Commercial
This group consists of market participants who use the futures contracts for
hedging purposes, and these commercial participants are generally exporters and
importers who are hedging against currency fluctuations. For example, a German
car-maker, who exports to the US, expects to receive 10 million euros worth of
sales within the next quarter. To hedge against the possibility of a US dollar
decline which would affect the amount of euros it would receive once converted
the German car-maker would short 10 million in Euro FX futures. On the other
hand, if a US car manufacturer exports 10 million US dollars worth of cars within
the next quarter, it would long the equivalent in Euro FX futures contracts
Non-commercial
This group consists of large speculators such as hedge funds, banks and so on
who use currency futures just for speculation
Non-reportable
.This group consists of small speculators like retail traders
The COT report tells you the long and short positions undertaken by participants from
each category.When it comes to analyzing information pertaining to currency futures
in the COT report, it is generally more relevant for traders to focus on the noncommercial
participants rather than on the commercial participants. The reason
behind this is that these large speculators trade the futures contractsmainly for profits
and do not have the intention to take delivery of the underlying asset, which in this
case would be cash. On the other hand, commercial participants tend to maintain and
roll over the same amount of contracts from month to month for hedging purposes
even though these positions could be in losses. Large speculators, however, will
.usually close their losing positions instead of rolling them over to the next month
?Why use The COT
The COT report allows you to gauge market sentiment in the currency futures
market, which also influences the spot forex market. Currency futures are basically
spot prices which are adjusted by the forwards (derived by interest rate
differentials) to arrive at a future delivery price. Unlike spot forex which does not
have a centralised exchange at the time of writing, currency futures are cleared at
the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
Price quotation
One of the many differences between spot forex and currency futures lies in their
quoting convention. In the currency futures market, currency futures are mostly
quoted as the foreign currency directly against the US dollar. For example, Swiss
francs are quoted versus the US dollar in futures, unlike the USD/CHF notation in
the spot forex market. So if the Swiss franc falls in value against the US dollar
USD/CHF will rise, and the Swiss franc futures will fall. On the other hand
EUR/USD in spot forex is quoted in the same way as Euro futures, so if the Euro
.appreciates in value, Euro futures will rise just like EUR/USD will go up
That said, spot forex and currency futures do have one similarity: the spot and
futures prices of a currency tend to move in tandem. When either the spot or futures
price of a currency rises, the other also tends to rise, and when either falls, the other
also tends to fall. For example, if the GBP futures price goes up, spot GBP/USD
goes up (because GBP gains in strength). However, if the CHF futures price goes
up, spot USD/CHF goes down (because CHF gains in strength), as both the spot
and futures prices of CHF move in tandem