When is the COT report released?
The schedule, the holiday rule, and what "as of" actually means.
The CFTC publishes the Commitments of Traders report every Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time, with positions recorded as of the preceding Tuesday's close. That three-day gap exists for compilation and review of the filings the data is built from.
The regular weekly rhythm
| Day | What happens |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | Snapshot date — all positions in the report are as of this close |
| Wednesday–Thursday | CFTC compiles and reviews reportable-position filings |
| Friday 3:30 p.m. ET | Report published (flat files and the CFTC public-data API) |
The holiday rule
When a U.S. federal holiday falls in the cycle, the CFTC delays publication rather than skipping a week: the snapshot stays a Tuesday, and the release moves to the following business day — most often the Monday after, when the holiday was a Friday, or a Tuesday-snapshot shift when the holiday was a Monday or Tuesday. The CFTC publishes its own list of adjusted dates for the year on its release-schedule page — that list, not the weekly rule of thumb, is authoritative for holiday weeks.
How fast the data lands here
FuturesBench watches both of the CFTC's publication channels — the flat files at cftc.gov and the CFTC's public data API — beginning a few minutes before the scheduled release, and publishes as soon as either carries the new report date, timed against the CFTC's own file timestamps. In practice the update is live here within about a minute of the drop; several well-known COT sites update hours later, which matters if your process runs Friday afternoon.
Reading a release the moment it lands
- Weekly movers — the largest position changes across every market, one page.
- Extremes — markets whose 3-year COT index just hit the edge of its range.
- All markets — every market page updates in the same release pass, together with its CSV/JSON download.