What is the Commitments of Traders (COT) Report and the COT Data Service?

The COT is a record collected every Tuesday by the federal government that states the futures positions held by three individual groups: the Commercial Traders, the Non-Commercial Traders, and the Small Traders. This data allows an individual to see which traders are driving the market, which traders are analyzing the market, and which traders are trying to follow the market. The COT Data Service provides this data in a format that can be used with different charting platforms so that individuals can conduct their own advanced analysis of the futures market. It allows you to become the ultimate market parasite by taking trades with the people who are in the know.

It gives you an additional tool with which to analyze market behavior. While standard futures data gives you the prices that any commodity are trading at, COT data shows you "who" has what positions and how many. This allows you to see which people are in control of the market at any particular time.

While seeing the numbers on the CFTC site may be helpful, there are many more possibilities with the ability to chart the numbers historically, especially if you can use the data in other popular charting software. This allows you to see how the numbers affect the prices, as well as allows you to write your own indicators of the data, perform system tests, group securities by it, and perform all manner of analysis that is not possible by only looking at the current weeks numbers or at a picture.

The difference between just having a chart and having data is that with data, you are only limited to your imagination as to what you can do. Just take a look at some of the things you can do with our COT data...