COT Positioning

Who is long and who is short in futures — commercial hedgers against large speculators, published weekly by the CFTC.

-10,590 contracts

MASS COMPLIANCE RECs CLASS 1 - ICE FUTURES ENERGY DIV — week of 2026-09-29 · +0 vs prior week

Large speculators are net short; commercials are net long at 10,590. Open interest 21,179.

Week Spec net Comm net Open interest
2026-09-29 -10,590 10,590 21,179
2026-09-22 -10,590 10,590 21,179
2026-09-15 -10,590 10,590 20,879
2026-09-08 -10,590 10,590 20,879
2026-09-01 -10,640 10,640 20,879
2026-08-25 -10,640 10,640 20,879
2026-08-18 -10,640 10,640 20,879
2026-08-11 -10,640 10,640 20,879
2026-08-04 -10,640 10,640 20,979
2026-07-28 -10,640 10,640 20,979
2026-07-21 -10,640 10,640 20,979
2026-07-14 -10,640 10,640 20,979
2026-07-07 -10,640 10,640 20,804
2026-06-30 -10,150 10,150 19,804
2026-06-23 -8,800 8,800 18,579
2026-06-16 -8,850 8,850 18,579
2026-06-09 -8,850 8,850 18,479
2026-06-02 -8,700 8,700 18,629
2026-05-26 -9,500 9,500 23,287
2026-05-19 -9,500 9,500 23,287
2026-05-12 -9,500 9,500 23,287
2026-05-05 -4,200 4,200 17,887
2026-04-28 -4,200 4,200 18,208
2026-04-21 -4,200 4,200 18,208
2026-04-14 -4,200 4,200 18,208
2026-04-07 -4,200 4,200 18,208

How to read a COT report

Every Friday the CFTC publishes how open interest in each futures market was divided the previous Tuesday, split into three groups:

The number people watch is speculative net — long minus short. Extremes matter more than levels: when speculators are as long as they have been in years, the marginal buyer is largely used up.

Timing, which trips people up

The report is dated Tuesday and released Friday afternoon. It is already three days stale when you read it, and it says nothing about intraweek moves. Treat it as a positioning survey, not a signal you can act on the same day.

Where this comes from

Straight from the CFTC's published archive at cftc.gov — the legacy Commitments of Traders format, which has the longest continuous history and the commercial/non-commercial split traders actually use. It is a work of the US government, free to use. This site holds 212,198 weekly rows across 764 markets since 2010.