COT report articles: long-form thinking about positioning data.
22 articles · by Valentin Dima · 6 languagesWe do not publish news or trade calls. We publish patient, structural long-reads on how the COT report works and how to read it, plus notes on the tools we build around the data.
The COT-Reports blog publishes free educational long-reads on the CFTC Commitments of Traders (COT) report: how the report families and trader categories work, when the data comes out, and how to read positioning and the COT Index. Product notes cover the site's own tools. Every post is written by Valentin Dima, in 6 languages.
More COT report articles.
- 9 min read
How Traders Use the COT Report: What They Read, Its Limits
What readers of the CFTC COT report look at: net positioning by group, changes, multi-year extremes, open interest, report families, and the limits of the data.
- 7 min read
COT Data in MetaTrader and NinjaTrader: What Each Offers
How COT data reaches NinjaTrader and MetaTrader 4/5, from their own help pages, and how COT-Reports.com tables, charts, CSV files and API fit alongside them.
- 7 min read
COT Data on TradingView vs COT-Reports.com: How to Read Both
How to find CFTC COT data on TradingView, from its own help pages, and what COT-Reports.com adds: tables, charts, a COT Index and the release dates.
- 9 min read
The COT Report Goes Twice Weekly: The CFTC’s New Release Schedule
The CFTC will publish the COT report twice a week by end-2026: Monday data on Wednesday, Wednesday data on Friday. What changes, and what is not known yet.
- 7 min read
COT Report: Futures Only vs Futures & Options Combined
Futures Only or Futures & Options Combined? What each CFTC COT version counts, when they differ most (a real example) and which one to read.
- 6 min read
COT Data in Your AI Assistant: the COT-Reports MCP Server
Ask Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or VS Code about CFTC positioning: how the COT-Reports MCP server works, what is free, what Premium adds, how to connect.
- 7 min read
ICT and the COT Report: How the Inner Circle Trader Reads It
How ICT (Michael J. Huddleston) reads the CFTC COT report: commercials first, the hedging program, Futures Only data — and where to follow it on our site.
- 8 min read
Larry Williams and the COT Report: the COT Index Explained
How Larry Williams read the COT report: his 1987 contest result, his 2005 COT book, the COT Index formula, the 80/20 readings and what the method cannot do.
- 7 min read
Position Sizing and Risk Management: A Guard for Every Trade
Most accounts blow up on bad sizing, not bad entries. How to size each trade to a fixed risk, and the on-chart robot coming soon to guard it on your platform.
- 7 min read
The COT Report Spreadsheet: weekly CFTC data in Excel
An Excel template (.xlsm) that auto-refreshes the latest COT report on open. No copy-pasting from the CFTC, no API key. Plus the Data Dump for full history.
- 7 min read
The COT Data API — programmatic access to weekly CFTC reports
A REST API for the Commitments of Traders dataset: bearer auth, JSON, four endpoints, $9.99/month. For traders who code and analysts who feed dashboards.
- 9 min read
Twenty Quietly Useful Facts About the COT Report
Most readers know the basics of the Commitments of Traders report. Beyond that, the picture thins out fast: twenty quieter facts, in five short sections.
- 7 min read
Free COT Data: What Is Free, Where, How Far Back
A short tour of everything you get on COT-Reports.com without paying a cent: the Telegram channel, the bot, weekly tables, charts and the comparison view.
- 4 min read
COT and Open Interest: Two Datasets Behind Every Futures Market
Open interest and the Commitments of Traders report are the two public datasets that shape how futures markets are described. How they complement each other.
- 4 min read
The Friday Release and the Three-Day Lag
Every Friday afternoon the CFTC publishes the latest Commitments of Traders file, with data three days old. Why, and why it matters less than it looks.
- 5 min read
Trader Categories Across the COT Reports
The Legacy, Disaggregated and Traders in Financial Futures reports each label traders differently. What each label means and why the CFTC has three systems.
- 4 min read
Who Actually Trades Futures
The COT report splits every market into trader categories. Who those participants really are, and why the mix differs from what most people imagine.
- 5 min read
The Report Families the CFTC Publishes
The Commitments of Traders report is a family, not one report: a short overview of Legacy, Disaggregated, Traders in Financial Futures and Supplemental.
- 4 min read
Non-Commercial Positioning and Market Sentiment
Hedge funds, CTAs and large speculators leave a weekly fingerprint in the COT data. What that fingerprint has historically meant for market sentiment.
- 4 min read
Why the COT Report Still Matters
Decades after it first appeared, the Commitments of Traders report is still one of the most-watched public datasets in the futures world. A short note on why.
- 4 min read
From Spreadsheet to Web: The COT Reports Tradition
For decades, futures traders kept their own COT spreadsheet, pasting CFTC files into Excel every week. Where that ritual came from, and where it is going.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often is the blog updated?
There is no fixed schedule. A post goes up when a topic deserves a long-read, and an existing post is revised when the facts behind it change; it then shows its "Updated" date. The newest posts are at the top of this page, and the RSS feed lists each new one.
Who writes the blog?
Every post is written by Valentin Dima, who built and runs COT-Reports.com. Where a post relies on outside material, it names the source, so a claim can be checked independently. We do not republish other people's content under our byline.
Can I subscribe to new posts?
Yes. The blog's RSS feed (/feed.xml, in English) lists every new post. For the weekly data itself, subscribe to the free newsletter from any newsletter card on the site, or follow the Telegram channel, which posts after each Friday CFTC release.
What topics does the COT-Reports blog cover?
Educational long-reads on the COT report: the four report families and their trader categories, Futures Only versus Futures & Options Combined, the Friday release and its three-day lag, open interest, the COT Index and how traders such as Larry Williams and ICT use COT data. Product notes cover the site's own tools: the COT Data API, the COT spreadsheet, the MCP connection for AI assistants, and a note on position sizing and risk-management robots.
Are blog posts free to read?
Yes — every post is fully free, no signup, no paywall. The blog is the public side of cot-reports.com; Premium subscriptions unlock the data pages and the report formats, not the blog content.
Where do you source data and citations?
The COT figures come from the CFTC's own Commitments of Traders data (U.S. federal public domain, 17 USC §105). When a post draws on other material, such as a CFTC page or a trader's own published work, it names it in the text or in a Sources list at the end of the post.
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