The Commitments of Traders (COT) report, published weekly by the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), provides insights into the positions of different market participants in the U.S. market. The report’s data is based on submissions from firms such as clearing members and brokers. Each firm’s classification in the COT report reflects its primary business purpose, as specified by the firm and verified by the CFTC. However, this classification may not account for the different reasons a trader might hold various positions, which could lead to potentially misleading interpretations in deeper COT analyses.
The Commitments of Traders (COT) report is published every Friday at 3:30 p.m. ET, showing the positions of different market participants as of Tuesday of the same week. This report promotes transparency in the futures market, giving investors up-to-date insights into how various participants are positioned.
CFTC Commitments of Traders Legacy Report – ICE Futures U.S. – Short Format
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The COT Report includes 4 different reports: Legacy, Traders in Financial Futures, Supplemental and Disaggregated.
The COT Legacy Report is provided as a futures only report and a futures and options report. The Legacy Report classifies all traders in commercial, non-commercial traders and non-reportable traders. GulfED provides you the graphical and tabular real time and historical Commitments of Traders Legacy Report for each asset above.
The Traders in Financial Futures Report is a COT Report, which classifies the different market participants in “sell side” and “buy side” entities. The report is available as a futures only report or a combined options and futures report. The report classifies traders into 4 different market participant: Dealer, Institutional, Leveraged Funds and other Reportable
This COT report gives more insights on the Commercials and Non-commercial Traders. The Disaggregated report splits the commercial traders into producers, merchants, processors and swap dealers. On the other hand, the Non-commercial Traders are split into managed money and other reportables. This COT report is used to get a transparent view on how the different commercial groups are placed in comparison to the different speculators.
The Supplemental COT Report is specialized on agriculture commodity assets. The report classifies the different market participants into Commercial, Non-commercial and Index Traders. This COT report includes futures and options positions.
To use the COT report & charts for your own trading, you must analyze the net positioning of the different market participants as well as the long and short extremes on a specific period (36 or 6 months). For deeper insights you can use our free Cot index, which puts the net positions in perspective to the extremes of the period. That is how you analyze a cot report correctly. A correct cot analysis can make you a participant for a long-term trend which is already in progress or is just evolving with a market reversal.
The COT report gives us a clear understanding of the overall market situation. But it is not a timing instrument and does not give any clear information when to enter the market. We can get insights if a trend will remain, or a reversal is taking place. With that, you should use the cot analysis in combination with seasonal tendencies and actual entry techniques. Use the Cot report as part of your higher timeframe and fundamental analysis to get clear institutional insights.
