What is the COT report?

The Commitments of Traders (COT) report is a weekly publication from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the regulator of American futures markets. It takes every open position in a market and sorts it by type of trader. Instead of a price, it answers a different question: who is holding this market, on which side, and by how much?

It is published by law, it is free, and hardly anyone reads it — because the raw file is a wall of comma-separated numbers with column names like Lev_Money_Positions_Short_All.

Who has to report

This is not a survey and not an estimate. Every trader whose position in a market grows past that market's reporting level must be reported to the CFTC — by the broker or clearing member carrying it, every day. The level is set per contract by the regulator, so it differs between, say, gold and the S&P 500.

Everything above those levels is counted trader by trader. Everything below is lumped together as non-reportable — the small accounts, derived as whatever is left over. In most large markets the reportable share covers the great majority of open interest, which is why the report describes the market rather than a corner of it.

The trader groups

The CFTC does not publish names. It publishes categories, and the categories differ by market type.

1. Financial futures (stock indices, currencies, bonds): dealers and intermediaries — the banks that sell exposure to everyone else; asset managers — pensions, insurers, mutual funds, the slow money; leveraged funds — hedge funds and CTAs, the fast money; and other reportables plus the non-reportable remainder.
2. Commodities (gold, oil, grains): producers, merchants and processors — the firms that dig it up, ship it or use it; swap dealers; managed money — the funds; and the same two leftover groups.

The categories matter more than they look. A gold miner selling futures is not bearish on gold — it is locking in a price for metal it will produce anyway. A hedge fund selling the same contract is taking a view. Same trade, opposite meaning, which is exactly why the breakdown exists.

One more thing that trips people up: the numbers are contracts, not dollars. A net of 100,000 contracts means something very different in gold than in the E-mini S&P, so the size only becomes comparable once it is set against that market's own history.

When it comes out

Positions are recorded at the close of business each Tuesday and published the following Friday at 3:30 pm ET. A US public holiday in between pushes the release back by a day.

That three-day gap is the report's real limitation, and it is worth stating plainly: the COT report shows where large traders were on Tuesday, not where they are when you read it. It is a positioning map, not a live feed.

Three things people get wrong

1. “Commercials are the smart money.” Hedgers are not trying to be right about direction. A producer sells into strength because higher prices are a good place to hedge next year's output — not because it expects a fall. Reading their positioning as a forecast misreads what they are doing.
2. “Positioning is extreme, so the market must turn.” An extreme is a condition, not a trigger. Crowded positioning can stay crowded for months and become more crowded still. It tells you how much fuel is on one side of the boat, not when someone will stand up.
3. “This is what the funds hold now.” See above — it is Tuesday's snapshot. In a fast week, the picture you are reading has already changed.

What it is good for

The report answers questions a price chart cannot. Who is on the other side of this move? Is a rally being driven by funds adding risk, or by dealers covering shorts? Has the crowd already arrived, or is the trade still lonely?

None of that is a signal on its own. It is context — and it is one of the few pieces of institutional data that retail traders get at the same time, in the same detail, and at the same price as everyone else.