Gold COT Positioning Heatmap

What the heatmap shows

Every Friday the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) publishes the Commitments of Traders report. Its disaggregated version splits COMEX gold futures traders into four reportable groups plus small traders. This page takes each group's net position (long minus short contracts) for every week from 2 Nov 2021 to 27 Oct 2026, about 5.0 years, and ranks it against all 261 weeks. A cell at the 95th percentile means the group was more net long that week than in 95% of the weeks shown.

In the latest report, managed money was net +105,562 contracts (+1,356 on the week), the 49th percentile of the period. Swap dealers were net -206,050, the 32th percentile.

The five trader groups

• Managed money: hedge funds, CTAs and other money managers trading for profit. The most-watched number for gold. Over the period it ranged from -43,094 (27 Sep 2022) to +219,029 (24 Sep 2024).
• Swap dealers: mostly bullion banks that sell exposure to clients and hedge it in futures. They are structurally net short gold; they ranged from -264,731 (4 Feb 2025) to -49,515 (27 Sep 2022). Over these 261 weeks the two series have a correlation of -0.91: when funds add longs, swap dealers are usually the ones taking the other side.
• Producers / merchants: miners, refiners and fabricators hedging physical business.
• Other reportables: large traders that fit none of the groups above, such as some family offices and proprietary traders.
• Non-reportables: positions below the CFTC reporting threshold, roughly the smaller traders.

How to read extremes

Over these 261 weeks, managed money spent 28 weeks at or above the 90th percentile and 27 at or below the 10th. Extremes cluster: a crowded position can stay crowded for months, so an outlined cell describes how one-sided the market is, not when it will turn. Traders use it as risk context: when funds are already very long, there are fewer new buyers left and a shock can force a fast exit; when they are very short or flat, the opposite is true.

In the 28 weeks when managed money was at or above its 90th percentile, gold's average change over the next four weeks was +2.62%, against +1.38% for all 258 weeks. After the 27 weeks at or below the 10th percentile, it was +2.45%. These are small, overlapping samples from one five-year period in which gold rose strongly overall, so they say little about the future. They are shown so you can check claims like "crowded longs always get punished" against the record.

How this differs from our COT report tracker

The gold COT report tracker uses the legacy report (speculators vs commercials) and charts the speculator net position against price over three years. This heatmap uses the more detailed disaggregated report, separates funds (managed money) from bullion banks (swap dealers), and shows five years at a glance so unusual weeks stand out.

Method and data source

• Data: CFTC Commitments of Traders, disaggregated futures-only report, COMEX gold (contract code 088691), from the CFTC public reporting API. Public US government data.
• Net = long − short for each group. Spread positions are excluded because they are both long and short.
• Percentile = share of weeks in the window (the latest 261 reports) with a net position at or below that week's value. The window rolls forward each week, so older cells can change slightly as new weeks arrive.
• Columns in the yearly heatmaps are ISO weeks of the report date (always a Tuesday, unless a holiday moved it).
• The page refreshes automatically with the site's data updates, normally a few hours after each Friday release.

Frequently asked questions

Educational tool only. Not financial advice and not a signal. Check your own broker's contract specification, margin rules and costs. Past data does not predict future prices. See our risk disclaimer.