and options markets by type of trader, based on positions as of Tuesday and normally released on Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
• Three main versions exist: the legacy report (commercial and non-commercial), the disaggregated report for physical commodities and the Traders in Financial Futures (TFF) report for financial contracts.
• Net positioning, a category’s long positions minus its short positions, is the figure most traders follow, and its change over several weeks says more than any single report.
• The data are a delayed weekly snapshot, classified by trader rather than by trade: they describe positioning, not timing.

What the COT report is: the short answer

The Commitments of Traders (COT) report is a weekly publication of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that breaks down the open interest of futures and options markets by category of trader. It shows how many contracts hedgers, funds, dealers and other large traders hold long and short, for markets in which 20 or more traders hold positions at or above the reporting levels set by the CFTC.

The figures describe positions as of the close of business on Tuesday and are normally published on Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Traders read the COT report to see who holds the open positions in a market and how that positioning changes from week to week. It is a positioning report, not a trading signal: on its own, it says nothing about the next price move.

Where the data come from and when they are released

Clearing members, futures commission merchants and foreign brokers report the positions of their large traders to the CFTC every day. The COT report aggregates those reports. Positions below the reporting levels are not identified trader by trader: they are obtained by subtracting all reportable positions from total open interest and shown as nonreportable positions.

The release follows a regular pattern. According to the CFTC, the reports are typically based on positions at the close on Tuesday, firm data reach the Commission on Wednesday morning and processing takes three days, which leads to a release on Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Federal holidays can delay a release by one or two days, and the CFTC release schedule lists the exact dates for each year.

Each report comes in a futures-only version and a futures-and-options-combined version that adds positions in options on those futures. Since 2022 the CFTC also offers the data through a public reporting environment, where they can be searched, filtered and downloaded.

Legacy, disaggregated and TFF: the three main COT report versions

The legacy report is the original format. It splits reportable traders into commercial and non-commercial groups and covers every market that meets the reporting threshold. A trader is classified as commercial in a commodity when its positions there are used to hedge a business activity, which it generally declares on the CFTC Form 40; every other reportable trader is non-commercial. A supplemental version adds a separate index-trader category for selected agricultural markets.

The disaggregated report, first published in 2009, covers physical commodities such as agriculture, energy and metals. It splits the commercial group into producers, merchants, processors and users on one side and swap dealers on the other, and the non-commercial group into managed money and other reportables. Added together, its categories can be brought back to the two legacy groups.

The Traders in Financial Futures (TFF) report, announced in 2010, covers financial contracts such as currencies, Treasury securities, stock indices and VIX futures. Instead of the commercial label, it separates the sell side, dealers and intermediaries, from the buy side: asset managers and institutional investors, leveraged funds, and other reportables. The CFTC stresses that the TFF is not a breakdown of the legacy data: a trader in any TFF category may come from either the commercial or the non-commercial group.

Reading the columns: long, short, spreading and open interest

Each category shows long positions, short positions and, for most categories, spreading. Spreading is the part of a trader’s position that is offset by an equal opposite position in another contract month, or between futures and options in the combined reports. It is counted separately so that the long and short columns show outright exposure.

Open interest is the total number of contracts entered into and not yet offset. When it rises, new positions are being opened; when it falls, existing positions are being closed. The report also gives the change in every column since the previous week, which is often more informative than the levels themselves.

• Long and short: outright positions held by each category.
• Spreading: offsetting long and short positions in different months, or between futures and options, reported separately.
• Changes: the difference from the previous report for each column.
• Percent of open interest: the share of the market held by each category.
• Number of traders: how many reportable traders sit in each category; the same trader can appear in more than one column, so the category counts can add up to more than the total.
• Concentration, in the long format: the share of open interest held by the largest four and eight traders.

Net positioning: the figure most traders follow

Net positioning is a category’s long positions minus its short positions. A positive figure means the group is net long, a negative one that it is net short. Because each report is a snapshot, the change in the net position over several weeks usually says more than its level in any one week.

Many traders also compare the current net position with its own range over a longer history, to judge whether a group’s positioning is unusually large compared with the past. That comparison works within one contract. Comparing raw contract numbers across markets is much less meaningful, because the value of one contract varies widely from one market to another.

On Trading Evolution, the free COT data page reads these official CFTC reports for 44 futures markets — stock indices, currencies, interest rates, energy, metals, agriculture and crypto. It shows net positions by trader category, weekly changes and a COT index, and it updates after each weekly release.

How traders use the COT report

The COT report is context, not a trigger. Most uses fall into a few families, and all of them work over weeks rather than minutes.

• Following a category’s net position over time to see whether the group is building or reducing exposure.
• Spotting positioning that is large compared with its own history, which some traders read as a crowded market likely to react sharply to surprises.
• Comparing hedgers and speculators in a commodity, keeping in mind that commercial positions largely reflect hedging needs rather than a view on prices.
• Cross-checking a longer-term view built from price, fundamentals or central bank policy against the way large traders are positioned.

For an intraday futures trader, the report sits at the top of a top-down process: it can shape the weekly bias you keep in mind, while entries and stops still come from the intraday chart. The guide to multi-timeframe analysis for futures shows how to combine those levels without letting them conflict.

Limits of the COT report

Several limits come straight from the way the data are built. Keep them in mind before treating any figure as meaningful.

• Delay: positions are measured on Tuesday and published on Friday, so the market can move a long way before the data become public.
• Classification by trader, not by trade: the CFTC classifies traders, not their trading activity. A fund in the leveraged funds category may hedge some positions, and a commercial firm may hold speculative ones.
• Judgment and change: staff place each trader according to its predominant activity, classifications change over time, and the disaggregated and TFF histories back to 2006 were rebuilt with recent classifications, which reduces their accuracy further back.
• One snapshot per week: changes during the week are invisible, and contract expiries or rolls can shift positions for reasons unrelated to any market view.
• No timing: extreme positioning can last for a long time, and the report says nothing about when it will change.

Read with these limits in mind, the COT report is a useful description of who holds the risk in a futures market. It does not replace risk management: position size and stops still come from your own rules, as described in futures trading risk management.

Put it into practice

• COT data (CFTC)Net positions by trader category, weekly changes and COT index for 44 futures markets.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. About the Commitments of Traders Reports — CFTC
2. Commitments of Traders: Explanatory Notes — CFTC
3. Commitments of Traders — CFTC
4. Disaggregated Commitments of Traders: Explanatory Notes — CFTC
5. Traders in Financial Futures: Explanatory Notes — CFTC
6. Commitments of Traders: Release Schedule — CFTC

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