What Is the Commitments of Traders Report?
A practical overview of CFTC COT coverage, publication lag, participant categories, net positioning and limitations.
What the report is
The CFTC Commitments of Traders report breaks down Tuesday open interest by participant category. Squawkdeck presents TFF Futures Only for financial contracts and Disaggregated Futures Only for physical commodity contracts, retaining each family’s official categories.
Reporting and publication lag
Positions are normally measured on Tuesday and published later in the week. This makes COT a historical positioning dataset, not a real-time signal.
How net positioning is calculated
Net position equals reported outright long contracts minus reported outright short contracts for the same family, market, scope, date and category. Commodity spread positions are stored separately.
Uses and limitations
Traders compare weekly changes, zero crossings, open-interest context and rolling history. The data does not reveal intent, paired legs, OTC exposure or future price direction.