FROM THE EDITORS · ENGLISH
Long-form thinking about positioning data.
We do not publish news. We publish the kind of patient, structural notes you wish you had on a Sunday evening before next week’s open. New essays roughly every two weeks.
The COT-Reports blog publishes weekly market commentary built on CFTC Commitments of Traders data — managed money positioning shifts, hedge-fund extremes, smart-money rotations and macro themes derived directly from the latest weekly release, written for active futures and forex traders.
Featured
LATESTCOT 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.
Archive
More from the editors.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What COT-Reports.com Offers for Free
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
We publish at least one positioning analysis post per week, usually within 24 hours of the Friday CFTC release. Additional posts cover educational topics, market-regime analyses and broker / prop firm reviews on an ad-hoc schedule.
Who writes the blog?
Posts are written by Valentin Dima, the founder of COT-Reports.com. We cite CFTC data and source files explicitly so any claim can be independently verified. We do not republish third-party blog content under our byline.
Can I subscribe to new posts?
Yes — subscribe to the COT-Reports newsletter on any newsletter card across the site, or follow our Telegram channel for instant notifications when new posts go live.
What topics does the COT-Reports blog cover?
Weekly positioning recaps for major futures and forex markets, market-regime analyses tied to CFTC data, broker and prop firm reviews, educational deep-dives on each CFTC report family, and occasional macro pieces tying COT positioning to bond yields, dollar moves, and commodity cycles. Every post links back to the underlying data on cot-reports.com so any claim is reproducible.
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?
CFTC SODA Open Data API for Commitments of Traders data (U.S. federal public domain, 17 USC §105), Yahoo Finance and the exchange websites for price + volume context, Bank of International Settlements for FX positioning context, and the prop firm / broker websites for their own disclosed offerings. Posts cite sources inline.
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