CoT Charts

The Commitments of Traders (CoT) offers a clear graphical representation of the weekly CoT reports published by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). These reports show the number of contracts comprising total long and short positions of the traders in the futures market. The data is usually released at 19:30 GMT summer / 20:30 GMT winter time on Fridays, and depicts the positioning at the previous Tuesday’s open. This is based on the currency futures reports and shows the long, short, and net positions of non-commercial traders, such as asset managers, hedge funds, and derivatives dealers. As the secondary currency in these futures is the US Dollar, the labels used in the CoT Charts only show the base currency. Thus, for example, the chart for EUR depicts the data for EUR/USD futures. The instruments available in the widget include the Euro (EUR), the Pound (GBP), the Yen (JPY), the Swiss Franc (CHF), and the Canadian (CAD), the Australian (AUD) and the New Zealand (NZD) Dollars. The CoT Charts provide valuable insight for the Forex traders, as they help to: • Identify trends through flips in the overall positioning, • Determine the strength of trends through changes in aggregate number of contracts, and • Recognise market reversals though extreme positioning.