Commitment of Traders Report Chart
The Commitment of Traders (COT) report is a weekly publication issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the United States. It provides a breakdown of the positions held by various types of traders in futures markets and the report categorizes traders into three main groups: commercial traders (often producers or consumers of the commodity), non-commercial traders (usually large speculators, such as hedge funds), and non-reportable traders (small speculators or traders whose positions do not meet reporting thresholds).
The Commitments of Traders report is published by the CFTC each Friday at 19:30 GMT and each CoT report includes a breakdown of each Tuesday's open interest for markets that show 20 or more traders hold positions above the reporting levels.
Unfortunately, CFTC reports are very hard to read and interpret, therefore, this tool can be a great way to simplify the reported numbers.
This data is not meant to indicate the actual value at any given point in time but represents a discretionary assessment by Dukascopy Bank SA only.
Why use the Commitment of Traders Chart?
The Commitment of Traders Report is a snapshot of what traders and investors are doing as seen by the lines of Long, Short and Net positions of Noncommercial traders. It can help you better understand the current situation in a particular market and, therefore, know if you want to be taking either a long, short, or no position.
Non-commercial vs commercial traders?
Non-commercial means that these positions have been taken by private money, therefore, what is left are large institutional investors, hedge funds, and other entities that are trading to achieve profit.
Commercial traders are entities and institutions engaging in trading activities primarily to mitigate risks rather than seek direct profits from price fluctuations and their focus is on hedging against adverse price movements rather than capitalizing on market trends. Consequently, they remain indifferent to prevailing market conditions and are not included in the report, as their trading strategies are not geared towards actively participating in market movements.
How to use the Tool?
The chart is made up of weekly report data for a specific currency that can be changed in the bottom left corner of the chart.
From these results, a line is drawn for 3 metrics of
- Long Noncommercial Positions
- Short Noncommercial Positions
- Net Noncommercial positions
The values are represented on the left-side vertical axis with the base value of 0 for positions seen as the horizontal light grey line.
The Weekly Close Price line is added with values seen on the right-side vertical axis to better grasp what the price was doing during each of the CoT (Commitments of Traders) reports.
Now you should be ready to start using the Commitment of Traders Report Chart and combine it with our risk management tools.
