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The Commitment of Traders (COT) Report - Part One |
by John Jagerson
Commodity traders have access to a special market report each week that provides a snapshot of the positions of large institutional traders and small speculators in each commodity futures category. This information is called the commitment of traders report or "COT report" and is provided by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
To see the second article in this series on the COT report click here.
To see the third article in this series on the COT report click here.
The COT report is a great analytical tool for traders in any market because it provides up to date information about the trend and the strength of the commitment traders have towards that trend in each of the commodities markets. The COT report is also available on the most actively traded futures contracts such as stock indexes, interest rates and currencies.
The COT report essentially shows the net long or short positions for each available futures contract for three different types of traders. If traders are overwhelmingly long or increasing their long positions then we will have a bullish bias on that market. Similarly, if traders are short or increasing their short positions then we will have a bearish bias.
Not all traders in the report are of equal importance. In fact, of the three types of traders, investors usually pay attention to the one type with requirements most like the individual trader.
See the COT report for all the major forex pairs here.
1. Commercial Traders: These traders represent companies and institutions who use the futures market to offset risk in the cash or spot market. For example, a corn producer may short corn futures contracts to protect her profits if prices fall in the near term. This class of trader is not going to be very helpful for retail investors and we don't pay much attention to them.
2. Non-Commercial Traders: This category includes large institutional investors, hedge funds and other entities that are trading in the futures market for investment and growth. They are typically not involved directly in the production, distribution or management of the underlying commodities or assets. We pay the most attention to this category.
3. Non-Reporting Traders: This is the catch-all category for traders too small to be required to report their positions to the CFTC. We don't know how many individual traders there are or what kind of investors they represent because they are non-reporting. Most market professionals assume that a major percentage of this category are individual speculators. They are notoriously bad traders and you will more often see this category betting against the trend than with it. We don't pay any attention to this category.
Knowing what the big traders (non-commercials) are doing through the COT report gives us some idea about the trend for a particular asset class. We can use these reports to see what the big money is doing in just about any asset class. There are COT reports for equity investors (stock futures), commodity traders (including oil and gold) and currency traders (very important for spot FX traders.)
Later in this series we will go into much more detail about how this report is produced and specific ways you can use it in your trading.
Next: Trading Gold Outside the Futures Market
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