CFTC positioning · COMEX gold
Who holds gold futures, counted once a week.
The Commitments of Traders report for COMEX gold futures: how many contracts each group of traders holds long and short, how that moved in a week, and where the latest count sits in the record since 2006.
About this data
Every week the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) counts the open positions in COMEX gold futures. It sorts the large traders who hold them into four groups by their main line of business, and counts the traders too small to report together as a fifth. This page uses the disaggregated, futures-only report for the 100-ounce gold contract, CFTC code 088691.
The CFTC releases the report on Fridays at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time. It normally counts positions as of the Tuesday before, so the figures are three days old when they appear. Now and then the count is taken on a Monday or a Wednesday instead, and a US federal holiday can delay the release by one or two days. This page always prints the date of the count. The history starts on 13 June 2006.
A net position is a group’s long contracts minus its short contracts. Every futures contract has one long and one short, so the net positions of the five groups add up to zero: when one group is net long, the others together are net short by the same amount.
The five groups
- Managed money: Registered commodity trading advisors and commodity pool operators, and unregistered funds the CFTC identifies, trading futures on behalf of clients. Often called “the funds”.
- Producers and merchants: Businesses that produce, process or handle the physical metal and use futures to hedge the risks of that business. The CFTC’s full name for the group is Producer/Merchant/Processor/User.
- Swap dealers: Firms that deal mainly in swaps on the commodity and use futures to manage or hedge the risk of those swaps. Their counterparties can be speculators or commercial clients.
- Other reportables: Every other trader large enough to report that fits none of the three groups above.
- Non-reportable: Traders below the CFTC’s reporting level, counted together. The figure is what is left of open interest once the reportable positions are taken out.
Questions about the report
- When is the gold COT report published?
- The CFTC releases it on Fridays at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time, normally counting positions as of the Tuesday before. A US federal holiday in the week can delay the release by one or two days.
- Who counts as managed money?
- Registered commodity trading advisors, registered commodity pool operators, and unregistered funds the CFTC identifies. They run organised futures trading on behalf of clients. In market commentary this group is often called “the funds”.
- Does a large net long mean the gold price will fall?
- No. The report counts positions; it does not forecast. A large managed-money net long shows that funds already hold the trade. It does not say when, or whether, they will sell. The Macro Conditions Score on this site reads it as one small input among many for that reason.
- Does the COT report cover physical gold?
- No. It covers the 100-ounce COMEX gold futures contract only: futures without options, and nothing traded over the counter or held as bullion. A net long of 100,000 contracts is price exposure to ten million ounces, not ten million ounces in a vault.