What Is the COT Report (Commitment of Traders)?

Q: Is the COT report real-time?

No. It reflects positions as of the prior Tuesday and is published on Friday — a three-day lag always worth keeping in mind.

Q: Is COT a predictive indicator?

No, it functions as a contrarian context indicator. Extreme positioning can persist for weeks before a reversal materializes.

Q: Which markets does the COT report cover?

It covers equity indices, currencies, commodities, and interest rates traded as regulated futures in the United States.

Yuka Finance — technical definition and reading method

The COT report (Commitment of Traders) is a weekly report published every Friday by the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), detailing the net positioning (long vs. short) of each trader category across regulated U.S. futures markets — equity indices, currencies, commodities, interest rates.

What Are the COT Report's Trader Categories?

Commercials — companies hedging real price risk (producers, exporters).
Non-Commercials — hedge funds and institutional managers, reflecting genuine directional bets.
Non-Reportables — small traders below the reporting threshold.

How Do You Interpret COT Net Positioning?

Raw net positioning (long contracts minus short contracts) must be compared to its history via a 52-week percentile to become interpretable:

If percentile > 90 — extreme bullish positioning, heightened reversal or profit-taking risk.
If percentile < 10 — extreme bearish positioning, heightened short-squeeze risk.

GEX/DEX vs. COT: What's the Difference?

Indicator	Source	Frequency
COT Report	CFTC (institutional positioning)	Weekly, 3-day lag
GEX/DEX	Options chains (market maker structure)	Daily, near real-time

Concrete example: hedge funds' net gold positioning at the 95th percentile means it's only been this bullish 5% of the time over the past year — a contrarian signal worth watching, not an immediate timing signal.

On the Yuka Finance cockpit, the 52-week COT percentile is calculated automatically for major indices, currencies, commodities, and Bitcoin.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the COT report real-time?

No. It reflects positions as of the prior Tuesday and is published on Friday — a three-day lag always worth keeping in mind.

Is COT a predictive indicator?

No, it functions as a contrarian context indicator. Extreme positioning can persist for weeks before a reversal materializes.

Which markets does the COT report cover?

It covers equity indices, currencies, commodities, and interest rates traded as regulated futures in the United States.

Track COT in real time

Yuka Finance calculates the 52-week COT percentile automatically, for free.

See COT on Yuka Finance →