The CFTC's Commitment of Traders Report: A Free Window Into Who's Betting on Commodities

If you follow commodity markets long enough, you will eventually run into a chart labeled 'COT positioning' or 'managed money net long.' These charts come from the Commitment of Traders report, a dataset published every week by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It is one of the few free, official windows into who is actually holding positions in futures markets for oil, gold, corn, natural gas, and dozens of other contracts -- and it has become a staple tool for both professional and retail commodity watchers.

What the Report Actually Contains

The COT report aggregates open interest -- the total number of outstanding futures and options contracts -- for each market and breaks it down by type of trader. The CFTC collects this data directly from clearing members, futures commission merchants, and foreign brokers who are required to report positions above certain size thresholds set by the agency. Traders below those thresholds are not individually identified; the report only shows totals by category, never individual firms or account holders.

• Commercial traders: companies that use futures to hedge a physical business exposure, such as an oil refiner locking in crude prices or a farmer hedging a grain harvest.
• Non-commercial traders: large speculators, including hedge funds and commodity trading advisors, who typically have no underlying physical business and are trading for profit.
• Non-reportable positions: the sum of all smaller accounts below CFTC reporting thresholds, often used as a rough proxy for retail activity.
• In the disaggregated version of the report, the CFTC further splits commodities into categories such as producer/merchant/processor/user, swap dealers, managed money, and other reportables.

Legacy vs. Disaggregated vs. Supplemental Reports

The CFTC actually publishes several versions of the data each week. The 'legacy' report is the original format dating back decades, split simply into commercial and non-commercial categories. The 'disaggregated' report, introduced for physical commodities in 2009, breaks positions into four more granular groups and is generally considered more useful for agricultural, energy, and metals markets because it separates index-fund and swap-dealer activity from traditional speculative money. A 'supplemental' report adds further detail for selected agricultural contracts, isolating index trader positions specifically. Financial futures, such as those on currencies, Treasuries, and stock indices, use a separate 'Traders in Financial Futures' format with its own category breakdown.

How Market Participants Use It

Analysts commonly track the net position of managed money or non-commercial traders over time -- that is, long contracts minus short contracts. A large net long position suggests speculative money is leaning bullish; a large net short suggests the opposite. Some traders look for positioning extremes relative to historical ranges, on the theory that when speculative positioning becomes very one-sided, there are fewer new buyers or sellers left to extend the move, which can set up conditions for a reversal or at least reduced momentum. Others watch the gap between commercial and non-commercial positioning as a rough hedging-pressure indicator, since commercial hedgers often trade opposite speculators by the nature of their business.

Limitations Worth Knowing

The data has real constraints. It covers only exchange-traded futures and options, so over-the-counter derivatives and physical forward contracts are excluded, meaning the report captures only part of total market hedging and speculative activity. Category labels can also be imprecise: a 'commercial' designation is based on how a trader registers with the exchange, and large financial institutions sometimes hold both hedging and proprietary trading books under one reporting classification. Reporting thresholds mean very small traders are bundled into a catch-all category with no further detail. And because the report is a snapshot of positions, not a record of trade flow or entry prices, it says nothing about where traders established their positions or at what cost.

Where to Find It

The CFTC publishes the Commitment of Traders report directly on its website, free of charge, with historical data available for download. Exchanges such as CME Group also republish and chart the data for convenience. Because the report is a primary government data source, it is widely cited by commodity research desks, newsletters, and financial media -- but as with any single indicator, experienced market participants typically weigh it alongside price action, inventory data (such as weekly EIA petroleum reports or USDA crop reports), and macroeconomic context rather than relying on it in isolation.