THE SHORT ANSWER
The COT report measures who holds futures, not where gold must trade next
The gold COT report is a weekly inventory of reportable COMEX futures positions grouped by trader type. GoldObserve uses the CFTC's Disaggregated Futures Only records for contract market code 088691. The most useful readings are the long-short balance within each category, the change from the prior report, open interest and the location of the current position within a clearly stated history. None of those values reveals a trader's exact motive or creates a price target.
LATEST VERIFIED REPORT LEDGER
What changed in the 2026-08-18 position report?
Static baseline evidence. The live workbench above checks for a newer official response.
Net change = change in gross longs - change in gross shorts. A falling short count contributes positively to net exposure.
| Trader category | Latest long | Latest short | Latest net | Weekly net change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed money | 154,595 | 12,947 | +141,648 | +3,986 |
| Producer / merchant | 16,883 | 46,644 | -29,761 | -1,826 |
| Swap dealer | 18,704 | 247,361 | -228,657 | -3,952 |
| Other reportables | 102,307 | 21,766 | +80,541 | +263 |
| Nonreportable | 51,347 | 15,118 | +36,229 | +1,529 |
Source: U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Disaggregated Futures Only, COMEX Gold code 088691. Snapshot record SHA-256 060d228296ad02dc…. CFTC position dates do not establish the exact public release timestamp, and weekly changes are not price forecasts.
DIRECT ANSWER
What does the gold COT report tell you?
Long, short and spreading contracts held by CFTC trader categories.
Compare current exposure with prior weeks and a disclosed historical window.
The report does not disclose why a trader holds a position or when it was opened.
Extreme positioning can persist and can coexist with price moves in either direction.
The primary path is the CFTC Public Reporting Environment API. If that request fails, GoldObserve can use a compact baseline generated only from CFTC annual Disaggregated Futures Only archives. Exact raw ZIP versions remain in a source-only archive with byte counts, retrieval times and SHA-256 evidence; changed historical rows are quarantined instead of silently replacing the verified baseline. The tool identifies which path supplied the view, preserves the latest verified report date and never fills an unpublished week.
THE EXACT DATASET
COMEX gold, futures only, measured in 100-ounce contracts
CFTC publishes several COT formats. This page does not mix them. It uses the Disaggregated Futures Only report for Gold - Commodity Exchange Inc. The contract market code is 088691 and the reported unit is contracts of 100 troy ounces. An open interest value of 400,000 therefore describes 400,000 open futures contracts, not 400,000 ounces, investor accounts or exchange-traded-fund shares.
TRADER CATEGORIES
Each category describes business purpose, not a guaranteed strategy
Entities predominantly engaged in producing, processing, merchandising or using the commodity. Positions can include hedging and other activity.
Do not translate every short into a bearish forecast.Dealers can offset exposures created through swaps and other client business. Their futures position may be one leg of a larger book.
The client side of the exposure is not visible here.Commodity trading advisers, commodity pool operators and certain funds. Net exposure is widely watched but is only one category.
Net position = gross long minus gross short.Reportable traders whose predominant business purpose does not fit producer, swap-dealer or managed-money classifications.
They should not be silently merged with managed money.Nonreportable positions are the residual required to reconcile total open interest after reportable positions. CFTC does not identify individual traders, and category assignment follows predominant business purpose rather than the motive for every contract held in a given week.
FORMULAS
Calculate net exposure and percentiles without inventing meaning
Category long contracts minus category short contracts.
Latest calculated net minus the preceding report's calculated net.
Category net divided by total open interest, multiplied by 100.
Rank the latest net against only the returned observations in the selected window.
Spreading contracts are reported separately. They are not added to either side of this simple directional net calculation.
FOUR PATTERNS
Read position changes together with open interest and market structure
Fresh long exposure is one possibility, but the report does not reveal entry prices, leverage or the other side's motive.
A less-negative or more-positive net can occur while contracts disappear, so gross long and short fields must be inspected.
Higher producer shorts can accompany stronger prices when producers lock in revenue; it is not automatically bearish.
Gross four-or-fewer concentration describes market structure, not whether those positions are profitable or about to reverse.
RELEASE LAG AND REVISIONS
Tuesday's position is usually not public until Friday
CFTC generally measures positions at Tuesday's close, receives reporting-firm data on Wednesday, reviews it and publishes the report Friday afternoon. A chart point dated Tuesday was therefore not public information on Tuesday. This matters when comparing COT changes with a gold-price move: using the position date as though it were the release timestamp creates look-ahead bias.
A proper market-reaction test needs the publication timestamp, the price before release, a defined post-release window and an explicit holiday rule. This page is a descriptive position history, not that event study.
CFTC states that historical data are not backdated after publication. That makes the published series easier to reproduce, but classifications can still change when a trader submits new business-purpose information or when traders enter or leave the reportable population.
COMMON ERRORS
Six ways a COT chart becomes misleading
01Mixing futures-only data with futures-and-options-combined history.
02Treating the Tuesday position date as if the market saw the report that day.
03Calling all managed-money exposure speculative and all producer exposure a pure hedge.
04Reading a high percentile as an automatic sell signal or a low percentile as an automatic buy signal.
05Ignoring gross longs, gross shorts and open interest when the net position changes.
06Comparing contract counts across markets without checking contract size and report definition.
RESEARCH WORKFLOW
Use COT as one evidence layer
Name the exact reportDisaggregated Futures Only, COMEX Gold, code 088691.
Inspect both gross sidesDetermine whether net changed because longs, shorts or both moved.
Check open interestSeparate new contracts from a shrinking market.
State the comparison windowA 52-week percentile and a full-history percentile answer different questions.
Add price and macro evidence separatelyReal yields, the dollar, liquidity and physical demand can dominate positioning.
Write a reversal conditionExplain what observation would invalidate the positioning story.
RELATED RESEARCH
Connect positions to instruments, timing and other gold drivers
PRIMARY SOURCES
Official definitions and records used by this page
FAQ
Gold COT report questions
What is the gold COT report?
The CFTC Commitments of Traders report is a weekly breakdown of reportable futures positions. This page uses the Disaggregated Futures Only report for COMEX gold, contract market code 088691.
When is the gold COT report released?
The positions are generally measured at Tuesday's close and released by the CFTC on Friday at 3:30 p.m. US Eastern time. Holidays and exceptional processing can change the schedule.
What does managed money net position mean?
It is managed-money long futures contracts minus managed-money short futures contracts. A positive result is net long; a negative result is net short. Spreading positions are reported separately and are not included in this subtraction.
Is managed money the same as all speculators?
No. Managed money is one CFTC category. Other reportables and nonreportable traders can also hold positions commonly described as speculative, while category assignment follows the trader's predominant business purpose.
Why are producers often net short gold futures?
Producer, merchant, processor and user positions can include commercial risk management. A short futures position may offset price exposure elsewhere, so it should not automatically be read as a directional forecast.
Does an extreme COT percentile predict a reversal?
No. A percentile only locates the latest position within the selected history. Crowded exposure can persist, expand further or unwind while gold moves in either direction.
Does this page include options?
No. It deliberately uses the Disaggregated Futures Only dataset. Futures-and-options-combined reports answer a different question and should not be spliced into the same series.
Is one contract equal to one ounce of gold?
No. The selected COMEX gold report uses contracts of 100 troy ounces. Position counts are contracts, not ounces, account balances or dollar notional.
What happens if the CFTC live API is unavailable?
GoldObserve may show its last verified baseline generated from CFTC annual Disaggregated Futures Only archives. The page labels that mode and its latest report date. It does not estimate missing weeks or present the baseline as a current API response.