What is the
COT Report?
Ever wondered what the "big money" in the market is really thinking? Hedge funds, giant banks, and gold producers — which side are they quietly holding: Long, or Short?
The good news: none of this is a secret. It's published for everyone to see, free, every week, in a report called the COT Report 👇
COT stands for Commitment of Traders. Put simply, it's a "register" showing how many Buy (Long) and Sell (Short) positions the big players in the futures market are holding on each side — like a "cheat sheet" that reveals where the market's biggest hands have placed their bets.
- Published by: the CFTC, the US futures market regulator
- Released: every Friday around 15:30 US time (roughly 2–3 AM Saturday, Thai time)
- Data as of: the Tuesday of that week (about a 3-day lag)
Why do traders worldwide
watch the COT?
The report earns its place for 4 main reasons — enough to make traders of every style, technical or data-driven, check it every week.
Who are the players
in the COT Report?
The standard (Legacy) report splits participants into 3 main groups — with motivations that are worlds apart.
💡 For commodity markets like gold, there's a more granular version called the Disaggregated Report, which explicitly breaks the speculators out into Managed Money (the funds) — the group gold traders watch most closely.
How do the groups differ?
Which one should you follow?
The key: each group's "motivation" is different — so never blend the three groups' numbers into one mushy total.
Commercials open positions to hedge → use them as a "reversal signal" when they hold extreme positions against the market
Non-Commercials / Managed Money trade to speculate → use them to read the "direction and strength of the trend"
Non-Reportables → use as confirmation; they're usually the wrong side at market extremes
- Watch Non-Commercials / Managed Money first — they mirror speculative sentiment most directly
- Use Commercials as a secondary signal to catch reversals at extreme levels
Reading Net Position,
made simple.
This is the heart of reading COT — one simple formula:
Net Position = Long (buy contracts) − Short (sell contracts)
Example: if the funds hold 180,000 Long contracts and 60,000 Short contracts:
Quick interpretation:
🟢 Positive Net (Net Long) = leaning bullish
🔴 Negative Net (Net Short) = leaning bearish
⚪ Net near zero = the market hasn't decided / sideways
But what matters more than any single number is:
How do you apply COT
to your trading?
- Use it as a big-picture compass alongside technical analysis (Price Action, Supply & Demand)
- When the chart trend + COT direction agree → your conviction in the plan goes up
- When Net Position hits an extreme → raise your guard, don't chase price
- Best suited to medium–long term planning — the data updates weekly, it's not a daily signal
📊 See the COT data, summarized,
at PowerOfPrice.co
We know that adding and subtracting the numbers yourself every week gets exhausting...
At www.powerofprice.co we distill the COT Report into an easy-to-read Data Infographic, so you can see the full picture of the market's biggest players at a glance.
- No manual math — we calculate the Net Position for you
- See the big money's direction in Gold / Bitcoin clearly
- Apply it to your own trading and investing plan right away
Come take a look 👉 Follow the gold COT Report on the powerofprice.co Market Data page
"Don't trade against the big money
Power of Price · Market Data Series
before you know
which side they're on"
This content is for educational purposes only and is not investment advice. Trading involves risk — please study and manage your risk before every decision.