COT report: how speculators positioned ahead of 2026

Commodities

The powerful rally across precious metals and PGMs—particularly during the second half of the year—was accompanied by a gradual reduction in net-long positions held by leveraged accounts. Rather than reflecting waning conviction, this adjustment largely stemmed from rising prices forcing traders to scale back positions in order to maintain stable nominal exposure. As a result, COMEX gold ended the year with a net long of 127k contracts, down from a January peak of 234k. Even so, the position still represented a nominal value of around USD 56 billion, by far the largest across the 25 major futures tracked. This was followed by copper at around USD 11 billion, Brent crude, and silver at USD 6.5 billion.

In next week’s update, we will take a closer look at how recent US actions in Venezuela have impacted positioning. We will also revisit the agricultural sector, where significant developments unfolded during the reporting blackout caused by the government shutdown. Not least soybeans, which experienced a sharp round-trip move—surging on speculative buying amid hopes of renewed Chinese demand, before slumping just as quickly when expected orders failed to materialize.

What is the Commitments of Traders report?

The COT reports are issued by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the ICE Exchange Europe for Brent crude oil and gas oil. They are released every Friday after the U.S. close with data from the week ending the previous Tuesday. They break down the open interest in futures markets into different groups of users depending on the asset class.

Commodities: Producer/Merchant/Processor/User, Swap dealers, Managed Money and other
Financials: Dealer/Intermediary; Asset Manager/Institutional; Leveraged Funds and other
Forex: A broad breakdown between commercial and non-commercial (speculators)

The main reasons why we focus primarily on the behavior of speculators, such as hedge funds and trend-following CTA's are:

• They are likely to have tight stops and no underlying exposure that is being hedged
• This makes them most reactive to changes in fundamental or technical price developments
• It provides views about major trends but also helps to decipher when a reversal is looming

Do note that this group tends to anticipate, accelerate, and amplify price changes that have been set in motion by fundamentals. Being followers of momentum, this strategy often sees this group of traders buy into strength and sell into weakness, meaning that they are often found holding the biggest long near the peak of a cycle or the biggest short position ahead of a through in the market.