What Is the Commitment of Traders (COT) Report?

01The three groups of traders the COT report tracks

The CFTC requires large futures positions to be reported, then aggregates them into a weekly snapshot for each market. Every open contract is sorted into one of three groups, and the report shows how many contracts each group holds long and short.

• •Commercial traders (hedgers) — businesses that deal in the underlying asset, such as producers and end users, using futures to offset real exposure. Because they are hedging, they often add to positions against the prevailing trend.
• •Non-commercial traders (large speculators) — typically funds and large trading firms with no commercial use for the asset. They trade for profit and tend to follow trends, so their net position often lines up with the current direction.
• •Non-reportable traders (small speculators) — smaller accounts below the CFTC's reporting thresholds, grouped together as the residual of total open interest.

02How to read net positions

The single most-watched number is each group's net position: total long contracts minus total short contracts. A positive net means the group is net long (betting the market rises); a negative net means net short. Comparing the groups tells you who is on each side — for example, large speculators net long while commercials are net short.

Net positions are best read over time rather than as a single week. A speculative net long that keeps climbing shows conviction building; one that rolls over can mark the crowd starting to unwind. Open interest — the total number of contracts outstanding — puts it in context: rising open interest alongside a growing net position means fresh money is committing, while a change on falling open interest is more likely positions being closed.

03Why positioning matters: hedgers versus speculators

The value of the COT report comes from the contrast between the groups. Commercial hedgers are often called the "smart money" because they trade the physical market and tend to be positioned early and against extremes. Large speculators, by contrast, are trend-followers who can become heavily one-sided near the end of a move.

When speculative positioning reaches a crowded extreme — an unusually large net long or net short versus the market's own history — it flags that most of the willing buyers or sellers may already be committed, which can precede a reversal. Traders use this as a contextual, contrarian input or as confirmation of a trend, not as a precise timing trigger: a crowded market can stay crowded for a long time, so COT works best alongside price and trend analysis.

04How TradersLab surfaces COT data

TradersLab's Commitment of Traders dashboard turns the weekly CFTC release into a readable picture for every covered market. For any market it charts the net positions of commercials, large speculators and small traders week by week, with an open interest line overlaid, across years of history you can zoom into.

A concentration table ranks 60+ US futures — indices, currencies, energy, metals, rates, grains, softs and meats — by how one-sided large speculators currently are, measured as net position relative to open interest, so the most crowded long and short trades surface at the top.