VIX COT Report
The Commitment of Traders (COT) report shows how the largest traders are positioned in VIX futures each week. The CFTC splits open interest into speculators (managed money) and commercial hedgers, so you can see who is leaning which way. Tracking when VIX speculative positioning reaches an extreme, and how speculators line up against commercials, is one of the most widely followed sentiment tools in futures.
In equity index futures, asset managers and dealers hedge exposure while leveraged funds trade direction, so an extreme in VIX speculative positioning often marks a sentiment extreme.
How to read VIX positioning
A 52-week z-score measures how stretched VIX speculative positioning is versus the past year: a high positive reading means speculators are crowded long, a deeply negative one means crowded short. Crowded extremes often precede reversals, while the positioning regime tells you whether the current structure is trending or stretched. New to this? Start with how to read the COT report.
COTInsight scores VIX on nine analytical layers every week, the moment the CFTC data lands: the 52-week z-score, the 3-year COT Index, regime classification, price-versus-positioning divergence, open-interest trend and more, with up to ten years of history so you can see how today compares to every prior extreme.