How to Read Energy Radar: Positioning and Fundamentals at a Glance

Q: What markets does Energy Radar cover?

Four panels, each on its own market's positioning. WTI against 41 crude and refined-product series: commercial crude, Cushing, SPR, gasoline, distillate, jet fuel, ULSD, heating oil and propane stocks, days of supply for five of those, plus production, refinery runs, imports, exports and product supplied. Natural gas against 12 series: working gas in storage for the Lower 48 and its five regions, the South Central salt and nonsalt split, Henry Hub spot, and monthly dry gas production, LNG exports and total consumption. RBOB gasoline against 14 gasoline series, and NY Harbor ULSD against 16 distillate, ULSD and heating oil series, each with its own refining margin against WTI.

Q: Is Energy Radar available on Pro?

No. It is an Ultimate-tier feature on the WTI, natural gas, RBOB gasoline and NY Harbor ULSD detail views.

Q: Does the COT Index in Energy Radar use the same threshold as the rest of COTInsight?

Yes: crowded long at 80 or above, crowded short at 20 or below, the same 0-100, 3-year-range COT Index used across the dashboard.

Q: Does Energy Radar tell you whether an inventory build is bullish or bearish?

No. It states where a stock level sits against its own 5-year seasonal band and leaves it there. Whether that position has meant anything for the price that followed is a separate, measured question, and the panel only states a direction where the measurement clears a stated sample-size and significance bar. Today that is true for two of fourteen relationships tested, and in both the measured direction runs opposite to what a build-is-bearish assumption would predict.

Q: What does the Cushing figure add?

Cushing is the WTI delivery point, so its level is useful context for physical tightness there, alongside the other stock readings on the panel.

Q: Is Energy Radar a trading signal?

No. It describes where positioning and fundamentals currently sit, with no win rate and no price target. Where a historical relationship is shown, it carries its own sample size and is described as history, not as a prediction.

30-second answer: Energy Radar is an Ultimate panel on four detail views, WTI, natural gas, RBOB gasoline and NY Harbor ULSD, that puts speculative positioning and EIA physical data on one screen. On WTI: the COT Index, crude and refined-product stocks measured against their 5-year seasonal bands, the flows that build or drain them, product cracks against WTI, and spot prices. On natural gas: the natural gas COT Index, working gas in storage by region and by the salt-cavern split, and Henry Hub spot. On gasoline and diesel: each contract's own COT Index against its own stocks, days of supply, exports, demand and refining margin. It states where a number sits, not what that means for price. Of fourteen candidate relationships we tested between a seasonal-band position and the price that followed, two clear our publication bar, and both run opposite to the old assumption that a stock build is bearish.

What Energy Radar is

Energy Radar is a panel on four of COTInsight's detail pages, WTI, natural gas, RBOB gasoline and NY Harbor ULSD, available on the Ultimate tier. It puts CFTC speculative positioning next to EIA physical data in one place, instead of two separate tabs. Open either market page on an Ultimate account and the panel renders once positioning and fundamentals are both current for the week. Each panel reads its own market's positioning; neither borrows the other's.

The fundamentals side covers more than crude alone: commercial crude stocks, Cushing, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, gasoline, distillate, jet fuel, ULSD, heating oil and propane stocks, days of supply for crude, gasoline, distillate, jet fuel and propane, crude production, refinery utilisation, refiner crude input, gasoline production, crude imports, exports and net imports, gasoline and distillate exports, product supplied for the total and for gasoline, distillate, jet fuel and propane, product cracks against WTI, and WTI, Brent and product spot prices. That is 41 series on the WTI panel. Positioning on this panel stays WTI-specific, so the crowd-versus-fundamentals read applies to WTI, drawn against that wider set of EIA series. RBOB gasoline and NY Harbor ULSD carry their own Managed Money positioning in the CFTC report, and each now has its own panel reading that positioning against its own barrels.

The positioning axis: the WTI COT Index

The first input is Managed Money's net position in WTI futures, converted into the COT Index, a 0-100 rank of the current net position against its trailing 3-year range. Energy Radar reads that number as:

COT Index >= 80: crowded long.
COT Index 50 to 79: net long leaning.
COT Index 21 to 49: net short leaning.
COT Index <= 20: crowded short.

This measures how much speculative capacity is already used, not whether the position is right; a crowded long can stay crowded for weeks. For the mechanics behind the index, see the COT z-score explained inside how to read the COT report.

The fundamentals axis: EIA data against the 5-year seasonal band

Each stock series, commercial crude, Cushing, SPR, gasoline, distillate, propane, is compared against its own 5-year seasonal band for the same calendar week: the range where that series has historically sat in that same week across the last five years. That strips the normal seasonal shape out and leaves a plain read of where the current level sits.

Energy Radar states that position, at or above the top of the band, inside it, or at or below the base, and how far the current level sits from the 5-year average for that week. The band is computed over the last five years including the current one, so a reading can sit exactly on an edge but never past it. It does not attach a direction to the position by itself. Whether sitting above or below the band has meant anything for the price that followed is a separate, measured question, covered below, and the panel only answers it where the measurement actually clears a publication bar.

The second panel: natural gas

Natural gas gets its own panel, on the NYMEX natural gas contract, and it never borrows WTI's positioning. Reading one market's COT index onto another market's fundamentals would be a fabricated number, so the gas panel uses the natural gas COT index or it shows nothing at all.

The fundamentals side is storage rather than stocks, from the EIA Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report: working gas in the Lower 48, then the same figure broken out across the East, Midwest, South Central, Mountain and Pacific regions, and then the South Central total split into salt-cavern and depleted-field storage. That split is the one worth knowing about. Salt caverns can be injected and withdrawn far faster than depleted fields, so they move first when the market needs gas quickly, and reading the two apart separates fast capacity from slow. Henry Hub spot is the price the positioning is read against.

Gas storage is also the one place where the same level genuinely means two different things depending on the date. Storage builds from April through October and draws from November through March, so a level that is unremarkable in April is a different statement in December. Every gas series is therefore compared against its own 5-year band for the same week of the year, the same treatment the oil stocks get.

Alongside it the panel carries a weather line, built from heating and cooling degree days in the EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook, comparing the season so far against the 10-year normal. Weather is the dominant driver of gas demand, so a storage level read without it is missing the reason the level is where it is. Only complete months count: a month still in progress would always look short against a full-month normal, and the degree-day series carries forecast months that are dropped rather than presented as observations. Colder or warmer than normal is a statement about weather, not about price, and it stays that way.

Reading the panel

The read: a short opening that states where positioning sits, where the fundamentals sit, and what has been measured about each. It asserts no relationship between the two; it names them, and says plainly that the crossed read was not measurable.
The positioning gauge: the COT Index on a 0-100 track, with the crowded thresholds marked at 20 and 80.
The band strip: every banded series on its own track, showing where it sits inside its own 5-year band. Series sitting at an edge are sorted to the top and marked.
The seasonal band chart: the panel's headline series over 52 weeks against its own 5-year envelope, with edge-touching weeks marked.
Reading tiles: one per series, each showing the current value and units, a band-position badge (above-band, in-band, below-band), the percent distance from the 5-year average for that week, the change versus the prior period, and a flag when a reading is at a one-year high or low, named in the series' own periods (52 weeks for weekly series, 12 months for the monthly gas series), or has just crossed its 5-year average.
Charts: stocks plotted against their 5-year average as a percentage, product supplied in barrels per day, balance flows (production, refinery runs, imports, exports) as percent change on the prior week, and spot prices as percent change on the prior day.
Product cracks: gasoline, distillate and heating oil priced against WTI, with a percentile against roughly a year of daily history. Context only; the sample behind any single crack is too small to publish as a measured base rate.
Measured base rates: the section covered in detail below. It shows a relationship only where the underlying data clears our publication rule, and states plainly when nothing currently does.
Data dates: the EIA reporting week behind the fundamentals, the WTI COT date behind positioning, and, where prices are shown, the more recent daily price date.

What the data actually shows: measured base rates, not assumptions

This panel used to describe a stock build as bearish and a stock draw as bullish. We tested that assumption against the record instead of asserting it. The test: for each of fourteen candidate relationships, a market's inventory sitting above or below its 5-year seasonal band, split by market (WTI as the control, gasoline, distillate, natural gas) and, for natural gas, by season, we measured the average price return over the following 8 weeks.

A relationship is only shown on the panel as a measured base rate if it clears both of two bars: at least 30 independent, non-overlapping observations, and a t-statistic of at least 1 in absolute value. The independence bar exists because 8-week windows sampled every week overlap roughly 8 to 1; a raw weekly count overstates how much distinct evidence actually exists.

Two of the fourteen candidates cleared both bars, measured on 1 September 2026. WTI crude stocks sitting at or above the top of their 5-year seasonal band, all seasons, drawn from 324 raw weekly observations (40 independent), produced an average forward return of +4.83% over the following 8 weeks, t = +2.32. Gasoline stocks above their own band, from 296 raw observations (37 independent), produced +6.67%, t = +1.95. Both are a higher price following a build, the opposite of what the old bearish label asserted. These remain modest samples describing history, not rules the current week is bound to follow.

The other twelve candidates did not clear the bar, including WTI and gasoline stocks sitting below their bands, every distillate relationship (distillate above band reaches t = +2.69 but only 24 independent observations, and a strong t alone never publishes), and every natural gas relationship tested. Energy Radar does not display a direction for any of those; the readings for those series appear on the panel with their band position and no attached base rate.

What it is NOT

Energy Radar is not a forecast. It does not predict where WTI will trade, it carries no win rate, and no inventory state is labelled bullish or bearish. The two measured base rates above are reported with their sample sizes and t-statistics attached, exactly as it was measured, not as a rule for what happens next. A market can sit in the same band position for weeks with no move at all, and price can move sharply from a reading that looked unremarkable.

Where to find it, and what it takes to see it

Energy Radar lives on the WTI, natural gas, RBOB gasoline and NY Harbor ULSD detail views inside the COTInsight dashboard, under the standard positioning charts. It requires an Ultimate subscription. On Pro or trial, those pages still show full positioning history and z-scores, without this panel.

For a field-by-field reference covering every number on all four panels, see the Energy Radar Field Guide. For the reasoning behind reading positioning and inventories together, see Crude Oil Positioning vs Inventories. For the broader WTI and Brent picture, see our COT report for crude oil traders guide. Each of the other three panels has its own guide too: natural gas, gasoline and diesel. Start a free 7-day trial →

Frequently Asked Questions

What markets does Energy Radar cover?

Four panels, each on its own market's positioning. WTI against 41 crude and refined-product series: commercial crude, Cushing, SPR, gasoline, distillate, jet fuel, ULSD, heating oil and propane stocks, days of supply for five of those, plus production, refinery runs, imports, exports and product supplied. Natural gas against 12 series: working gas in storage for the Lower 48 and its five regions, the South Central salt and nonsalt split, Henry Hub spot, and monthly dry gas production, LNG exports and total consumption. RBOB gasoline against 14 gasoline series, and NY Harbor ULSD against 16 distillate, ULSD and heating oil series, each with its own refining margin against WTI.

Is Energy Radar available on Pro?