Introducing the COT small traders

The SpreadCharts app is well known for offering data and features that provide a material edge in the markets. Other analytical software often becomes cluttered with tons of features over time as everyone demands this or that to be implemented. While we listen to the feedback from our users, we have resisted adding everything requested. Our motto is “less is often more.”

Today, we’re introducing a new data series in the app that has passed our utility threshold: the non-reportables data in the Commitments of Traders report. This data has always been there, yet we overlooked it. This group represents the positions of small traders, usually retail, who are often irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. They can’t move the market on their own. However, their positioning data can still be valuable as a great contrarian indicator. We won’t pretend we discovered this time series ourselves. In fact, we were inspired by Tom McClellan, who regularly uses it for silver and other markets.

You can find this small traders’ data under the COT net positions or COT net positions’ index in the SpreadCharts app. No net traders data is available for this group.

From our own experience, this data is especially useful in retail-driven markets like silver. Despite not being the largest players, their positioning often swings from one extreme to another and can be used as a sentiment gauge.

Another great example is cryptocurrencies, which are the poster child of retail frenzies. We already closely follow the net positions of large speculators in the Bitcoin and Ether micro contracts on CME, and the small speculators’ data can be interesting as well.

We encourage you to explore the small speculators’ COT net positions in other markets, too. While the signal-to-noise ratio is lower in some commodities, it will provide you with a meaningful edge in most markets.

You can browse the new data right now in the SpreadCharts app, either in the free or the premium version.
Just don’t forget to fetch the new version using Ctrl+Shift+R.