How to Find the COT Report

COT reports are based on position data supplied by reporting firms (FCMs, clearing members, foreign brokers, and exchanges). While the position data is supplied by reporting firms, the actual trader category or classification is based on the predominant business purpose self-reported by traders on the CFTC. Non-reportable traders don’t have the heavy bank accounts of commercial and non-commercial traders. They are speculators with smaller accounts who are also looking to make money from the futures market.

Because the COT measures the net long and short positions taken by speculative traders and commercial traders, it is a great resource to gauge how heavily these market players are positioned in the market. The short format shows reportable open interest and week-to-week open interest changes separately by reportable and non-reportable positions. These major market drivers include institutional traders, hedge https://g-markets.net/ funds, big banks, and more. And the weight these traders pull on the markets can sometimes be staggering enough to drive trends. As retail forex traders, our best bet is to trade like big financial institutions. Even if a trader works at a large bank and sees sizable client flows going through, these flows may not impart enough knowledge to assess the size of current positions in a given currency.

The Foundation of Currency Value

Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) as a Broker-Dealer and with the CFTC as a Futures Commission Merchant and Commodity Trading Adviser. References to securities trading are made on behalf of the BD Division of SFI and are intended only for an audience of institutional clients as defined by FINRA Rule 4512(c). References to exchange-traded futures and options are made on behalf of the FCM Division of SFI. One exception we have noted recently is the ability of the small trader in T-bonds to hit the correct direction of the market. It is also important that the COT report with futures and options (released one day later) confirm the situation that is indicated by the futures only report.

• Those reports show the futures and option positions of traders that hold positions above specific reporting levels set by CFTC regulations.
• The information in the report indicates how much interest there is, both long and short, in various derivatives contracts, and which type of market actor is involved.
• Every other reportable trader that is not placed into one of the other three categories is placed into the “other reportables” category.
• They figure it is better to look at what the non-commercials are doing as a whole, rather than bother to look at the breakdown and have to add up two numbers that are available elsewhere as a single one.
• Open interest is the total of all futures and/or option contracts entered into and not yet offset by a transaction, by delivery, by exercise, etc.

Reporting firms send Tuesday open interest data on Wednesday morning. The CFTC then corrects and verifies the data for release by Friday afternoon. The Barchart site’s data is then updated, after the official CFTC release. We introduce people to the world of trading currencies, both fiat and crypto, through our non-drowsy educational content and tools.

Where Do You Find a COT Report?

Adam received his master’s in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology. He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Upon the first reading of the COT report, it may seem confusing how future positions in USD, JPY, GBP or EUR could be helpful for trading EUR/USD, USD/JPY, or EUR/GBP. There is a lot to learn about the COT report but what’s often helpful is to find where there is a strong divergence between large speculators and large commercials. Notice how the non-commercial’s long positions increased by 2100 while their shorts reduced by 20.

The category called “dealer/intermediary,” for instance, represents sell-side participants. It breaks down the open-interest positions of all major contracts that have more than 20 traders. The legacy COT simply shows the market for a commodity broken into long, short, and spread positions for non-commercial traders, commercial traders, and non-reportable positions (small traders). The total open interest is given as well as changes in open interest. Open interest held or controlled by a trader is referred to as that trader’s position. For the COT Futures-and-Options-Combined report, option open interest and traders’ option positions are computed on a futures-equivalent basis using delta factors supplied by the exchanges.

How To Use The COT Report In Your Forex Trading

Technically, they are enterprises that have a currency position that is incidental to their core business. Say you are a Chicago manufacturer of widgets that you sell in Mexico. You want to sell the pesos in the futures market as soon as you know the size of the order in order to protect your revenue stream.

Just because a big euro sell order is executed in the market, it does not necessarily mean that market players as a whole are short euros. Perhaps players were heavily long euros instead and now are squaring up. Because flow data can be deceptive and because many players do not have access to these flows, traders look for any gauge that offers insight into which way the market is leaning. Because of this, they like to look at the positioning data by CFTC as well as reports released by the Tokyo Financial Exchange. The disaggregated COT report is another one that is commonly known by traders. It provides a deeper breakdown of the market participants, splitting commercial traders into producers, merchants, processors, users, and swap dealers.

To help you analyze important trends and movements using the Commitment of Traders reports, Tradingster.com provides up-to-date COT reports (including COT reports’ historical data) and free COT charts. Barchart Premier Members can choose from a Detailed Report where you can page through the last 52 reported weeks of data, or a Summary Report, showing just the last reporting period. The first place to start with is a clean understanding of ‘net positioning’ which is shown clearly on the report itself, as well as the week over week differential of major market bias (circled above).

Business 101

Long-call and short-put open interest are converted to long futures-equivalent open interest. Likewise, short-call and long-put open interest are converted to short futures-equivalent open interest. For example, a trader holding a long put position of 500 contracts with a delta factor of 0.50 is considered to be holding a short futures-equivalent position of 250 contracts. A trader’s long and short futures-equivalent positions are added to the trader’s long and short futures positions to give “combined-long” and “combined-short” positions. The Commitments of Traders (COT) reports can sometimes give traders a good idea of future significant moves in the market. The CFTC requires large speculators and commercial traders, or hedgers, to report their net positions twice each month.

They figure it is better to look at what the non-commercials are doing as a whole, rather than bother to look at the breakdown and have to add up two numbers that are available elsewhere as a single one. The supplemental report is the one that outlines 13 specific agricultural commodity contracts. This report shows a breakdown of open interest positions in three different categories.

With these general definitions in mind, traders can then decide how to use this information. The image below depicts an extract from the COT report with the three main groups as outlined above. To get better results, you can use the data from the COT report to complement your technical analysis from other forex trading tools. The CFTC publishes beforehand the release schedule for the COT report. The historical Commitment of Traders reports can be accessed here. Traditional trading lore has it that the way to use COT data is to “follow the commercials.” In FX, this is not always the best advice.

Hello there,
With this script, you can see CFTC COT Non Commercial and Commercial Positions together. This way, you can analyze net values ​​greater than 0 and smaller, as well as very dense and very shallow positions of producers and speculators. Green – Non Commercials – Speculators
Red – Commercials – Producers

This script is multi time-frame and… You’re here because you want to understand the markets, not just play in them. You’re not interested in the fluff, the indicators, or the “magic systems” that promise you riches. You want to know what drives the market, what makes it tick, and how you can leverage that knowledge to your advantage.

The aggregate of all traders’ positions reported to the Commission usually represents 70 to 90 percent of the total open interest in any given market. Information that is included in the report is compiled on Tuesday and verified on Wednesday before being released every Friday. The report provides the data, which is visualized in graphical form. The report is intended to help people understand the dynamics of the market.

How a Commitments of Traders (COT) Report Works, Types, Example

The blue area is the Daily September futures contract subtracted by the current price. The green area is the Daily June futures contract subtracted by the current price. This is a long term/investment type of strategy designed to have a good idea about where the big commitment of traders report forex trend direction is headed. Its logic, its made entirely on the COT report, mainly from looking into the net non comercial positions aka the speculators. For bullish trend we look that the difference between long non comercial vs short non comercial is higher than…