CFTC positioning
A COT report tool that reads the CFTC tables for you.
Every Friday the CFTC discloses how dealers, asset managers and leveraged funds are positioned in futures. The raw tables are unreadable; the useful form is normalized history — net positions, z-scores and the 52-week COT index. This page explains exactly how those are computed.
The 52-week COT index, defined
index = (net − min₅₂w) / (max₅₂w − min₅₂w) × 100
Where net is the current net position of a trader category and the min/max are taken over the trailing 52 weekly reports. 100 = most net-long in a year; 0 = most net-short. The companion z-score expresses the same position in standard deviations from its trailing mean — useful when the range itself is distorted by one extreme week.
Two reports, different markets
TFF — Traders in Financial Futures
Equity index, rates and FX futures, split by dealer / asset-manager / leveraged-fund. The one to watch for macro positioning: e.g. how net-short leveraged funds are in 10-year Treasury futures.
Disaggregated — commodities
Producers, swap dealers and managed money in energy, metals and agriculture. Managed-money extremes in crude or gold are the classic crowding reads.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the COT report?
- The Commitments of Traders report, published weekly by the CFTC, discloses the aggregate futures positions of large trader categories. MEDGE ingests two variants: Traders in Financial Futures (TFF — dealers, asset managers, leveraged funds) for financial contracts, and the Disaggregated report (producers, swap dealers, managed money) for commodities.
- What is the 52-week COT index?
- A normalization that turns a raw net position into a 0–100 percentile against its own trailing year: index = (current net − 52-week minimum) / (52-week maximum − 52-week minimum) × 100. A reading near 100 means the trader group is the most net-long it has been in a year; near 0, the most net-short. It makes positioning comparable across contracts of different sizes.
- How do traders use COT positioning?
- Mostly as a crowding / sentiment gauge: extreme readings show when a trader category is heavily positioned on one side, which some interpret as contrarian context (a crowded trade has fewer marginal buyers left). It is one input among many — positioning extremes can persist for months, so COT is context, not a signal by itself.
- When is COT data released?
- The CFTC publishes every Friday afternoon (US Eastern), reporting positions as of the preceding Tuesday. That built-in 3-day lag is inherent to the source — any tool showing "live" COT data is showing the same Tuesday snapshot.
- What does MEDGE add on top of the raw report?
- The Futures Positioning module parses TFF + Disaggregated weekly, computes net positions, z-scores and the 52-week index per trader category, and charts the history against price — so an extreme reads at a glance instead of requiring spreadsheet work on the raw CFTC tables. It is available on the Pro tier.
Related
The live COT dashboard is inside MEDGE.
Weekly TFF + Disaggregated history, z-scores and the 52-week index per trader category, charted against price. Futures Positioning is a Pro-tier module — 7-day free trial, cancel anytime.
Open Futures Positioning