CFTC to publish Commitments of Traders report twice a week by end-2026

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will publish its Commitments of Traders (COT) report twice a week instead of once, Chairman Michael S. Selig announced on October 27, 2026. According to the agency's press release number 9316-26, the new schedule is to be in place by the end of 2026. The COT report breaks down positions held in US futures and options markets and is one of the most closely watched positioning datasets among speculative traders and commercial hedgers.

Wednesday and Friday releases with a two-day lag

Under the calendar set out by the CFTC, data captured on Monday will be released on Wednesday, and data captured on Wednesday will be released on Friday. Both reports will be published at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on their release day. The CFTC states that the gap between the date of the data and its publication will shrink from three days to two.

Today, the report comes out every Friday at 3:30 p.m. ET and reflects positions as of the previous Tuesday, according to data providers including Barchart, COTdata.net and cot-reports.com. Traders would therefore move from one weekly snapshot to two, each slightly fresher than the current one.

According to the press release, the CFTC's Division of Data is leading the implementation, modernizing and automating the production process while preserving the accuracy of the data.

A follow-up to the April consultation

The agency presents the move as the outcome of its Request for Comment on the COT program, launched on April 30, 2026 and published in the Federal Register on May 5, 2026. That consultation covered, among other topics, more frequent publication and the content of the reports.

The CFTC frames the decision mainly around agricultural markets. "Following feedback from the agricultural community, I'm pleased to announce the CFTC will be rolling out COT Reports twice a week," said Michael S. Selig, Chairman of the CFTC.

The report's reach is broader than farm products. It covers positions in commodity futures and options as well as currencies, equity indices and interest rates, as reported by Saxo and Briefs. Speculative traders use it to track shifts in positioning and spot crowded bets, while producers rely on it for hedging decisions, according to Bloomberg and Saxo.

Start date and scope still open

The CFTC release gives only a target of "the end of 2026" and does not set a precise start date. Saxo and Briefs report that the Wednesday and Friday releases would begin in December 2026, but the agency has not confirmed that month, and both outlets may be drawing on the same initial Bloomberg report.

Several practical points have not been specified:

• whether all report formats (Legacy, Disaggregated, Traders in Financial Futures, Supplemental), in both futures-only and futures-and-options versions, will move to the twice-weekly cycle;
• whether Tuesday-dated data will be discontinued, which would affect comparability with historical weekly series;
• how US public holidays will be handled under the new calendar;
• how closely the coverage of currency, index and rate contracts described by the media matches the CFTC's plans, since the release focuses on agricultural markets.

What it means for traders

Until the change takes effect, the COT report remains weekly, on Fridays at 3:30 p.m. ET with Tuesday data. Once the new calendar is live, traders following large speculators and commercial hedgers on US futures, from currency contracts to energy, metals, grains, equity indices and rates, would receive two positioning updates per week.

The most direct impact would be on indicators built around a single Tuesday reading. COT indices calculated over 26 or 52 weeks, week-on-week changes in net positions and historical comparisons all assume one observation per week on a fixed day. With data points on Mondays and Wednesdays, those calculations could need to be redesigned, and long-term series could lose continuity if the Tuesday snapshot disappears. The structure of the dataset is covered in a guide to the Commitment of Traders report.

Data feeds are a second point to check. Charting platforms, data vendors and custom scripts that download CFTC files are currently set up around the Friday release. Clients relying on COT-based indicators would have an interest in asking their provider whether the Wednesday publication will be supported and how historical data will be handled. The CFTC announcement does not address third-party integration.

Timing could also matter. According to an analysis by Coindoo, Monday and Wednesday data could show positioning just before or just after major mid-week events such as FOMC decisions. This is the outlet's reading, not a statement by the CFTC. For traders who follow the Fed meeting calendar, the new release days would add two scheduled data points around those events.

The change has no direct effect on leverage, trading costs, market access or taxation. It concerns only public positioning data, and its practical value will depend on implementation details the CFTC has not yet set out.