Commitment of Traders report

A publication of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission that divides the open interest in each reportable futures market among categories of holder. The legacy format separates commercial from non-commercial and non-reportable holders. The disaggregated format is finer, naming producers and merchants, swap dealers, managed money and other reportables, and a separate report covers financial futures on the same basis.

The figure most often quoted from it is net positioning: the long holdings of a category less its short holdings, tracked as a series rather than read as a level. A widespread convention treats an unusually large speculative net position as a crowding signal, on the reasoning that a position already established is a position that has to be closed. That convention is bounded and contested, and the report itself makes no claim of the kind.

Three limits matter. The data are lagged, describing Tuesday's positions on Friday, so they cannot describe the week they are read in. They cover United States exchange traded futures and options only, which makes them a proxy for global foreign exchange positioning rather than a measure of it, since the spot market is dealt over the counter and is far larger. And the categories are classifications of the reporting entity, not of the intent behind a position, so a hedge and a bet can sit in the same bucket.