CFTC COT Positioning
The CFTC Commitments of Traders report is one of the most valuable publicly available data sets for FX traders. It reveals what large institutional speculators are actually positioned for — not what they say, but what they have real money on.
What Is the COT Report?
The Commitments of Traders (COT) report is a weekly publication from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It shows the aggregate open positions of different categories of traders in futures and options markets regulated by the CFTC — including currency futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).
For FX traders, the report provides a window into the positioning of the most sophisticated market participants: hedge funds, commodity trading advisors (CTAs), proprietary trading firms, and other large speculative accounts. This is institutional-level data, published by the CFTC every Friday afternoon.
CFTC.gov. Data is updated weekly (Friday release covers positions as of the prior Tuesday). The panel header shows the "week ending" date so you always know how current the data is.
Reading the COT Panel
The terminal displays COT data for AUD, CAD, CHF, EUR, GBP, JPY, and NZD futures (all quoted vs. USD — the CFTC does not publish a standalone USD futures contract directly comparable to the others, so USD does not appear as its own row). Each row shows the long/short bar, Long%, net contracts, the week-over-week net change (WoW Δ), an LF/AM alignment dot, net as % of LF open interest (Net%OI), and total LF open interest (OI):
The horizontal bar visualizes the long/short split. Green fills from the left (longs), red fills from the right (shorts). A bar extending past the midpoint on the green side means more speculative longs than shorts. Past the midpoint on the red side means net short positioning.
COT in the Pair Detail strip — dual-leg display for cross pairs
When you click any pair to expand its inline detail, the COT Positioning section adapts to the pair type:
- USD majors (EUR/USD, GBP/USD, etc.): Single leg — LF Net, AM Net, and LF Open Interest for the base currency vs USD. The CFTC data directly reflects the pair.
- Cross pairs (EUR/GBP, GBP/JPY, etc.): Two independent legs shown — base currency and quote currency separately, each with its own LF Net, LF WoW Δ, and Net%OI. Both values are raw CFTC figures as reported (no inversion). The footer line summarises alignment: GBP LF Long · JPY LF Short · aligned means both legs favour the same directional bias for the cross (long base, short quote = bullish cross).
Open Interest (OI)
The OI column shows the total Leveraged Funds open interest for each currency — the sum of all long and short contracts held by speculative accounts (hedge funds, CTAs, prop trading firms). This is distinct from net positioning: it measures the total size of the speculative bet, not its direction.
Open interest is the institutional standard for gauging conviction and participation level in a positioning move. It answers the question: is the current net position backed by large, active participation, or is it a thin, easy-to-unwind position?
| OI Change | Net Direction | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Rising OI ▲ | Net long growing | New money entering long — strong conviction |
| Rising OI ▲ | Net short growing | New money entering short — strong bearish conviction |
| Falling OI ▼ | Net improving | Shorts covering, not fresh longs — weaker signal |
| Falling OI ▼ | Net deteriorating | Longs liquidating, not fresh shorts — trend exhaustion risk |
A directional arrow (▲ green / ▼ red) appears alongside the OI number when the prior week's data is available, showing whether participation is expanding or contracting week-over-week.
The COT Detail Modal
Clicking any currency row in the COT panel opens the institutional COT detail modal — a full-screen overlay (bottom sheet on mobile) with five tabs that provide progressively deeper analysis for that currency.
Overview tab
The default tab. Organized in two rows:
- Top row — Positioning Gauge (left): A visual spectrum from Extreme Short (<−2σ) to Extreme Long (>+2σ), with a pin showing where current LF net positioning falls within the trailing 52-week history. Below the gauge: z-score, historical percentile, and label (e.g. Crowded Short · 22nd percentile).
- Top row — Long / Short Split (right): The absolute long and short contract counts and a proportional bar between them, showing LF long% and short%.
- Key Metrics section (full-width): Net%OI, Week-on-Week change with BUYING/SELLING badge, LF/AM crowd alignment, and 4-week trend pattern (Accumulating / Distributing / Mixed).
- Participants section (full-width): A mini bar-chart row for each category (Leveraged Funds, Asset Managers, Dealers / Intermediaries) with net contracts and LONG/SHORT/FLAT badge. Bars are proportionally scaled to the largest absolute net.
- 52-Week Range section (full-width): A range bar and table showing 52w High, Current, and 52w Low net contracts with the current position's percentile rank.
- 12-Week Net Trend section (full-width): A 12-week SVG sparkline of LF net contracts with a trend label (e.g. Accumulating · 3 consecutive weeks).
Net Position tab
A weekly bar chart of LF net contracts over the available history (up to 52 weeks). Bars are green (teal) for net-long weeks and red for net-short weeks — direction is encoded in both the bar color and the y-axis. This matches the terminal's standard up/down color convention.
Long / Short tab
A weekly line chart overlaying LF longs (teal) and LF shorts (red) on the same scale. Where the two lines converge, the position is close to neutral. Where they diverge, the gap represents the absolute size of the net position. Useful for seeing whether a net move is driven by new positions being added or existing positions being unwound.
Participants tab
A multi-line chart overlaying LF, Asset Manager, and Dealer net positions over the available history. Each series uses a fixed color (LF = blue, AM = orange, DD = red) so they render consistently on all devices. Below the chart, a brief text legend explains each category's typical behavior and how to interpret divergences.
History tab
A scrollable table of the last 52 weeks of raw CFTC data for the selected currency, with columns: Week, Net LF, WoW Δ (week-over-week change in net), Longs, Shorts, Long%, Net%OI, AM Net, and Dealer Net. This is the same source data that feeds all other tabs, presented in full for manual analysis or reference.