CFTC Disaggregated · ICE Futures Europe · LME · 350+ Markets · Futures & Options Positioning Intelligence

The smart money is already positioned.
Now you can see exactly where.

Q: Does positioning data actually work?

Markets crowd. Crowds unwind. The CFTC data shows exactly when that crowding is reaching historical extremes, not as a gut feeling, but as a measurable number across a decade of history. It won't tell you when. What it gives you is an objective read on where the weight is sitting. Macro funds have used this for decades. We just make it accessible.

Q: What is positioning structure, and how is it different from the COT Index?

The COT Index tells you how crowded a position is. Positioning structure tells you who is holding it. Every week the CFTC publishes the number of speculative traders in each market, and its own measure of how much open interest the four and eight largest traders hold. Almost no COT tool surfaces either. COTInsight reports top-4 trader concentration ranked against that contract's own three-year history, available on 340 of the 344 markets scored on the 1 September 2026 report, plus the speculative trader count and the average position size per trader wherever the CFTC discloses them. It frequently does not: the CFTC writes a suppression marker instead of a count when too few traders hold a position to publish the number, which covered 189 of those 344 markets, and we withhold the count there rather than print a zero. Where the speculative split is suppressed we show the count of all reporting traders in the contract instead. Why it matters: on 1 September 2026 corn and wheat both read a COT Index of 100, maximum crowding, but corn's trader concentration sat in the 65th percentile of its own record while wheat's sat in the 5th. One was held in a few large hands, the other spread wide, and a dashboard showing only the index renders those two identically. Ultimate only, and descriptive: it reports market structure, it does not forecast direction.

Q: How many markets does COTInsight cover?

Around 350 markets report every week, and those are what the dashboard shows by default: between 349 and 359 in every week since launch. Behind them sit 600 instruments with weekly history back to 13 June 2006 , the first Disaggregated and Traders in Financial Futures report the CFTC published. The gap is contracts that have stopped reporting, some as long ago as 2008; they are kept for their history, hidden by default, and one toggle in the dashboard shows them. Coverage is the CFTC Disaggregated and TFF reports, the Supplemental index-trader report on 13 agricultural markets, the London Metal Exchange book, and the ICE Futures Europe Commitments of Traders, which is reported to the UK FCA rather than the CFTC. ICE is where Brent crude, gasoil, robusta coffee, white sugar and London cocoa trade, and none of them appear in any CFTC file. ICE Brent alone carries more open interest than NYMEX WTI.

Q: Where does the data come from, and how current is it?

Directly from the regulators and exchanges themselves. No vendor, no intermediary. Most of the book comes from cftc.gov; ICE Futures Europe contracts such as Brent and gasoil come from ICE's own Commitments of Traders publication, because those markets report to the UK FCA and never appear in CFTC files, and the metals book comes from the London Metal Exchange. The CFTC publishes each Friday (data as of Tuesday's close) and COTInsight refreshes automatically on Friday evening. You're always on the latest available figures from the authoritative source. Options included: commodity markets (energy, metals, grains, softs, livestock) use the CFTC's futures-and-options-combined disaggregated report, so open interest and participant positions reflect the full picture including options. Financial markets (FX, equity indices, rates, crypto) use the futures-only report, which is what the CFTC publishes for those instruments.

Q: What is the Historical Outcome Analyzer?

For each instrument that has a price series, you see a table broken down by seven z-score buckets (from "z ≥ 2.0, extreme spec long" to "z < −2.0, extreme spec short"). For each bucket, the table shows how often price was higher and the average % price change at three forward horizons: 4 weeks, 8 weeks, and 12 weeks after the signal date. Every row means the same thing on both sides of the book: the share of past cases in which price was higher at the end of the window. N shows how many historical occurrences fell into each bucket across the full available history (up to 20 years for major instruments). Instruments without a mapped price ticker show no outcome data. This is descriptive of past data, not a forecast or guarantee.

Q: Do I need a card for the free trial?

No. Your 7-day trial gives full dashboard access to all 350+ instruments, 10-year history, and every signal, with no payment information required at signup. CSV export is included but limited during the trial (the most-traded markets are excluded); the full CSV report covering every market is available to Pro and Ultimate subscribers. PDF reports, AI commentary, outcome stats, full historical archive, and API access are Ultimate-only features not included in the trial.

Q: Is this investment advice?

No. COTInsight is an informational data tool only. Nothing here constitutes a trading recommendation. Read the Risk Disclaimer before subscribing.

COT Report Analysis · Commitment of Traders Signals · COT Index & Z-Score Extremes · Managed Money Positioning

Every week, institutional traders reveal their hand: hedge funds building exposure, commercials hedging against the trend, swap dealers offloading risk. The CFTC disaggregated COT report captures all of it, participant by participant, across every regulated market. Whether you trade with institutional conviction or fade crowded extremes, positioning structure tells you more than price alone ever will. COTInsight turns that intelligence into clear signals across 350+ markets.

Start 7-day free trial See the signals

No credit card required · Full dashboard access for 7 days · Cancel anytime

350+ markets CFTC futures and options, plus the LME metals book and ICE Brent, the largest crude contract in the world, which no other COT tool carries

9 layers On every market, every week, on every plan. Not a single number to interpret alone

20 years Back to the first modern CFTC report in June 2006. Nobody can go deeper on these reports

Only on COTInsight Historical Outcome Analyzer What this market did last time. Every extreme scored against that market's own record, so you see what actually followed at 4, 8 and 12 weeks, with the sample size beside it. Ultimate

Live now: this week's most stretched marketsCFTC data as of 2026-09-15

Japanese Yen (JPY)+3.45σCrowded long Sugar+2.86σCrowded long Mexican Peso (MXN)+2.86σCrowded long Live Cattle-2.35σCrowded short Swiss Franc (CHF)-2.10σCrowded short Corn+2.05σCrowded long

6 of 73 markets at a positioning extreme this week. The full board, all nine layers and the history are inside.

The Dashboard

Friday afternoon to a decision, in one view.

Institutional positioning across 350+ markets, ranked by signal strength. Sorted, scored, and ready.

Open the board

Eight major markets from the current CFTC release, most stretched first
Market	Z	COT Idx	Regime
Crude Oil (WTI) Energy	+2.04	100	Extreme Long
S&P 500 Indices	+1.43	64	Neutral
Bitcoin Crypto	+1.31	94	Building Long
10-Year Treasury Note Rates	+1.30	45	Neutral
Gold Metals	+1.15	56	Distributing
Euro FX (EUR/USD) FX	-0.82	34	Neutral
Natural Gas Energy	-0.75	22	Neutral
Copper Metals	+0.24	87	Flip Zone

Crude Oil (WTI)Energy · CL=F

+2.04 z-scoreExtreme LongCOT 100

Z-score

+2.04

COT idx

100

Regime

Extreme Long

OI trend

Neutral

Divergence

None

Small spec

Normal

Net speculative positioning, 52 weeks

52 weeks ago26 weeksNow

Net speculative

+2,747

contracts held long minus short

Open interest

1,058,139

all contracts outstanding

Spec streak

4-week streak ↑

consecutive weeks one way

Participant breakdown net contracts, short left of centre, long right

Managed Money

+2,747

Swap Dealers

-149k

Producer/Merchant

+128k

Other Reportables

+15k

Non-Reportable

+3,052

Historical outcomes by z-bucket Ultimate

Z-range	N	4W higher	8W higher	12W higher	12W avg
▶ z ≥ 2.0 (extreme long)	33	46%	55%	48%	-3.9%
1.5 ≤ z < 2.0 (strong long)	61	43%	43%	38%	+3.2%
0.5 ≤ z < 1.5 (mild long)	187	54%	52%	55%	+3.2%
-0.5 ≤ z < 0.5 (neutral)	207	59%	58%	56%	+4.7%
-1.5 ≤ z < -0.5 (mild short)	224	50%	49%	47%	+0.2%
-2.0 ≤ z < -1.5 (strong short)	95	54%	62%	56%	+2.9%
z < -2.0 (extreme short)	59	42%	39%	51%	-3.8%

See all 350+ markets

No credit card · Full dashboard access for 7 days

The CFTC publishes a 129-column text file. We turn it into an analysis, and the tools to act on it.

◈ Scan

The whole board, already ranked

Every market gets scored on the same nine layers and sorted by how stretched it is, so the crowded ones come to you instead of you hunting for them. Contracts that stopped reporting are hidden by default, so everything you see actually traded this week.

~350 markets9 layers eachsorted by extremity

◉ Analyze

Click once. The read is done.

Open any market and the work is already finished. Positioning against price across twenty years of history, the regime it is sitting in, who holds the exposure and how much of the open interest that is, whether index money is padding the commercial number, and what this market did the last time it looked like this. No spreadsheets, no maths, no digging through raw releases.

20 years of historyevery trader groupsample sizes shown

⇗ Act

Straight into the tools you already trade with

The z-score, COT Index and regime state plot right under the price on your own TradingView chart, so positioning sits exactly where you make decisions. CSV for your model, PDF for the meeting, a REST API to wire it into your own system, and the full archive if you want to test the idea against twenty years of record before you risk a cent.

TradingViewCSV & PDFREST APIfull archive

COT Report analysis:the most underread signal in public markets.

The CFTC Disaggregated Commitment of Traders report separates the players who move markets from those who follow them. Managed Money, hedge funds and CTAs running systematic and discretionary strategies, on one side. Commercials with structural hedging needs, and the swap dealers who intermediate them, on the other. When a group reaches a historical extreme, the positioning structure is saying something. Trend followers look for institutional accumulation confirming a move. Contrarians look for the overcrowded side that's about to unwind. Both strategies start with the same data.

COTInsight turns that raw report into a decision surface across 350+ markets, energy, metals, grains, softs, livestock, FX, equity indices, rates and crypto. Every instrument is scored on nine analytical layers, every week: a 52-week positioning z-score, a 3-year COT Index, an eight-state regime classifier, momentum and streak, open-interest trend, price-vs-positioning divergence, small-speculator extremes, the full participant breakdown, and category concentration showing which participant group dominates the book and what share of open interest it holds, with index-trader positions separated out on the 13 Supplemental agricultural markets. Ultimate adds the layers that turn a reading into a decision: historical outcome statistics showing how often price was actually higher after each z-score bucket, positioning structure showing whether the position sits in a few large hands or is spread wide, ranked against the contract's own history, plus how many speculators hold it wherever the CFTC discloses that count, options exposure showing how much of the read comes from the options leg, the forward curve, Energy Radar reading WTI, natural gas, gasoline and diesel positioning against the weekly EIA fundamentals, an AI analyst write-up of every flagged market, the TradingView indicator on your own chart, VS comparison and a REST API. Ten years of weekly history on Pro, twenty on Ultimate, recalibrated every Friday the moment the new report drops. The work that used to take hours of spreadsheets is already done when you open the dashboard. Learn how to read the COT report →

Learn

Guides to reading the CFTC Commitments of Traders report: z-score and COT Index normalisation and what the lookback window does to it, positioning regimes, price versus positioning divergence, crowded trades, index traders in the Supplemental report, the Friday release schedule, and measured studies of what actually follows a positioning extreme. Browse all articles.

Begin with the report itself: what the CFTC publishes, when it lands, and how to normalise it.

Guide

How to Read the COT Report

Step-by-step guide to reading CFTC Commitment of Traders data, net positioning, Managed Money, z-scores.

Guide

When Is the COT Report Released?

The CFTC schedule in full, the Friday 3:30 PM ET release, why the data is as of the prior Tuesday, and how federal holidays delay it.

Guide

COT Z-Score Explained

What the COT z-score is, how to interpret ±1.5 and ±2.0 thresholds, and how to use it as a contrarian signal.

Guide

Commercial vs Non-Commercial Positioning

Who the commercials and non-commercials are, why hedgers are the smart money, and how the Disaggregated and TFF reports split Managed Money, Producer/Merchant, and Leveraged Funds.

Guide

COT Index Explained

The Williams formula, and what the lookback window does to it. Gold reads 100 on 26 weeks and 62 on three years, and the 26-week setting pins at a boundary in one reading out of five.

What You Get

9 COT signals per instrument, per week.

Every market. Fully automated. What is a COT z-score? →

Core

Z-Score Extreme

Your crowding alarm. When managed money gets historically one-sided, measured against the past 52 weeks, the z-score catches it and fires an alert. At 1.5σ, something is worth watching. At 2.0+, the crowd is at its most vulnerable.

Core

COT Index

Where are we in the cycle? A single number, 0 to 100, against the past three years. Above 80, the market hasn't been this long in years. Extremes at either end rarely sustain.

Core

Regime Classifier

Not just how crowded, but which direction the crowd is moving. Eight states from Extreme Long to Extreme Short capture both the position and the momentum. You know exactly where in the cycle a market sits.

Signal

Divergence Detection

Price breaks to a new high. The smart money doesn't follow. When positioning and price tell opposite stories, the setup is worth a serious look, one of the most consistent early signals in systematic COT analysis.

Signal

Open Interest Trend

Fresh money entering a move means conviction. Money leaving at a positioning extreme means the unwind may already be starting. OI context turns a crowded number into an actionable story.

Signal

Small Spec Extreme

When retail piles in on the same side as the professionals, you're looking at maximum crowding from both ends. A secondary confirmation that the trade is getting dangerously popular.

Context

Participant Breakdown

Managed Money, Commercials, Swap Dealers, Non-Reportables, net contracts and percentage of open interest, side by side. See exactly who is holding the position and how dominant each group is.

Signal

Momentum & Streak

Is the crowd still building, or quietly leaving? Whether net positioning is accelerating, decelerating or flat, and how many consecutive weeks it has been adding or reducing. A stretched reading that stopped growing three weeks ago is a different animal from one still being fed.

Context

Market Concentration

How many hands is this position in? An HHI score, which group dominates the book, and what share of open interest they hold. A crowded reading spread across many traders behaves nothing like the same number sitting with two desks.

Ultimate exclusive

TradingView Integration

COT signals, directly on your charts.

Ultimate subscribers get the COTInsight indicator, an invite-only Pine Script that brings the full dashboard to any weekly TradingView chart. Z-score histogram, COT Index gauge, momentum & regime panel. 99 chart symbols auto-detected, covering 53 CFTC markets.

✓ Three stacked panels, Z-Score, COT Index, Momentum & Regime
✓ Divergence markers, streak counter, OI trend
✓ Futures, FX, indices, crypto, 99 symbols auto-mapped onto 53 CFTC markets
✓ Updated every Friday from the CFTC, the same release the dashboard reads
✓ Works on any TradingView plan, Free, Pro, or Premium

Get Ultimate → View on TradingView → Read the full indicator guide →

▼

2 3802 3502 3202 290

COTInsight · Z-Score 52W ULTIMATE

Bias: Bearish
Z: +1.87
Distributing

+1.5 0 −1.5

COTInsight · COT Index 3yr

COT Index: 78

805020

COTInsight · Momentum & Regime

Distributing
−4 wks reducing · OI Contracting

AugSepOctNovDec

Ultimate exclusive

Energy Radar

Where the crowd is leaning, and where the physical market actually is.

Two lenses, one screen. The COT Index shows where large speculators sit inside their own multi-year range. The 5-year seasonal band shows whether crude, products or gas storage are building or drawing against what is normal for this week of the year. Both stated plainly, with their samples. The judgment stays yours.

✓Four panels, 45 EIA series. WTI, natural gas, gasoline and diesel.
✓Crude, gasoline, diesel, jet, heating oil and propane, each against its own 5-year seasonal band.
✓Cushing, days of supply, refinery runs, imports, exports and the product cracks against WTI.
✓Gas storage in all five regions, salt caverns split out, degree days alongside.
✓Gauge, band strip, seasonal chart. The read lands before the table.
✓And the forward curve beside it. Ultimate reads the full NYMEX term structure on WTI, Brent, gas and RBOB: contango, backwardation, and where the roll is building.

Get Ultimate → See every field explained →

Example · WTI crude Ultimate

CFTC disaggregated · EIA weekly · NYMEX term structure

Positioning86COT Index · crowded long

Curve−4.3%backwardation, M1–M12

Crude stocks+6.2%above the 5-yr band

Positioning · COT Index 86 of 100

0 · crowded short crowded long · 100

Forward curve · CL Backwardated · M1−M12 $2.70

Solid is this week, dashed is last week. A front bid into a falling back end is the roll paying to be long.

Inventories vs 5-year seasonal band Δ week

Crude stocks

+6.2%

▲2.4

Cushing

-17.9%

▼1.1

Gasoline stocks

+1.4%

▼0.8

Distillate d/s

-2.5%

▲0.3

Propane stocks

+3.1%

▲1.9

Refinery runs

-1.8%

▼0.6

Product cracks vs WTI, with their own percentile

3-2-178th$21.40

RBOB64th$18.05

ULSD91st$28.90

Commercial crude stocks vs 5-year seasonal band

Shaded band is the 5-year range for each week of the year. Gold marks the weeks the series touched it.

Measured base rate: WTI stocks at or above the seasonal band averaged +4.83% over the next 8 weeks (independent n=40, t=+2.32).

Illustrative example, not live data

Pricing

Start with everything. Decide later.

Start free for seven days, no credit card. You get full dashboard access to COTInsight: all 350+ CFTC Commitment of Traders markets, 10 years of weekly positioning history, and nine analytical layers on every futures and options instrument: z-score extremes, COT Index, regime detection, momentum and streak, open-interest trend, divergence, small-speculator extremes, the participant breakdown and category concentration. CSV export is included, though limited during the trial; the full CSV report for every market is available on Pro. The complete smart-money picture, the moment you log in.

Upgrade to Ultimate when you want the whole board: historical outcome statistics showing what this market has actually done from this reading over the next 4, 8 and 12 weeks, positioning structure revealing how many traders hold the position and how concentrated it is, so a crowded reading held by twenty hands never looks the same as one spread across two hundred, options exposure revealing how much of the headline number comes from the options leg, Energy Radar setting WTI, natural gas, gasoline and diesel positioning against the weekly EIA fundamentals, index-fund positions separated out of the agricultural commercial number, AI analyst insights on every flagged market, forward curve analysis reading the full term structure, contango, backwardation and where the roll is building, a futures-only view of pure positioning the way the desks read it, side-by-side VS instrument comparison, the full twenty-year archive, PDF reports, REST API access, and the exclusive COTInsight TradingView indicator on your charts. Pro shows you what the smart money is doing; Ultimate tells you what it means, where on the curve it's happening, and what usually happens next, it pays for itself the first time it keeps you on the right side of a turn.

Monthly Annual 2 months free

Free Trial 7 days

^$0

7 days · no card needed

✓ 350+ instruments from day one
✓ 10-year positioning history
✓ Nine analytical layers per instrument
✓CSV export (limited)
✓ No payment information required
→ Access ends after 7 days unless subscribed

Start free →

Pro

^$29

per month · billed monthly

✓All 350+ instruments, every week: CFTC Disaggregated and TFF, plus ICE Futures Europe (Brent, gasoil, London softs) and the LME metals book
✓ 10-year positioning history
✓ Z-score, COT Index, regime, momentum
✓ OI trend, divergence, small-spec flags
✓ Participant breakdown and category concentration
✓ Heatmap, detail panel, participant charts
✓ Structured weekly CSV export
✕Not included on Pro
✕Historical Outcome Analyzer
✕AI analyst read
✕TradingView indicator
✕Energy Radar
✕Positioning structure
✕Options exposure
✕Forward curve
✕VS comparison
✕Futures-only view
✕PDF briefing
✕Twenty-year archive
✕REST API

Get Pro →

Commitment of Traders, Frequently Asked Questions

Does positioning data actually work?+

Markets crowd. Crowds unwind. The CFTC data shows exactly when that crowding is reaching historical extremes, not as a gut feeling, but as a measurable number across a decade of history. It won't tell you when. What it gives you is an objective read on where the weight is sitting. Macro funds have used this for decades. We just make it accessible.

What is positioning structure, and how is it different from the COT Index?+

The COT Index tells you how crowded a position is. Positioning structure tells you who is holding it. Every week the CFTC publishes the number of speculative traders in each market, and its own measure of how much open interest the four and eight largest traders hold. Almost no COT tool surfaces either. COTInsight reports top-4 trader concentration ranked against that contract's own three-year history, available on 340 of the 344 markets scored on the 1 September 2026 report, plus the speculative trader count and the average position size per trader wherever the CFTC discloses them. It frequently does not: the CFTC writes a suppression marker instead of a count when too few traders hold a position to publish the number, which covered 189 of those 344 markets, and we withhold the count there rather than print a zero. Where the speculative split is suppressed we show the count of all reporting traders in the contract instead. Why it matters: on 1 September 2026 corn and wheat both read a COT Index of 100, maximum crowding, but corn's trader concentration sat in the 65th percentile of its own record while wheat's sat in the 5th. One was held in a few large hands, the other spread wide, and a dashboard showing only the index renders those two identically. Ultimate only, and descriptive: it reports market structure, it does not forecast direction.

How many markets does COTInsight cover?+

Around 350 markets report every week, and those are what the dashboard shows by default: between 349 and 359 in every week since launch. Behind them sit 600 instruments with weekly history back to 13 June 2006, the first Disaggregated and Traders in Financial Futures report the CFTC published. The gap is contracts that have stopped reporting, some as long ago as 2008; they are kept for their history, hidden by default, and one toggle in the dashboard shows them. Coverage is the CFTC Disaggregated and TFF reports, the Supplemental index-trader report on 13 agricultural markets, the London Metal Exchange book, and the ICE Futures Europe Commitments of Traders, which is reported to the UK FCA rather than the CFTC. ICE is where Brent crude, gasoil, robusta coffee, white sugar and London cocoa trade, and none of them appear in any CFTC file. ICE Brent alone carries more open interest than NYMEX WTI.

Where does the data come from, and how current is it?+

Directly from the regulators and exchanges themselves. No vendor, no intermediary. Most of the book comes from cftc.gov; ICE Futures Europe contracts such as Brent and gasoil come from ICE's own Commitments of Traders publication, because those markets report to the UK FCA and never appear in CFTC files, and the metals book comes from the London Metal Exchange. The CFTC publishes each Friday (data as of Tuesday's close) and COTInsight refreshes automatically on Friday evening. You're always on the latest available figures from the authoritative source.

Options included: commodity markets (energy, metals, grains, softs, livestock) use the CFTC's futures-and-options-combined disaggregated report, so open interest and participant positions reflect the full picture including options. Financial markets (FX, equity indices, rates, crypto) use the futures-only report, which is what the CFTC publishes for those instruments.

What is the Historical Outcome Analyzer? ULTIMATE+

For each instrument that has a price series, you see a table broken down by seven z-score buckets (from "z ≥ 2.0, extreme spec long" to "z < −2.0, extreme spec short"). For each bucket, the table shows how often price was higher and the average % price change at three forward horizons: 4 weeks, 8 weeks, and 12 weeks after the signal date. Every row means the same thing on both sides of the book: the share of past cases in which price was higher at the end of the window. N shows how many historical occurrences fell into each bucket across the full available history (up to 20 years for major instruments). Instruments without a mapped price ticker show no outcome data. This is descriptive of past data, not a forecast or guarantee.

Do I need a card for the free trial?+

No. Your 7-day trial gives full dashboard access to all 350+ instruments, 10-year history, and every signal, with no payment information required at signup. CSV export is included but limited during the trial (the most-traded markets are excluded); the full CSV report covering every market is available to Pro and Ultimate subscribers. PDF reports, AI commentary, outcome stats, full historical archive, and API access are Ultimate-only features not included in the trial.

Is this investment advice?+

No. COTInsight is an informational data tool only. Nothing here constitutes a trading recommendation. Read the Risk Disclaimer before subscribing.

See all questions →

The smart money is already positioned.Now you can see exactly where.

Friday afternoon to a decision, in one view.

COT Report analysis:the most underread signal in public markets.

9 COT signals per instrument, per week.

COT signals, directly on your charts.

Where the crowd is leaning, and where the physical market actually is.

Start with everything. Decide later.

Commitment of Traders, Frequently Asked Questions

The smart money is already positioned.
Now you can see exactly where.