Legacy vs disaggregated vs TFF: the three COT report formats
One report, three lenses — with the category crosswalk table nobody publishes.
The CFTC publishes the Commitments of Traders data in three formats: the legacy report (all markets, three categories, history to 1986), the disaggregated report (physical commodities, four categories, since 2009 with data back to 2006), and the Traders in Financial Futures (TFF) report (financial markets, four categories, since 2010, data back to 2006). All three describe the same underlying positions as of the same Tuesday — for the current report, Jul 21, 2026 — sliced by different trader taxonomies.
The category crosswalk
The disaggregated categories are an exact partition of the legacy ones — they sum back perfectly. The TFF categories are a reclassification, not a re-labeling, so the financial-market crosswalk is approximate by design (the CFTC's explanatory notes say as much). Here is the full map:
| Legacy (all markets) | Disaggregated (physical commodities) | TFF (financial futures) |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial (hedgers with a business exposure) |
Producer / Merchant / Processor / User | Roughly: Dealer / Intermediary, plus whichever buy-side traders hold a commercial designation (approximate — see note below) |
| Swap Dealer | ||
| Non-commercial (large speculators) |
Managed Money | Roughly: Asset Manager / Institutional, Leveraged Funds, and Other Reportables without a commercial designation |
| Other Reportables | ||
| Non-reportable | Non-reportable (identical) | Non-reportable (identical) |
The exact identities: in the disaggregated report,
Commercial = Producer/Merchant + Swap Dealer and
Non-commercial = Managed Money + Other Reportables, to the contract. In
TFF there is no such identity: dealer/intermediary captures the sell side
(banks and market makers), while asset managers (pension and mutual fund
institutions), leveraged funds (hedge funds and CTAs), and other reportables split
the buy side — categories built around what kind of firm you are, not
whether you hold a hedging designation. A bank hedging swaps and a bank trading its
own book both land in dealer/intermediary; in legacy they could land in different
buckets. That is why a legacy commercial net and a TFF dealer net for the same
market and week are similar but rarely equal.
Which markets appear in which format
| Format | Coverage | First published | History runs from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legacy | Every reported market — physical and financial | Long-running (machine-readable files back to 1986) | 1986 |
| Disaggregated | Physical commodities: energies, metals, grains, softs, livestock | September 2009 | June 2006 |
| TFF | Financial futures: currencies, rates, equity indexes, crypto | July 2010 | June 2006 |
So every market has a legacy series, and most liquid markets additionally have exactly one of the other two — disaggregated if it is a physical commodity, TFF if it is financial. Gold gets legacy + disaggregated; Euro FX gets legacy + TFF. Only the legacy files reach back before 2006, which is why long-lookback studies are stuck with the three-bucket view whether they like it or not.
One market, two formats: Euro FX this week
In the legacy report dated 2026-07-21, Euro FX non-commercials were net short 41,338 contracts, commercials 17,975, on open interest of 800,061. The TFF report for the same market and Tuesday splits those same reportable positions into dealer/intermediary, asset manager, leveraged funds, and other reportables — the four-way table is published alongside the legacy one on the Euro FX market page. Two things to notice when you put them side by side:
- Open interest matches. It is the same market and the same snapshot; only the grouping of traders differs.
- No TFF category equals the legacy speculator net. The legacy non-commercial total mixes what TFF separates — asset managers and leveraged funds often sit on opposite sides of a financial market, a structure the legacy format cannot show. That, in one sentence, is the reason TFF exists.
The same exercise works on the 10-Year T-Note (legacy specs currently -879,706 contracts on 5,272,703 open interest), where dealer-versus-leveraged-fund structure is usually the most-watched line.
Why totals differ between formats
Three mechanical reasons account for essentially every discrepancy people ask about:
- Different partitions. Legacy commercial includes swap dealers; disaggregated producer/merchant does not. Quoting one as the other creates a phantom difference.
- Reclassification vs partition. TFF re-sorts traders by firm type, so its categories cannot be summed into the legacy pair exactly.
- Futures-only vs combined. Each format ships in two variants — futures-only, and futures plus delta-adjusted options. Cross-format comparisons only work within one variant. FuturesBench labels which variant every table uses.
Which format should you look at?
Descriptively: analysts working long history use legacy because nothing else goes back past 2006; commodity analysts tend to quote managed money from the disaggregated report because it isolates funds; rates and FX analysts tend to quote TFF because dealer/asset-manager/leveraged-fund structure is the story in those markets. This site publishes all formats the CFTC provides for each market, on the same page, so the choice never requires a second data source.
- Do the three formats use different data?
- No. All three are built from the same position filings for the same Tuesday. Only the trader classification scheme differs.
- Why does the disaggregated report only go back to 2006?
- The CFTC introduced it in September 2009 and back-computed history to June 2006, the earliest period for which the finer classifications could be reconstructed reliably. The same limit applies to TFF.
- Is "managed money" the same as "leveraged funds"?
- They are analogous but belong to different reports: managed money is a disaggregated category (physical commodities), leveraged funds a TFF category (financials). Both are dominated by hedge funds and CTAs, but the definitions are maintained separately.
- Can I reconstruct legacy numbers from disaggregated ones?
- Yes, exactly: producer/merchant plus swap dealer equals legacy commercial, and managed money plus other reportables equals legacy non-commercial. The equivalent reconstruction from TFF is not exact.
Live figures from the CFTC report dated 2026-07-21. Category definitions summarize the CFTC's explanatory notes for the legacy, disaggregated, and TFF reports; the notes are authoritative.