The title of an article

History of the cot report

The American wheat farmer rode an economic roller coaster from the beginning of the 20th century’s first great war to the start of the second. Wholesale prices climbed sharply even before the United States entered World War I and peaked shortly after its end. The resumption of European farm production flooded world markets in the Twenties, guaranteeing years of low prices. American agriculture was clearly mired in deep depression long before the stock market crash of 1929. By the early 1930s, many farmers were receiving less for their crop than its cost of production — a certain recipe for default and foreclosure. Prices climbed briefly in the mid-1930s, only to plunge again. It was not until after American entry into World War II that sustained increases in price and demand occurred.

As a result, congress responded to the crisis, passing the Grain Futures act, signed by President Warren G. Harding in 1922.

The act for the first time, required CBOT members to report their aggregate trades to the newly formed Grain futures administration, which posted these figures in the first annual report to congress in 1924. From the beginning a key feature of the report was to differentiate speculators from the “trade” (Commecial hedgers who used futures markets to protect their ongoing cash business from price volatility)

In response Chicago traders first sued (unscuccessfully) to maintain their trading privacy, and then formed the Borad of Trade Clearing Corporation in 1925 (now the clearing corporation) to provide trader anomity in aggregating and reporting trades. Even though position size were only informly controlled, large traders like Arther cutten – who by 1926 took delivery of 5 million bushels of what—were contemptuous of government oversight, and attitude that continues amount certain large traders to this day.

The commodity exchange authority

Monthly reporting continued under the commodity exchange authority (CEA), created by the commodity exchange act of 1936. This act empowered the cea to establish speculative position size limits as well as prospective market manipulators, and banned option trading on commodities – a restriction that was not lifted until 1982. This act and subsequent amendments, added markets to the CEAs portfolio

In 1942, the commodity futures statistics report was published separately from the us department of agriculture’s USDA annual report. The new publication included monthly trader statistics (though still published annually). The cea published the first monthly commitment of traders report on July 13, 1962. This listed large traders positions for 13 aggricultural commoditiy markets as of July 30.

The commodity futures trading commission

Congress created the commodity futures trading futures commission cftc to succeed the cea in 1974. By this time, several additions were made to the cot report, including adding data on the number of traders in each category a new-crop, old-crop breakoutl and concentration ratios that show the percentage of open interest held by the four and each largest traders. Under the cftc, th  cor report release interval was incrementally shortened beginning in 1990 with mid-month and month-end reports, to every two weeks beginning in 1992, and to the current weekly schedule in 2000. The delay between tabulation and release has been shortened, as well, and you can now collect the data at the cftc’s website at 3:30pm estern time each Friday (from tabulations made on Tuesday’s close).