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The COT Report (Trade With Smart Money) Part 1 of 3

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C.O.T. is an acronym for Commitment of Traders. It is a report that contains a weekly overview of how participants of the futures markets in the U.S. have traded. The report contains all the positions of the main market factors in the United States.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) provides this report every Friday at 3:30 P.M. EST for all positions recorded from the Tuesday of the same week to Tuesday in the previous week. As the name suggests, the COT report exposes their commitments.

And these market participants are divided into three trading groups:

commercial- Commercial traders are big institutions who are in the futures market to hedge against risks due to unfavorable price movements that could affect their investments. They only trade for the sake of reducing risk, not for profit.

non-commercial- Non-commercial traders are large speculators who already have a lot of money in the bank, but want to make some more by trading the futures market. Examples of these non-commercial traders include hedge funds, trading advisors, and other huge financial institutions. These institutions follow the major trends religiously. They buy in an uptrend and sell in a downtrend.

non-reportable traders- Non-reportable traders don’t have the heavy bank accounts of commercial and non-commercial traders. They are speculators with smaller accounts who are also looking to make money from the futures market. Retail traders fall into this category.

These major market drivers include institutional traders, hedge funds, big banks, and more. And the weight these traders pull on the markets can sometimes be staggering enough to drive trends. As retail Forex traders, our best bet is to trade like big financial institutions or Non-Commercials.

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