CFTC Opens First COT Report Review in 20 Years -- Asks Whether Weekly Friday Publication Should

The CFTC just launched the first comprehensive review of its Commitments of Traders Reports since 2006 -- and the questions it's asking could reshape how every futures trader reads positioning data.

On April 30, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a Request for Comment on potential modifications to the COT Reports program. The agency is explicitly asking whether the weekly Friday publication should move to a more frequent schedule, whether the current 3-day data lag should shrink, and whether new contract types like event contracts should be included.

This is not a routine procedural notice. The last time the CFTC reviewed the COT program was 20 years ago, in 2006. Whatever emerges from this RFC will likely define COT reporting for the next decade or more.

What the CFTC Is Asking

The full 18-page Request for Comment poses 13 specific questions. Here are the ones that matter most to traders:

1. Should COT be published more than once a week?
The CFTC asks: "On what frequency and schedule should the Reports be published and why?" Currently, COT data comes out every Friday at 3:30 PM ET showing the previous Tuesday's positions. The agency wants to know if twice-weekly or even daily publication would be beneficial.

2. Should the 3-day data lag shrink?
Right now, Friday's report reflects Tuesday's close-of-business positions. In today's volatile markets -- crude oil moving $5-10 on geopolitical headlines, Treasury futures repricing daily around FOMC decisions -- three-day-old positioning data has obvious limitations. The CFTC asks whether it should publish based on more recent data, such as Wednesday positions on Friday.

3. Could more frequent publication compromise trader anonymity?
This is the key tension. The CFTC explicitly asks: Would more frequent or fresher data allow market participants to "deduce the identity of the position holders" or "gain a trading advantage over the reported position holders"? Large commercials and managed money funds have legitimate concerns about being front-run.

4. Should event contracts and binary options be included or excluded?
With prediction markets hitting record volume (Kalshi alone processed $22 billion in April), the CFTC asks whether these new contract categories should appear in COT Reports. That's a new transparency frontier for an exploding asset class.

5. What about the Public Reporting Environment?
Since October 2022, the CFTC has offered an interactive online tool for downloading and filtering COT data. The agency asks whether it's useful and whether it should be modified.

Why This Matters to Traders

COT data is one of the most widely used positioning tools in futures markets. Swing traders, macro analysts, and commodity hedgers all reference commercial vs. speculative positioning to gauge market sentiment. Any change to publication frequency or data freshness will alter how this information gets incorporated into trading decisions.

• More frequent data means faster reads on managed money positioning shifts -- but it also means large traders have less time between position changes and public disclosure.
• Fresher data would make COT more actionable in fast-moving markets (think crude oil during Hormuz closures or Treasury futures around FOMC weeks), but at the cost of potentially less accurate data since staff would have less time to validate.
• Event contract inclusion would bring an entirely new class of positioning data into the public domain -- relevant given the institutional interest flowing into prediction markets.

Chairman Michael Selig said the review follows "significant outreach and communication with the agricultural community and commercial end users." Comments are due within 30 days of publication in the Federal Register and can be submitted through Regulations.gov.

Market Charts



What Do You Think?

Should COT data move to daily publication? Would fresher data help your trading -- or just help algorithms front-run large position holders faster? Should event contracts be included?

This is one of those rare opportunities where retail traders can actually influence regulatory policy that directly affects market transparency. If you have an opinion on how COT should evolve, the CFTC is literally asking for it.

Source: CFTC Press Release 9223-26 (April 30, 2026) | Full Request for Comment (PDF)

-- Fi

"The best edge is the one you can actually execute."