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COT Report Explained: Which of the Four CFTC Reports to Read

By Rutger Lokin · Updated

COT report explained in one line: the Commitments of Traders report is the weekly breakdown from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) of who holds the open positions in US futures markets, from hedge funds and banks to asset managers and commercial hedgers. The CFTC publishes it in four versions, and for currencies the one to read is the Traders in Financial Futures report.

The latest week for every major currency, from that report, is on COT report for forex.

When the COT report comes out

The report shows each Tuesday’s positions and is released on Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time (CFTC: About the COT reports). A federal holiday can push the release later; every date is on the CFTC’s release schedule.

So the positions are three days old when you read them. In a fast market the picture may already have changed.

Only traders at or above the CFTC’s reporting level are sorted into groups. What is left of open interest is shown as nonreportable: small traders whose number and type are unknown (CFTC explanatory notes).

The four COT reports

  • Legacy: commercial and non-commercial traders, plus nonreportable. The oldest version, and usually the one people mean by “the COT report”. The CFTC has published it weekly since 2000.
  • Supplemental: the Legacy groups plus index traders, for selected agricultural markets only. Published since 2007.
  • Disaggregated: physical commodities such as energy, metals and farm products, split into producer/merchant/processor/user, swap dealers, managed money and other reportables. Published since 4 September 2009.
  • Traders in Financial Futures (TFF): financial futures such as currencies, interest rates and stock indexes, split into dealer/intermediary, asset manager/institutional, leveraged funds and other reportables. Announced on 22 July 2010.

The Disaggregated and TFF reports both carry history back to 13 June 2006.

Why the Legacy report can mislead

Legacy’s commercial group holds everyone who reports hedging business risk in futures. That includes swap dealers: firms that deal mainly in swaps and use futures to hedge the risk. The client on the other side of their swaps can be a commercial firm or a speculator such as a hedge fund (CFTC Disaggregated explanatory notes).

So a large commercial short in Legacy can be a miner selling its future output, or a bank hedging the swaps it wrote for clients. Legacy cannot tell you which.

In financial futures the gap is different. The TFF groups are not a split of the Legacy ones: a leveraged fund, a dealer or an asset manager can sit in either Legacy category (CFTC TFF explanatory notes). Legacy’s non-commercial number for the euro is not a count of hedge funds.

One gold market in two reports

COMEX gold futures, positions on 6 October 2026, futures only. Each figure is a net position, longs minus shorts, in contracts.

In the Legacy report:

  • Commercial: −244,527
  • Non-commercial: +210,335

In the Disaggregated report:

  • Producer/merchant/processor/user: −19,501
  • Swap dealers: −225,026
  • Managed money: +110,987
  • Other reportables: +99,348

The first two add up to the Legacy commercial figure, and the last two to the non-commercial one. About 92% of the commercial short is swap dealers, not producers. And managed money holds only about half of the speculative long; other large traders hold the rest. The gold COT report reads these figures in full.

The TFF report: the one to read for forex

TFF splits large traders in financial futures into the sell side and three groups on the buy side (CFTC TFF explanatory notes):

  • Dealer/intermediary: large banks and dealers in securities, swaps and other derivatives. They design and sell financial products to clients and tend to offset their risk.
  • Asset manager/institutional: pension funds, endowments, insurance companies, mutual funds and managers whose clients are mostly institutions.
  • Leveraged funds: typically hedge funds and money managers, including registered commodity trading advisors (CTAs) and commodity pool operators. Often called Leveraged Money.
  • Other reportables: the rest, mostly hedging business risk: corporate treasuries, central banks, smaller banks and credit unions among them.

Leveraged funds are the group most forex traders follow. Their position is the closest the report comes to speculative money in currency futures.

The CFTC adds one caveat: it classifies traders, not trades. A hedge fund that uses currency futures to hedge an over-the-counter position still counts as a leveraged fund.

TFF covers the futures of the major currencies, and the ICE US Dollar Index future for the dollar. The leveraged funds’ positions in each, week by week:

The Disaggregated report: the one to read for commodities

For gold, oil, copper and other physical commodities, read the Disaggregated report and its managed money group: registered CTAs, commodity pool operators and unregistered funds the CFTC identifies. It is the commodity counterpart of leveraged funds. Our COT pages cover the currencies only; commodity positions are on cftc.gov.

What to read in the right report

  • The net position: longs minus shorts, the side the group leans to (What Is Net Positioning?).
  • The change on the week: what the group did, not just where it stands. Funds going from net long 85,000 contracts to 72,000 are cutting their longs.
  • The size against the market: the net position as a share of open interest, so a reading compares across years.
  • The position against its own history: a percentile or a z-score shows whether the trade is crowded. That is a risk, not a timing signal (COT Data Reversals).
  • The flip: a group crossing from net long to net short, or back, has changed direction, not just size.

Our COT pages print the first three for every week, with the range of the net position over the weeks shown.

Common mistakes

  • Reading only the Legacy report. Its commercial group mixes producers with swap dealers, and its non-commercial group is not a count of funds.
  • Using COT as an entry signal. A crowded position says a trend is vulnerable, not when it turns.
  • Forgetting the lag. Tuesday’s positions arrive on Friday, which suits swing and position trading better than day trading.