COT Report: Futures Only vs Futures & Options Combined

What each version counts

Futures Only counts positions in futures contracts and nothing else. Futures & Options Combined adds the traders’ option positions, converted into futures: in the CFTC’s words, option positions are “computed on a futures-equivalent basis using delta factors supplied by the exchanges”.

Long calls and short puts are counted as long futures-equivalents; short calls and long puts as short ones. The CFTC’s own illustration: a long put on 500 contracts with a delta of 0.50 counts as a short futures-equivalent position of 250 contracts. Those equivalents are then added to each group’s futures positions.

Which reports come in both versions

The Legacy report, the Disaggregated report and the Traders in Financial Futures (TFF) report are all published in both versions. The Supplemental report — the one that adds the Index Traders category, for a selected group of agricultural markets — exists only as Futures & Options Combined.

Both versions are released together, normally on Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time, with positions as of the previous Tuesday. For the Legacy report the futures-only history is the longer one: the CFTC’s combined history starts in March 1995.

When the numbers differ — a real example

Because the combined version adds option positions, the gap grows with the size of a market’s options business; in a market with few options the two versions are almost identical. Crude oil shows how large it can get. In the report of 29 September 2026, WTI crude oil (NYMEX) had an open interest of 1,878,576 contracts in Futures Only and 2,494,485 in Futures & Options Combined — about a third more.

The positioning changes too, and not always in the same direction. In crude oil, the Non-Commercial (large speculators) net position was 109,463 contracts net long in Futures Only and 190,022 in Combined — about three-quarters larger. In corn, in the same report, open interest was 1,857,317 against 2,577,179, yet the large speculators’ net long was smaller in Combined: 413,811 against 509,501. Read the same group in the other version before drawing a conclusion from its size.

Which version do traders read?

Legacy Futures Only is the classic: it has the longest history, and it is the default of our Legacy pages. ICT (The Inner Circle Trader) is explicit about it in his COT lesson — the futures-only report, options left aside. For the classic COT Index approach associated with Larry Williams, we found no primary statement on which version he used.

Neither version is “right”. Futures Only is the cleaner read of futures traders; Combined shows the fuller exposure when a group also uses options. The useful habit is to stay with one version for a given study, and to check the other one in markets with a large options business.

Both versions on COT-Reports.com

Each report opens on its default version: Futures Only for the Legacy report, Futures & Options Combined for the Disaggregated, TFF and Supplemental reports. The default version is included wherever the report itself is; switching to the other version is a Premium feature. The Supplemental report has no switch, because it only exists as Combined.

The switch sits on the report tables (COT Report Simplified, COT Report Detailed, Disaggregated, TFF), on the Latest COT Report pages, COT Data Charts, the COT Index, Comparison, Weekly Summary, Heatmap, Advanced Charts and COT Volume Profile.

For code and AI assistants, the COT Data API and the MCP server take a variant argument — futonly or combined — and default to each report’s own version. A Data API key reads both; through the MCP server, both versions come with COT Premium, while without an account or with a free account each report answers in its default version. For files, the COT Data Dump sells both versions as downloads: the Futures Only archive, the Futures & Options Combined archive, or both together.