CFTC releases COT schedule

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has announced an updated release schedule for the Commitment of Traders and other reports delayed during the US government shutdown. 

With regards to the COT schedule, they write:

“The last COT report was published on December 21, 2018. Reports going forward from that date will be published in chronological order beginning with the report previously scheduled for release on Friday, December 28, 2018 (based on data from Monday, December 24, 2018).  The CFTC expects to publish this report on Friday, February 1, 2019.  After this, the CFTC expects to publish one report on Tuesday and another on Friday of each week until the reports are current as per the normal schedule. “

Based on this schedule and given the number of delayed reports which currently stands at six, the first up-to-date report will not be published until Friday, March 8 covering the week to Tuesday, March 5.  

What is the Commitments of Traders report?

The Commitments of Traders report is issued by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission every Friday at 15:30 EST with data from the week ending the previous Tuesday. The report breaks down the open interest across major futures markets from bonds, stock index, currencies and commodities. The ICE Futures Europe Exchange issues a similar report, also on Fridays, covering Brent crude oil and gas oil.

In commodities, the open interest is broken into the following categories: Producer/Merchant/Processor/User; Swap Dealers; Managed Money and other.

In financials the categories are Dealer/Intermediary; Asset Manager/Institutional; Managed Money and other.

Our focus is primarily on the behaviour of Managed Money traders such as commodity trading advisors, commodity pool operators, and unregistered funds.

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.