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Commitment of traders reportWHAT IS IT The Commitment Of Traders (CoT) is a report issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) , one of the most important trading insitutionsof the American government. The report has the purpose of transparently showing market dynamics to the all the people involved or interested in the matter. The COT report show all currently open positions (open interest) of the future and options market, where 20 or more traders hold positions for an amount greater or equal to the minimum amount amount established by the CFTC . The report is issued every Friday at 3:30 P.M. (Eastern Standard Time, hence UTC-5). Each report normally contains data until previous Tuesday. CFTC usually receives data on Wednesday morning from the reporting firms (i.e.: Future Commission Merchants, Financial Insititutions, Brokers or International Stock Exchanges). After some verifications, CFTC publish data the following Friday. For each market, data are provided in terms of existing (still open) LONG and SHORT positions. TYPES OF REPORTS There are 4 types of report: 1) Legacy It contains data split by stock exchange. This report has two different variants: "futures only", that contains data related to the futures market only, and "combined", that contains aggregated data for futures and options market. All the reported positions in this report are split in two main market actors categories: Commercials (or Large Speculators) and Non-Commercials 2) Supplemental It includes contracts related to 13 selected agricultural market commodities. This kind of report split positions in 3 market actors categories: Commercials (or Large Speculators), Non-Commercials and Index Traders. Differently from Legacy report, the Supplemental is provided in the "combined" format only, hence contains data for both futures and options market 3) Disaggregated This report contains the same data issued in the Legacy report, but with a more detailed drill down in terms of representation. First of all, it presents data split in 5 macro-categories: Agriculture, Petroleum and Products, Natural Gas and Products, Electricity, Metals and Other. Moreover, the report shows open positions/interests of 4 market actors categories: Producer/Merchant/Processor/User, Swap Dealers, Managed Money e Other Reportables. Aggregating data of this report, it is possible to obtain same data of Legacy report, hence this is a detailed view of data contained in the Legacy report. The Disaggregated, as well as the Legacy one, is available as "futures only" and "combined" variants 4) Traders in Financial Futures (TFF) This report includes contracts related to currencies, US Treasury Bonds, Eurodollar deposits, VIX shares and Bloomberg Index only. The reports shows open interests of 4 market actors categories: Dealer/Intermediary, Asset Manager/Institutional, Leveraged Funds e Other Reportables. Last, also this report is available as "futures only" and "combined" variants REPORT FORMATS Legacy and Disaggregated reports are provided in two formats: short (synthetic) and long (extended). Both these formats contain same data, but long format contains also the concentration of open positions in the hands of the major 4 and 8 market investors at the moment of data collection, while short format does not contains any data about concentration. TFF report is available in long format only, while the Supplemental is available in the short format only. Report type Scope Format Futures Combined Long Short Legacy ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Disaggregated ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ TTFF ✓ ✓ ✓ X Supplemental X ✓ X ✓ Legacy report As said above, market actors in Legacy report are divided in 2 categories: Non-Commercials , or Large Speculators : they are market speculators as well as hedge funds. This category normally uses financial leverage to amplify variation of derivative asset and has an aggressive behavior in the market. They use rigid stop loss policies and, when the market falls below certain levels, they reverse positions on the other side. The main purpose of Large Speculators is not the asset they buy or sell, but to obtain a net profit from the buy/sell cycle. They normally have a trend following behavior. Commercials buy futures just because they are interested in the underlying asset and try to hedge their financial exposition related to the commercial activity with the assets they are interested in. These market actors hold more than 50% of open positions in the US futures market and normally they go against the price trend: they sell when the market goes higher and they buy when the market goes lower. Their positions on underlying assets normally anticipate market trend, hence they should be carefully monitored Non-Reportable : are the open position of small investors/traders that normally are on the wrong side of the market. This investors category is usually confused and not disciplined. They do not follow precise rules and are usually dragged by the trend, but they are slow to reverse positions when the market trend reverses. The following example contains data about "futures only" market for BUTTER, coming from Chicago Mercantile Exchange. BUTTER (CASH SETTLED) - CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE Code-050642 FUTURES ONLY POSITIONS AS OF 03/17/20 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| NON-REPORTABLE NON-COMMERCIAL | COMMERCIAL | TOTAL | POSITIONS --------------------------------|---------------------|--------------------------|----------------- LONG | SHORT |SPREADS | LONG | SHORT | LONG | SHORT | LONG | SHORT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (CONTRACTS OF 20,000 POUNDS) OPEN INTEREST: 11,597 COMMITMENTS 0 2,473 453 10,401 8,149 10,854 11,075 743 522 CHANGES FROM 03/10/20 (CHANGE IN OPEN INTEREST: 753) 0 -127 101 675 796 776 770 -23 -17 PERCENT OF OPEN INTEREST FOR EACH CATEGORY OF TRADERS 0.0 21.3 3.9 89.7 70.3 93.6 95.5 6.4 4.5 NUMBER OF TRADERS IN EACH CATEGORY (TOTAL TRADERS: 47) 0 12 10 28 22 38 34 It is possible to see as in the report is provided the total amount of LONG and SHORT positions for Non-Commercial, Commercial and Non-Reportable actors. Variations from previous week are moreover reported. In addiction to LONG and SHORT positions, Legacy report contains also the SPREAD amount, that is available for Non-Commercial only, and refers to contracts that are opened LONG and SHORT at the same time. Normally a growing SPREAD value means a high level of uncertainty. If we calculate NET POSITIONS (NP) for the 3 actors categories, as it's easy to check, the report show a zero-sum scenario: NP Non-Comm = 0 – 2,473 = - 2,473 NP Comm = 10,401 – 8,149 = 2,252 NP Non-Rept = 743 – 522 = 221 NP Non-Comm + NP Comm + NP Non-Rept = -2,473 + 2,252 + 221 = 0 OPEN INTEREST value is the grand total resulting as the sum of LONG, SHORT and SPREAD positions: Open Interest = 0 + 453 + 10,401 + 743 = 11,597 Supplemental report Even the Supplemental report (called also Commodity Index Traders - CIT) shows data in the same manner of Legacy report, but the market actors are 3: Non-Commercial, Commercial and Index Traders. Non-Commercial and Commercial actors are the same, while Index Traders category has appeared for the first time in January 2007. Before that date, investors that are now reported in this category were scattered in the two existing categories (Non-Commercial and mostly in the Commercial). The creation of Index Traders category has had the purpose to separate that category from Commercials, because Index Traders are not involved in the buy/sell cycle of underlying assets, and are usually managed funds, institutional investors or swap dealers. Index traders are normally interested in passive and longstanding LONG positions, while are not interested in the short-term price fluctuations. It's not unusual that this category start buying when price is falling and technical analysis says that the price falling will be even more deep. Index Traders are hence a counter-part of speculators, who have usually a contrarian habit. Supplemental report is provided for 13 commodities: • WHEAT-SRW - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • WHEAT-HRW - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • CORN - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • SOYBEANS - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • SOYBEAN OIL - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • SOYBEAN MEAL - CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE • COTTON NO. 2 - ICE FUTURES U.S. • LEAN HOGS - CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE • LIVE CATTLE - CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE • FEEDER CATTLE - CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE • COCOA - ICE FUTURES U.S. • SUGAR NO. 11 - ICE FUTURES U.S. • COFFEE C - ICE FUTURES U.S. Disaggregated report Market actors of Disaggregated report are: Producer/Merchant/Processor/User : they are involved in production, handling, packaging or transport of physical assets that is underlying to the future instrument or option. These actors use futures to cover/hedge risks associated to the activities they are involved in that are strictly related to the production of the assets Swap Dealers : they are subjects that are involved in trading swap contracts related to the commodity and uses futures market to cover/hedge risks associated with swap transactions. The counterpart of a Swap dealer could be a speculative traders, as well as an hedge fund, or a more traditional Commercial subject that is interested in managing risks associated with the commerce activities of the asset Money manager : to this category belong Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA), Commodity Pool Operator (CPO) or an unregistered fund identified by the CFTC. These subjects are delegated from their clients to do financial operations in their behalf Other Reportable : all speculative traders that are not belonging in the three previous category are included in this category Even in this case, the report shows LONG, SHORT and SPREAD positions. Comparing this kind of report with Legacy, we can see that: COMMERCIAL = PRODUCER/MERCHANT/PROCESSOR/USER + SWAP DEALERS NON-COMMERCIAL = MONEY MANAGER + OTHER REPORTABLE This explains why the report is called "disaggregated". It shows the same data but with a more level of detail especially regarding the actors that hold open positions. If we take the Disaggregated report about BUTTER for the "futures only" market coming from Chicago Mercantile Exchange (equivalent to the previous example that is showed under the Legacy report section, we see: :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ : : Producer/Merchant : : : : : Processor/User : Swap Dealers : Managed Money : Other Reportables : : Long : Short : Long : Short : Spreading : Long : Short : Spreading : Long : Short : Spreading : -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BUTTER (CASH SETTLED) - CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE (CONTRACTS OF 20,000 POUNDS) : CFTC Code #050642 Open Interest is 11,597 : : Positions : : 8,893 6,326 1,048 1,363 460 0 301 180 0 2,172 273 : : : : Changes from: March 10, 2020 : : 244 648 324 41 107 0 -12 -8 0 -115 109 : : : : Percent of Open Interest Represented by Each Category of Trader : : 76.7 54.5 9.0 11.8 4.0 0.0 2.6 1.6 0.0 18.7 2.4 : : : : Number of Traders in Each Category Total Traders: 47 : : 24 18 . . 4 0 . . 0 10 9 : --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If we take the categories Producer/Merchant/Processor/User and Swap Dealers and we sum all LONG positions and then subtract all SHORT positions, we obtain an overall NET positions like this: NP = (8,893 +1,048 + 0 + 0) - (6,326 + 1,363) = 2,252 Now, if we do the same calculation for Commercial category of the correspondent Legacy report (see above) we obtain: NP = 10,401 - 8,149 = 2,252 This is the confirmation that Disaggregated report contains the split of data reported in the Legacy report, where Commercial category is divided in Producer/Merchant/Processor/User and Swap Dealers. Same calculation would demonstrate that Non-Commercial category in the Legacy report is spitted here in Managed Money and Other Reportable categories. If we now consider the Disaggregated report and we sum all LONG positions and then we subtract all SHORT positions for each actors category, we obtain: (8,893 + 1,048 + 0 + 0) – (6,326 + 1,363 + 301 + 2,172) = 9941 - 10162 = -221 Given that the grand total should represent a zero-sum scenario, e can deduce from Disaggregated report that net position of Non-Reportable subjects should be +221, hence a net LONG of 221 contracts, and that is correct, in fact it is possible to obtain the same result from correspondent Legacy report (see above) by subtracting net SHORT position for Non-Reportable actors to the amount of net LONG positions for the same actors. Hence Disaggregated report allow us to calculato also net position of Non-Reportable, even if the data do not explicitly report the value. Traders in financial futures report This report is a further view on the market and split market actors in two sides (SELL and BUY) and 4 categories: SELL SIDE Dealer/Intermediary : are financial intermediaries who earn by the commissions related to the sell of financial products. Big banks and other financial entities are involved in this activities BUY SIDE Asset Manager/Institutional : they are insitutional investors, including pension funds, insurance companies and investment portfolio managers whose clients are mainly institutional entities Leveraged funds : these are typically speculative funds (hedge funds) and various types of money managers, including the Commodity Trading Advisors (CTA) and the Commodity Pool Operators (CPO) not necessarily registered by CFTC. These subjects can be involved in hedging strategies and arbitrages on their own capital, or even third parties capital Other reportable : these are all the traders that are not included in previous categories Differently from Disaggregated report, the TFF report the positions of the mentioned actors categories are not an exact disaggregation of Commercial and Non-Commercial positions reported in the Legacy report. Here each actor belonging to one of the categories mentioned above could belong to the Commercial or the Non-Commercial category in the Legacy report, basing on the decision that CFTC takes during the report creation, that can be different time after time (i.e.: a subject that has already been considered a Commercial one in the beginning, can be shifted to Non-Commercial after a while, depending on the specific activities he is involved during the time, that can change as well). The TFF report is moreover available only in the LONG format REPORT ANALYSIS If we properly analyze data in the Commitment of Traders legacy report, we can determine the expectations of each market actor category regarding the market future. The possibility to know the net positions of Commercial subjects (institutional investors) is the basis to understand the market sentiment. Their influence is, in fact, between 50% and 75% of the entire futures market of S&P500 and from 40% and 60% of Nasdaq100. It is useful to point out that Commercial subjects, as well as the Non-Commercial, can take arbitrage or hedging positions, or, alternatively, put in place an active management of their portfolios by buying or selling futures on foreign (not US) markets, or, again, have open position on the futures' underlying assets and protect themselves from risks of price variations by taking opposite positions on the futures market. Hence the Commitment of Traders Report is an important thermometer to measure US stock exchange sentiment, but it isn't a tool that, alone, can allow us to predict how financial markets will move. It should be used (as usual) together with other indicators, tools, analysis and perspectives to have a better understanding of what is happening and a good approximation of what is going to happen (most likely). Commercial subjects are active actors in the futures' underlying asset market and generally sell when the market (price) grows and buy when the price is more convenient (low), hence their activities are contrarian to the logic of speculators. For this reason the Commercial actors are often responsible of market moves and trends. They drag prices and the market with their activities, hence they anticipate and determine the market trends. Non-Commercial subjects, viceversa, have opposite interests. They want to make money by price variations, hence they buy when the market shows growing prices and sell in the opposite conditions. This behavior is what we call "trend following" approach. Here are some typical scenarios that we can find by analyzing the Commitment of Traders report: 1) If Non-Reportable actors (small/retail traders) are LONG and Commercial are SHORT, the Non-Reportable actors are most likely going to loose money because the price will go to to the side where Commercial are pushing it (down) 2) On the maximum levels of an asset price (i.e. near significant RESITANCE levels), Non-Reportable are likely pushed to SELL their positions. Then stop loss levels are likely hit and only after the price starts his falling stage 3) If Non-Commercial are LONG and Non-Reportable are SHORT, we are likely in the middle of an UPTREND and there is more space for the price to gro further 4) If Non-Commercial are LONG and also Non-Reportable are LONG, we are likely in the "euphoric" phase of the trend, hence the trend is going to finish soon 5) If Non-Commercial are SHORT, Non-Reportable are upgrading their SHORT positions and Comemrcial slow down their LONG positions, e re likely in the terminal phase of a downtrend If we accept the hypothesis that Commercial traders hold better information on the market than the others just because they are active actors of the futures' underlying assets (it's their own business!), it is very important to monitor their behaviour in order to understand how they are evaluating the situation related to the specific commodity that is at the center of our interest. Commitment of Traders Index An interesting approach to have effective insights from the Commitment of Traders report can be obtained by calculating an index using the report data. Normally Comemrcial net positions are used to calculate the index as follows: NP (Net Position) = Long Positions – Short Positions Usually, an interval of 26 periods (weeks) is selected and the calculation to determine the index value is: COT Index = * 100 The index, expressed as a pecentage value from 0 to 100, reflects net position of Commercials on the basis of last 26 periods. It can be used as an indicator of overbought and oversold zones and can be a good tool to understand where investors are moving. The index can be also calculated for Non-Commercial or Non-Reportable positions. Last, but not least, remember that Commitment Of Traders report is released every Friday evening, but contains data up until previous Tuesday, hence a "lagging" effect should be seriously considered in all the analysis that involves it. The content of this article has solely education purposes and should be not considered trading or investement advise.
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by Marco_it972