Detailed COT Report

The Detailed COT Report is the full Legacy Commitments of Traders table, shown as Futures Only by default (COT Premium members can switch to Futures & Options Combined). For every CFTC market it shows long, short, net positions, and the percentage of open interest held by each of the three trader categories: Non-Commercial (large speculators), Commercial (hedgers) and Non-Reportable (small traders).

Commercials are entities that use the futures market primarily to hedge an underlying business risk — e.g. a corn farmer selling futures to lock in next harvest's price, or an airline buying crude oil futures to fix fuel cost. Their net position is usually opposite to Non-Commercials; an extreme reading means it sits at the edge of its own historical range.

Open Interest is the total number of futures contracts that have been opened and not yet closed, expired or delivered. It measures market participation. Rising open interest with a rising price means new positions are being opened as the price climbs; falling open interest with a rising price means positions are being closed — for example short-covering — rather than new ones opened.

Non-Reportables are traders whose position size is below the CFTC reporting threshold — effectively retail and small institutional traders. Many traders watch Non-Reportable net positioning as a sentiment gauge: it shows how heavily small traders lean long or short compared with their own history.

Yes. The Detailed COT Report and 6 months of historical data are free with no signup. Free accounts unlock 1-year through 10-year historical periods. Premium accounts unlock all CFTC report formats (Disaggregated, TFF, Supplemental), 20+ years of data, CSV export and every trader group’s figures on the Positioning Heatmap.

When you switch the Group Reports filter from Individual to Bi-Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Half-Year or Yearly, the underlying weekly CFTC reports are combined as follows. Snapshot columns (Long, Short, Spreading, Open Interest) are averaged across the period — a monthly row shows the average position across the 4-5 weeks that fall inside that month. Flow columns (Change Long, Change Short, Change OI) are summed, because they represent weekly deltas and the period total is the cumulative flow. NET % CHANGE uses an endpoint formula: it compares the net position in the last week of the period to the net position in the first week, expressed as a percentage. The small ×N chip on the DATE cell shows exactly how many weekly reports were aggregated into that row.