Commitments of Traders
COT report glossary: 30 key terms explained
Look up the report formats, trader groups and position fields used throughout the Commitments of Traders data.
If you are new to the report itself, start with What is the COT report? Use this glossary whenever you need to check a term.
Classification rule
Trader categories describe an organization’s main role in the market. One category can contain positions opened for different reasons.Reports and dates
The CFTC's weekly breakdown of open interest by trader category. It covers futures and options-on-futures markets where at least 20 traders hold positions equal to or above the CFTC's reporting levels. The data normally reflects Tuesday positions and is released Friday at 3:30 p.m. ET.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.S. federal agency that regulates derivatives markets, including futures, options on futures and swaps. It publishes the COT reports.
The date on which the reported positions were measured, usually Tuesday. It is not the publication date: the report normally arrives three days later, on Friday. Holidays can change the normal timetable.
The original COT format. It groups reportable traders as commercial or non-commercial and shows nonreportable positions as the remainder. Legacy covers physical and financial markets and has the longest history of the main COT reports.
The more detailed report for physical commodities. It divides reportable traders into Producer/Merchant/Processor/User, Swap Dealers, Managed Money and Other Reportables.
Traders in Financial Futures, the detailed report for interest-rate, equity-index and currency futures. Instead of the Legacy commercial/non-commercial view, it shows Dealer/Intermediary, Asset Manager/Institutional, Leveraged Funds and Other Reportables.
Futures Only vs. Futures and Options Combined
Futures Only reports count futures positions. Combined reports convert options into futures-equivalent positions using exchange-supplied delta factors, then add them to futures positions. Because of option-delta calculations, a reconstructed long or short side in a Combined file may be one contract above or below reported futures-equivalent open interest. COT Screener uses Futures Only data for its main positioning board.
The Short format contains the main position, weekly-change, percentage and trader-count fields. The Long format adds crop-year breakdowns where relevant and concentration ratios for the four and eight largest traders. Legacy and Disaggregated are available in Short and Long formats; TFF is Long only; Supplemental is Short only.
Supplemental report / Index Traders (CIT)
An additional Futures and Options Combined report for selected agricultural markets. It identifies Index Traders drawn from both Legacy commercial and non-commercial categories. Their main activity is replicating a commodity index.
The number of contracts that remain open. Every open long has a matching open short, and that pair counts as one contract of open interest. Combined reports express options on a futures-equivalent basis.
A trader becomes reportable when a position in any single futures month or option expiration is equal to or above the CFTC threshold for that market. The reporting firm then submits the trader's full position across all expirations in the commodity.
Trader categories
In the Legacy report, a reportable trader that uses futures or options in that commodity to hedge business risk. The classification is commodity-specific, and it does not mean that every position the trader holds is a hedge.
Non-commercial (large speculator)
In the Legacy report, a reportable trader that is not classified as commercial in that commodity. The category often includes commodity trading advisers, commodity pool operators, hedge funds and other investors. “Large speculator” is common shorthand for the group. COT Screener uses its net position for the Legacy COT Index.
The remainder on each side after all reportable positions—including Spreading on both sides where shown—are subtracted from open interest. The public report provides neither a trader count nor a commercial classification for this remainder. “Small trader” is therefore only shorthand.
Producer / Merchant / Processor / User
An entity whose main business involves producing, processing, packing, handling or using a physical commodity, and that uses futures to manage risks from that business.
An entity that deals mainly in commodity swaps and uses futures to manage the risk from those swaps. Its clients can be commercial firms or speculative traders. The Disaggregated report separates swap dealers from other traders included in the Legacy commercial category.
The Disaggregated report category for registered commodity trading advisers and commodity pool operators, plus unregistered funds identified by the CFTC. They manage futures portfolios on behalf of clients. The category overlaps with, but is not identical to, Legacy non-commercial traders.
The TFF category for large banks and dealers in securities, swaps and other derivatives. They use futures to price products, serve clients and manage the resulting risk.
The TFF category for institutional investors such as pension funds, endowments, insurers, mutual funds and investment managers whose clients are mainly institutions.
The TFF category for hedge funds, commodity trading advisers, commodity pool operators and other funds. Their strategies can include directional trades and arbitrage within or across markets.
A catch-all for reportable traders not assigned to the other categories. In TFF it can include corporate treasuries, central banks, smaller banks, mortgage originators and credit unions.
Positions and measures
A long futures position gains value when the contract price rises; a short position gains value when it falls. Wherever Spreading is reported separately, equal long and short amounts are placed in Spreading, and the Long and Short fields show what remains on each side. Where no separate Spreading field appears, they show the category's reported long and short positions.
Long minus Short for one trader category. A positive number is net long; a negative number is net short. Spreading is excluded because it contributes equally to both sides. In Futures Only data, category net positions sum to zero. In Combined data, option-delta calculations can leave a one-contract rounding difference on either side.
The calculated amount of offsetting long and short positions held by the same trader, usually across contract months. Spreading contributes equally to the long and short sides of open interest, so it cancels out of net position. Legacy shows it for non-commercial traders; Disaggregated and TFF show it for the categories specified in those reports. Intermarket spreads are excluded.
The difference between the current and previous report for each Long, Short or Spreading field. It shows how the category total moved between the two report dates.
Each published Long, Short or Spreading field expressed as a share of total open interest. The CFTC publishes these field-level percentages; net percent of open interest is calculated as 100 × (Long − Short) ÷ open interest. Combined reports use futures-equivalent open interest as the denominator, and displayed percentages can differ slightly because of rounding.
A calculated indicator—not a field published by the CFTC—that rescales one trader category's net position within a chosen lookback window. When the range is greater than zero, an unrounded 0 marks the lowest net position and an unrounded 100 the highest. A displayed 0 or 100 can also result from rounding. COT Screener returns 50 when the window high and low are equal.
The history used to find the low and high for a COT Index. COT Screener's market pages offer 26-, 52- and 156-week views; a younger series uses all history available up to the selected window. The same position can receive a different score in each window.
On COT Screener's positioning board, displayed readings from 80 to 100 fall in the upper-range band and 0 to 20 in the lower-range band. These site-defined ranges show that positioning is near one end of its selected historical range.
In the long-format report, the percentage of open interest held by the four and eight largest reportable traders. The CFTC publishes separate gross-long, gross-short, net-long and net-short ratios, regardless of trader category.
A free account lets you see these categories and measures in context on the positioning board, including gold, WTI crude oil and Euro FX (euro futures).
Official sources
These definitions follow the CFTC’s own report descriptions and explanatory notes:
