I’m hoping someone can unravel the meaning behind the COT report for me, I’ve read numerous articles and they all expound the virtues of watching open interest and volume for Comm and Non-Comm traders to help understand market sentiment…however…how do i get this information (particularly volume) from the report?
I understand that Open Interest is the number of contracts yet to expire or be exercised however is the Commitments row the total number of contracts in the market? Or just the number of new contracts that week?
So far I’ve read the report as the Commitments row being the total contracts being in existence and how this is split across different traders and the Open Interest is the number of those contracts that are yet to be exercised. Is this correct or do I have the wrong idea?
I believe one of the most popular ways to use the report is to look for large imbalance between long and short contracts and if the market is still heading in the same direction a reversal could be imminent.
When looking for the imbalance you only look at non-commercial or commercial. I believe the two almost exactly inversely correlate with each other.
Thanks for the link, I guess Im trying to understand where to find the volume information i.e. total number of transactions not just open interest for the futures market. The COT report seems to just feature open interest, would be great to also know what total volumes are. Any ideas?