When Is the COT Report Released? The Full CFTC Schedule and Timing

Key takeaways

• The CFTC publishes the Commitment of Traders report every Friday at 3:30 PM Eastern Time (20:30 UTC).
• The data reflects positions as of the close of business the prior Tuesday, a built-in three-day reporting lag.
• When a US federal holiday falls in the reporting week, the release is delayed (usually to the following Monday), and the Tuesday "as of" date can shift too.
• All report formats, Legacy, Disaggregated, and Traders in Financial Futures (TFF), in both Futures-Only and Combined versions, are released at the same time.
• The edge is not in refreshing cftc.gov on Friday afternoon. It is in having the new numbers already scored and ranked the moment they land.

The 30-Second Answer

The Commitment of Traders (COT) report is published by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) once a week, on Friday at 3:30 PM Eastern Time. That is 20:30 UTC, or 12:30 PM Pacific.

The numbers you see on Friday are not live. They are a snapshot of how traders were positioned as of the close of business on the previous Tuesday. So every Friday release carries a three-day lag built into it by design.

That is the whole schedule in one paragraph. The rest of this guide explains why the lag exists, what shifts the release around holidays, and how to make sure you are reading the fresh data within minutes rather than hours.

Why the Data Is "As of Tuesday": The Three-Day Lag

The COT report is not a real-time feed. It is a regulated, reconciled dataset, and that reconciliation takes time.

Here is the weekly sequence:

The three days between the Tuesday snapshot and the Friday release are spent collecting, checking, and categorising the data. The CFTC is aggregating positions from hundreds of reporting firms and sorting every large trader into the correct group (Commercial, Managed Money, Leveraged Funds, and so on). That process is what makes the report trustworthy, and it is why the data is never same-day.

Practical implication: by the time you read Friday's report, the market has already traded for three more days. Positioning can have moved. This is exactly why COT data works best as a structural filter rather than an execution trigger. A crowded extreme tells you the market is stretched; it does not tell you the reversal happens at Friday's close.

→ How to read the COT report from scratch

Exactly What Time, and Where CFTC Posts It

The release time is 3:30 PM in the US Eastern time zone. Because the US observes daylight saving, the UTC equivalent shifts by an hour across the year:

• During Eastern Daylight Time (roughly March to November): 3:30 PM EDT = 19:30 UTC
• During Eastern Standard Time (roughly November to March): 3:30 PM EST = 20:30 UTC

If you trade from Europe, that is early-to-late evening. From Asia, it lands in the middle of the night, which is one reason so many traders prefer to wake up to a summary rather than sit on the CFTC site.

The report is posted on the CFTC's Commitments of Traders page at cftc.gov, as a set of downloadable files. There is no email alert from the CFTC and no push notification. If you want it, you go and get it, or you use a service that fetches and processes it for you.

Holiday Delays: The Part That Trips People Up

The Friday-at-3:30 schedule holds on a normal week. It breaks whenever a US federal holiday falls inside the reporting window, and this is where most traders get caught out.

When a federal holiday closes US government offices during the week, the CFTC pushes the release back. The general rule:

• The release is delayed by one business day for each holiday in the processing window. In practice, a holiday most often moves the Friday release to the following Monday (or Tuesday if there are two).
• The "as of" snapshot can also shift. If the Tuesday itself is a holiday, the snapshot moves to the next available business day, so the report can be "as of Wednesday" instead of Tuesday.

Holidays that regularly disturb the COT schedule:

The mistake we see most often: a trader checks the CFTC page on a holiday-shortened Friday, sees last week's report still sitting there, and assumes the site is broken or the data is missing. It is neither. The release has simply moved to the next business day. On those weeks, the fresh report usually lands the following Monday afternoon, occasionally Tuesday.

COTInsight tracks these holiday shifts automatically. Its data poller keeps watching through the Monday and Tuesday after a delayed week, so the dashboard updates the moment the CFTC actually publishes. You do not have to remember which weeks were short.

All the Report Formats Drop Together

There is not one COT report. There are several formats, and they are all released in the same 3:30 PM Friday window:

• Legacy, the original format, splitting traders into Commercial, Non-Commercial, and Non-Reportable.
• Disaggregated, for physical commodities (energy, metals, grains, softs, livestock), breaking out Producer/Merchant, Swap Dealers, Managed Money, and Other Reportables.
• Traders in Financial Futures (TFF), for financial contracts (currencies, equity indices, rates, and crypto), splitting Dealer, Asset Manager, Leveraged Funds, and Other Reportables.

Each of these also comes in two versions: Futures-Only and Futures-and-Options-Combined. You do not have to choose in advance or wait for one after the other. Everything publishes at once, and a good analysis platform pulls the right format for each market automatically.

→ Commercial vs non-commercial positioning, and how the formats split traders

How to Read the New Numbers the Moment They Land

Knowing when the report drops is only useful if you can act on it quickly. Downloading raw CFTC files and building your own spreadsheet every Friday works, but it takes time, and by the time you have normalised the numbers the evening is gone.

Two faster paths:

1. Get the report in your inbox. COTInsight sends a free weekly COT email that goes out as soon as the new data is processed after each release. No sitting on the CFTC page at 3:30, no doing the math yourself, no missing the holiday-shifted weeks. You wake up to the top positioning extremes already flagged.

Get the free weekly COT email →

2. Have it already scored on the dashboard. COTInsight fetches the CFTC release, computes a 52-week z-score and a 3-year COT Index for every one of 475+ markets, classifies the regime, and flags price-vs-positioning divergence, all within hours of the Friday release, and through the Monday/Tuesday window on holiday weeks. Ten years of weekly history on Pro; the full CFTC archive plus AI commentary and historical outcome statistics on Ultimate.

If you live on the charts, the COTInsight TradingView indicator (Ultimate) puts the same z-score, COT Index, and regime panels directly on your weekly chart and recalculates when the new report posts, so the fresh positioning shows up where you already trade.

→ See the COTInsight TradingView indicator

Frequently Asked Questions

What time is the COT report released?

The CFTC releases it every Friday at 3:30 PM Eastern Time (19:30 UTC during daylight saving, 20:30 UTC in winter). On weeks with a US federal holiday, the release is delayed, usually to the following Monday afternoon.

What day does the COT report come out?

Normally Friday. When a federal holiday falls in the reporting week, it shifts to the next business day, most often Monday.

Why is the COT report data three days old?

Because the snapshot is taken at the close of business on Tuesday, and the CFTC needs the rest of the week to collect, validate, and classify positions from hundreds of reporting firms before publishing on Friday. The lag is the price of a clean, regulated dataset.

Is the COT report as of Friday or Tuesday?

The positions are as of Tuesday's close. Friday is only the publication date. So Friday's report already reflects a three-day-old picture.

What happens to the COT report on holidays?

A US federal holiday delays the release by roughly one business day per holiday, typically moving it to Monday. If the Tuesday snapshot day itself is a holiday, the "as of" date shifts forward too. COTInsight's poller keeps checking through the delayed window so the data updates automatically.

How often is the COT report published?

Once a week. There is one standard COT release per week, covering the Tuesday-to-Tuesday change in positioning.

Summary

• The COT report is released every Friday at 3:30 PM ET, with data as of the prior Tuesday's close, a deliberate three-day lag.
• Federal holidays delay the release, usually to the following Monday, and can move the snapshot date.
• Legacy, Disaggregated, and TFF formats, Futures-Only and Combined, all publish simultaneously.
• Because the data is never same-day, use COT as a structural positioning filter, not a same-bar trigger.
• The real advantage is speed of interpretation: have the new numbers scored, ranked, and flagged the moment they drop rather than building the spreadsheet yourself.

The schedule is public and the data is free. The edge is in reading it faster and better than everyone else refreshing the CFTC page.

All data sourced from the CFTC Commitments of Traders report (cftc.gov). Release times are set by the CFTC and subject to change around US federal holidays. This article is educational and does not constitute investment advice. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss.