COT Report
The Commitments of Traders report, published weekly by the U.S. CFTC, shows how the biggest players in the futures markets are actually positioned. It's the closest a retail trader gets to seeing institutional money's hand.
By the TradingCalculator.Pro team · Updated on · About us
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Commercials (Hedgers)
Producers and users of the underlying asset (oil firms, farmers, banks) hedging real business. Deep-pocketed and usually right at turning points — the 'smart money'.
Large Speculators
Hedge funds and CTAs (non-commercials) trading for profit. Strong trend followers — usually most crowded right as a trend is about to exhaust.
Small Speculators
Retail and small traders (non-reportable). Often late and on the wrong side at extremes.
Net position
Longs minus shorts for each group. The sign shows which way they lean; the size shows how strongly.
Weekly change
Who added or cut positions this week matters more than the absolute level. Watch the direction of the flow.
Positioning extremes
Multi-year highs or lows in net positioning flag crowded trades that are vulnerable to a sharp reversal.
Commercials vs. specs
Commercials and large speculators are almost always on opposite sides. The signal is strongest when both reach an extreme at once.
The COT Index
Raw position numbers are hard to compare over time. The COT Index rescales net positioning to 0–100 over a lookback window (often 3 years), so extremes jump out. Readings above ~80 or below ~20 are the actionable zones.
Market bottoms
When commercials are heavily net long and large specs heavily net short at a price low, it often marks a durable bottom.
Market tops
When commercials are heavily net short and large specs piled into longs at a price high, the trend is fragile and prone to reversal.
Legacy
The classic format: commercial, non-commercial and non-reportable. Simple and the most widely used.
Disaggregated
Breaks commodities into producers/merchants, swap dealers, managed money and other reportables for finer detail.
Traders in Financial Futures (TFF)
For financial futures (currencies, indices, rates): dealer, asset manager, leveraged funds and other reportables.
Where to get the data
The CFTC publishes the report every Friday at 3:30 pm ET with data as of the previous Tuesday. Free charted versions are on the CFTC site, Tradingster, Barchart and many trading platforms.