Questions, answered

Straight from the CFTC’s own weekly Commitments of Traders publication — official, public data, read from the agency’s public feed. We normalize it and compute every index ourselves; nothing comes second-hand from a data vendor.

The CFTC publishes Fridays at 3:30 pm ET, reporting positions as of the preceding Tuesday. The board updates within minutes of publication.

Yes — the Tuesday-to-Friday lag is in the source itself, for every COT tool. Positioning is a slow signal: extremes build over weeks, which is why the report is read for context and turning points rather than for day-trading.

Every market the CFTC publishes, over 360 of them. The Markets page curates the widely followed contracts; Explore lists all the rest, sorted by open interest. Both open the same analysis. Market coverage explains how the two fit together.

To each market's first CFTC report. For long-running markets that reaches into the 1980s; the archive's ceiling is 1986. Newer contracts naturally start later, and the charts show each market's own beginning rather than padding it.

Legacy futures-only everywhere, so one market is comparable with the next. Market pages additionally offer Disaggregated for physical markets and Traders in Financial Futures for financial ones. The report types guide compares the families.

The raw data is public, so you never have to ask us for it. The CFTC publishes every weekly file itself, free, on its Commitments of Traders page. What COT Screener gives you is the reading rather than the file: one comparable score across every market, the history already assembled, and an email when a market reaches the level you set.

Exchange data, synced once a week and always delayed rather than live. The price pane sits on the same time axis as positioning so you can see what price did while a position was building. Markets without a clean price source simply omit that pane instead of showing a substitute.

It places a trader group’s net position on a 0 to 100 scale, between the low and the high of a chosen lookback period. It makes markets of very different sizes comparable. The COT Index guide walks through the formula.

Because the index is relative to the window you picked. A position can sit at a six-month high and still be mid-range against three years. That is not a contradiction; it is the point. Market pages show all three windows at once so the comparison is visible rather than hidden.

80 and above is called a long extreme, 20 and below a short extreme. Readings can sit at the edge for weeks, so an extreme is context rather than a trigger. The extremes guide covers how to read them.

Almost always the lookback window or the trader group. There is no official COT Index, so every site picks its own definition. Ours is stated on the page: the window is switchable, the group is named, and the underlying CFTC table is shown unchanged so you can check the arithmetic yourself.

Commercials hedge a business exposure; large speculators trade the price and hold positions above the CFTC’s reporting threshold. They usually sit on opposite sides, because every long faces a short. The commercials guide explains the mirror.

No. COT Screener is an analysis tool built on public CFTC data. It shows how traders are positioned. It does not tell you what to do with that, and nothing here is a recommendation.

No. COT Screener is an analysis tool, not a broker. Futures positioning is read as a macro signal for ETFs, FX, and equities just as often as for futures themselves.

Use reset your password and follow the link in the email. If you created the account with Google, use the Google button on the sign-in screen instead, because there is no password on that account to reset. Still stuck? Write to us and say which of the two you used.

Both live in Settings, under Account. Changing the address needs a confirmation click on the new one, so it cannot be pointed somewhere you do not control.

Settings, at the bottom. It asks for your password first, then removes the account together with your watchlist and alerts. That is immediate and cannot be undone.

We use it to run your account and answer you, nothing else. The privacy policy lists what is stored and for how long. The market data itself is public CFTC data and has nothing to do with you.

The whole board, so you see this week’s COT Index on every major market. Three of them — Gold, WTI Crude Oil and Euro FX — open in full, with their entire history back to 1986, every index window and the report table for any past week. No card, and nothing expires. The pricing section lists both plans side by side.

The same full analysis on all 360+ markets the CFTC publishes, rather than on three. On top of that: the deeper trader breakdowns, the five analysis views, the screener, a watchlist, and alerts on any market.

Yes, self-serve, effective at the end of the billing period. Your account then keeps working on the free tier.

As a consumer you have 14 days to withdraw from the purchase, which is different from cancelling: cancelling ends the subscription at the end of the period, withdrawing unwinds the purchase and the money comes back. Checkout runs through Paddle as merchant of record, so a withdrawal is declared to them. Any clear statement that you are withdrawing is enough — no form required. The terms spell it out.

Yes. Paddle is the merchant of record for the purchase, which means it issues the invoice and handles VAT for your country. It arrives by email with the payment, and business details can be entered at checkout so they appear on it.

Through the cancellation page, without writing to anyone. Your account stays open on the free plan afterwards. Your watchlist and alerts are kept, not deleted — they pick up again the moment you resubscribe.

You set a level on a market’s COT Index and a direction. Every CFTC release is checked against it, so an alert can fire at most once a week, because the data moves once a week. Watchlist and alerts shows the whole routine.

Yes. When a release moves a market past the level you set, you get an email naming the market, the new reading and the direction it crossed. The CFTC publishes once a week, so an alert can arrive at most once a week per market. You can switch alert emails off in Settings, under Notifications, and the alerts page still shows what has triggered.

Tell us the market and the report week and we will check it against the CFTC release. Two things explain most surprises. The index is relative to the lookback you picked, and the report describes Tuesday but appears on Friday. The COT Index guide walks through the formula.