COT Report

How to read this

Each week, the CFTC publishes how many futures contracts large hedge funds and money managers ("leveraged funds") hold on each instrument. Net long means they hold more contracts betting the price will rise than contracts betting it will fall — net short is the opposite. The number itself (e.g. "-45,461") is the difference between those long and short contracts — bigger numbers mean a stronger, more one-sided bet by the big players; it isn't a dollar amount or a price target.

What this is NOT: seeing "net short" here doesn't mean go and open a short trade. COT data isn't a signal to act on by itself — it's one more variable, alongside your seasonality and central bank bias, that feeds into your overall view on an instrument.

How to actually use it: check whether this lines up with the bias you've already formed from your other tools. If it agrees, that's extra confluence. If it disagrees, that's a reason to be more cautious or reduce size — not necessarily a reason to flip your view. What matters is how you react to that agreement or conflict, not the raw number on its own.

Funds can be wrong, and very one-sided positioning can sometimes mean a reversal is overdue. The data also lags the market by a few days.