COT reports?
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Commission or CFTC) publishes the Commitments of Traders (COT) on a weekly basis. COT reports provide a breakdown of open interest for futures.
Open interest is the total number of outstanding derivative contracts, such as futures that have not been settled for an asset.
If a buyer and seller come together and initiate a new position of one contract, then open interest will increase by one contract. Should a buyer and seller both exit a one contract position on a trade, then open interest decreases by one contract.
The CFTC releases the data each Friday which contains the positions on Tuesday.
The Disaggregated reports are broken down by
- Agriculture
- Petroleum and products
- Natural gas and products
- Electricity
- Metals and other physical contracts
And then further into the following trader classifications
- Producer/Merchant/Processor/User
- Swap Dealers
- Managed Money
- Other Reportables
For our questions we are interested in the Disaggregated reports and then further in the Producer/Merchant/Processor/User classification for futures only.
Will the CFTC report more or less than the previous amount on Friday, March 5?