CFTC
US derivatives regulator; publishes weekly Commitments of Traders data for NYMEX WTI and Brent futures.
CFTC's 17 July Commitments of Traders release, capturing positions only to the prior Tuesday, showed NYMEX WTI managed money down 69% to 19,783 lots, a snapshot already stale by the time Iran struck a Kuwaiti power plant that same day.
Last refreshed: 3 August 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
After the June flush to near-neutral, which way does crude positioning break on GL X?
Timeline for CFTC
Published Commitments of Traders data for the week to 28 July
European Oil Markets: Money went into WTI, not into BrentPublished Commitments of Traders data showing managed money flip Brent net long
European Oil Markets: First net long of the rally on 06765TMentioned in: Brent takes $90 on the ninth night
European Oil MarketsReleased Commitments of Traders data showing the WTI net-long collapse and the standalone Brent net short
European Oil Markets: WTI net length falls to 19,783 lotsReleased a delayed Commitments of Traders report showing WTI length cut 23%
European Oil Markets: Funds cut crude length into the rallyBackground
CFTC is the US federal regulator for derivatives markets, established in 1974 with a statutory mandate for market Integrity and fraud prevention rather than price forecasting. Its Commitments of Traders report, published every Friday, is one tool among several the agency uses to police US futures and options markets, and has used its current disaggregated format since 2009.
CFTC's authority covers only US-listed futures, which is why the only Brent line it reports is the domestically listed Brent Last Day contract, code 06765T, rather than the internationally traded ICE Brent Futures Europe contract that sets the global benchmark price; that contract is regulated in the UK and sits outside CFTC's jurisdiction entirely.
European trading desks and the OPEC Secretariat both read the agency's weekly managed-money figures as a crowding signal, even though CFTC designed the report as a transparency instrument rather than a trading indicator, a mismatch between why the data exists and how the market actually uses it.
Its snapshot missed an escalation
CFTC's release for the week to 14 July showed NYMEX WTI managed money down 69% to 19,783 contracts and a standalone Brent Last Day net short of 60,141, the last snapshot before Iran struck a Kuwaiti power plant on 17 July.
Because the report only ever covers positions to the prior Tuesday, the next Friday's release was the earliest point CFTC's own data could register nine further nights of strikes that had by then pushed Brent past $90. The lag is built into how the agency discloses, not a one-off gap.
Its data recorded a rare reversal
CFTC's release for the week to 21 July was the first in the cycle to show managed money confirming, rather than fading, the rally: Brent Last Day longs outweighed shorts by 14,255 contracts, reversing the prior week's net short.
That reading only became visible because of a run of weekly snapshots stretching back to 6 July, when the agency's figures had shown the Brent-WTI spread near $3.26 the same day OPEC+ confirmed another output increase. Read together, the sequence of CFTC releases traces sentiment moving from cautious to convicted as the conflict widened.
CFTC's snapshot missed the escalation
Why did oil speculative positioning swing so violently in June 2026?
What does the CFTC Commitments of Traders report show for crude oil positioning in June 2026?
What happened to WTI speculative positioning in May 2026?
Why are oil traders watching the WTI-Brent speculator positioning gap?
What does the CFTC COT report say about Brent positioning in April 2026?
Reference
What is managed money in CFTC oil market reports?
How does CFTC data compare to ESMA positioning data for Brent futures?
When does the CFTC publish the Commitments of Traders report?
Does the CFTC Commitments of Traders report cover ICE Brent futures?
