COT Report for Copper Traders: Producer Hedging, a Crowded Fund Long, and a Record Dealer Book
Key takeaways
- Copper is the metal where the physical trade genuinely holds the short. Producers and merchants are short 124,406 contracts, 42.34% of open interest, against 18.48% in silver and 9.06% in gold.
- That makes copper the mirror image of silver, where the dominant short is dealer intermediation rather than hedged metal. Same complex, opposite structure, and the two require opposite readings.
- Managed Money is genuinely crowded: net long 73,000 contracts, the 95.4th percentile of the 239 weeks since February 2022, against an all-time high of 80,880 for this series. The COT Index reads 93.6.
- It is also rolling over. The fund long fell 3,446 contracts on the week and 4,796 over four weeks. Level plus direction is the combination that matters, and copper now has both.
- Swap Dealers are short 15.69% of open interest, the highest reading in the entire series, against a mean of 6.16%.
- While the internet argues about a silver conspiracy, copper is the metal that is actually at a positioning extreme this week.
Introduction
Copper does not attract the mythology that silver and gold do, which is a shame, because its Commitments of Traders report is the most straightforward in the metals complex and currently the most interesting.
It is straightforward because copper's participants are doing recognisable things. Miners and fabricators hedge real metal. Funds express a view on global growth. There is comparatively little of the structured-product and ETF machinery that makes precious metals positioning so hard to interpret. When the copper commercial line moves, it is usually because somebody with metal changed their hedge.
It is interesting because on the report dated 1 September 2026 copper is sitting at a fund-positioning extreme that neither silver nor gold is anywhere near, and the speculative side has just started to unwind it.
Every figure below comes from the CFTC disaggregated futures-and-options-combined report dated 1 September 2026, released Friday 4 September, and from the weekly series back to February 2022, when COMEX copper began reporting in this format.
Which CFTC Report to Use for Copper
Copper is a physical commodity, so it appears in the Disaggregated Commitments of Traders report. The contract is COPPER- #1 - COMMODITY EXCHANGE INC., CFTC code 085692, the 25,000-pound COMEX contract.
Use the futures-and-options-combined version, and note one thing that catches people out: copper's disaggregated series in this format begins 8 February 2022. That is 239 weekly observations rather than the decade-plus you get in gold, silver, platinum and palladium. It is enough to compute a meaningful percentile and nowhere near enough for a twenty-year base rate, and this article does not pretend otherwise.
The other thing to keep in mind is that COMEX is not the only venue that matters. The LME runs the deeper global copper market and files nothing to the CFTC. COMEX positioning is a real and tradeable signal, but it is a window onto part of the market, not all of it. If the formats are new to you, start with how to read the COT report.
The Three Groups in Copper, and What They Held
On the report dated 1 September 2026, against 293,855 contracts of open interest:
| Group | Long | Short | Net | Short as % of OI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Producer / Merchant | 27,579 | 124,406 | -96,827 | 42.34% |
| Swap Dealers | 50,804 | 46,102 | +4,702 | 15.69% |
| Managed Money | 91,662 | 18,662 | +73,000 | 6.35% |
Managed Money also held 31,430 spreading contracts and Swap Dealers 8,733.
The shape of that table is the whole point of this article, and it is worth seeing next to the rest of the complex. Here is the producer and merchant short side, as a share of open interest, with each metal measured against its own history:
| Metal | Mean | Median | 1 Sep 2026 | Its own percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platinum | 37.40% | 37.62% | 20.78% | 4.1th |
| Copper | 31.39% | 29.24% | 42.34% | 85.8th |
| Palladium | 28.87% | 33.45% | 7.72% | 16.6th |
| Silver | 24.62% | 24.05% | 18.48% | 15.9th |
| Gold | 15.97% | 15.13% | 9.06% | 11.0th |
Copper's physical trade carries roughly twice the short book that silver's does and nearly five times gold's, measured the same way. Copper is also the only metal in the complex whose producer short is currently above its own median rather than well below it.
Why this matters for reading the data. In gold and silver, the largest short is held by Swap Dealers, who are intermediaries laying off client exposure. Their position is a description of flow, not a forecast, which is why treating it as bearish is such a common error. In copper, the largest short is held by people who dig copper out of the ground and sell it forward. That position is a commercial decision about price, taken by participants with better information about supply than anyone else in the market.
It does not follow that you should trade against them. Producers hedge on a schedule and against a cost of production, not a price target, and our piece on whether commercials are really the smart money covers why that distinction matters. But copper is the market where the commercial line comes closest to meaning what people think it means everywhere.
The Crowded Long
Managed Money is net long 73,000 contracts. Set against the 239 weeks of this series:
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Latest (1 Sep 2026) | +73,000 |
| Series maximum | +80,880 |
| Mean | +23,047 |
| Median | +19,580 |
| Series minimum | -42,309 |
| Percentile | 95.4th |
Against the trailing 52 weeks alone, that is a z-score of +0.97 on a mean of 61,530 and a standard deviation of 11,787, and the 156-week COT Index reads 93.6.
Notice that the two normalizations disagree in tone, and that the disagreement is informative. The z-score of +0.97 says copper is roughly one standard deviation above where it has been over the past year, which is elevated but not startling. The percentile against the full series says this is the 95th percentile of everything since 2022. Both are true: the fund long has been persistently high for the past year, so the trailing-52-week baseline has itself drifted up. When a z-score looks tamer than a long-run percentile, it usually means the recent past was already stretched. That is exactly the case where a short lookback flatters a crowded market, which is the argument our COT Index piece makes at length.
And it has started to unwind. The fund long fell 3,446 contracts on the week and is down 4,796 over four weeks. That is not a collapse, it is a rounding error against a 73,000-contract book, but the direction has changed while the level is still extreme.
That combination is the one that carries information. An extreme with the crowd still adding is a trend with fuel. An extreme with the crowd starting to leave is a different animal. Level tells you how much fuel is in the tank; the change tells you which way the flow is going. Copper is currently the second of those, which is the configuration our what happens after a COT extreme work is about.
We are deliberately not attaching a forward win rate to it. With 239 weekly observations, overlapping heavily once you look at any multi-week horizon, copper does not have the independent sample to support a published base rate the way the longer series do. Saying so is more useful than inventing a number.
The Dealer Book Nobody Mentions
Swap Dealers are short 46,102 contracts, 15.69% of open interest. Against a mean of 6.16% and a median of 5.66% across the series, that is the 100th percentile: the highest dealer short share COMEX copper has recorded in this format.
Copper is not alone in this. On the same report, silver's swap dealer short share sits at its 99.7th percentile, gold's at its 98.4th and platinum's at its 93.3rd. Four of five metals are at or near record dealer shorts simultaneously, which is what intermediating a very large and very one-sided client long looks like from the exchange side.
Copper's version is the most striking in relative terms because its baseline is so low. A market that normally runs a 6% dealer short is running 16%. Whatever flow is being hedged into COMEX copper is, proportionally, a bigger departure from normal than in any of the precious metals.
The caveat that applies to all of these numbers. A share of open interest has a denominator, and denominators move. Before reading any ratio as new positioning, check whether open interest changed. Silver's dealer share jumped nearly five points in the week to 1 September almost entirely because open interest fell 13%, not because dealers sold. Copper's open interest was comparatively stable, so its reading is doing more work, but the habit is the point.
How to Trade Copper Positioning
Read copper as a growth trade, not a metals trade. Copper's positioning correlates with the global industrial cycle far more than with the monetary story that drives gold and silver. A crowded copper long is a crowded bet on growth. Read it against the macro backdrop, not against the gold chart.
Take the commercial line more seriously here than elsewhere. This is the one metal where the dominant short really is hedged physical metal. That does not make it a timing signal, but it is genuine commercial information rather than dealer plumbing.
Watch policy risk explicitly. Copper is unusually exposed to trade policy, and tariff and import-review headlines have repeatedly repriced the COMEX contract independently of global fundamentals. Because COMEX can dislocate from the LME when policy is in play, positioning on this contract can reflect a US-specific distortion rather than a world view. Check what is live in policy before reading an extreme as a demand signal. We are not quoting current tariff terms here because they change, and a stale number in an evergreen guide is worse than no number.
Use a long lookback, and know the series is short. The 52-week z-score and the full-series percentile disagreed above, and the longer measure was the more honest one. Copper only has 239 weeks in this format, so treat every percentile as provisional.
Do not fade an extreme on level alone. Copper has been at the top of its range for much of the past year without resolving. The change in the fund book is what turned this week's reading into something worth watching.
Where COTInsight Fits
The copper market page carries the current positioning read. Inside the app, copper sits on the same board as around 350 other weekly-reporting markets, ranked by extremity, with the z-score, 156-week COT Index, regime state, open-interest trend and divergence check on one screen. That is what makes "copper is at a COT Index of 93.6 while silver is at 36.5" a five-second observation instead of an afternoon of spreadsheets.
Ultimate adds the historical outcome statistics per z-score bucket, the twenty-year archive for the markets that have one, the weekly AI commentary, and the TradingView indicator so the same z-score and COT Index sit on your copper chart.
What it is not: no intraday data, no entry signals, no free tier. COT is weekly data with a three-day lag, built for swing and position timeframes.
Related metals: gold, silver, platinum, palladium. Pricing is here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which copper contract does the COT report cover?
COPPER- #1 - COMMODITY EXCHANGE INC., CFTC code 085692, the 25,000-pound COMEX contract. The LME runs the deeper global copper market and does not report to the CFTC, so COMEX positioning is a window onto part of the market rather than all of it.
Is copper positioning crowded right now?
Yes, on the report dated 1 September 2026. Managed Money is net long 73,000 contracts, the 95.4th percentile of the 239 weeks since February 2022, against a series high of 80,880, with a 156-week COT Index of 93.6. It is also easing, down 3,446 contracts on the week and 4,796 over four weeks.
Why is the producer short so much larger in copper than in gold or silver?
Because in copper the physical trade genuinely dominates the short side. Producers and merchants are short 42.34% of open interest in copper against 18.48% in silver and 9.06% in gold. In the precious metals the largest short is held by Swap Dealers hedging client and product flow, which is a different thing entirely and should be read differently.
How far back does copper COT data go?
In the disaggregated futures-and-options-combined format used here, to 8 February 2022, which is 239 weekly reports. That is enough for a percentile and not enough for a reliable multi-year base rate, so we do not publish forward statistics for copper the way we do for markets with two decades of history.
What does a record swap dealer short in copper mean?
Swap Dealers are short 15.69% of open interest, the highest in the series, against a mean of 6.16%. Dealer positions are usually the offset to client exposure taken on elsewhere, so this describes an unusually large one-sided client flow being hedged onto COMEX. It is a statement about plumbing rather than a directional forecast.
When is copper COT data published?
Every Friday at 3:30pm Eastern, reflecting positions as of the preceding Tuesday. The report dated 1 September 2026 was released on Friday 4 September.