CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission)

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), based in Washington, D.C., is an independent U.S. federal agency created in 1974 that regulates futures markets (like Comex), as well as option and swap markets.

The stated mission of the CFTC is to “foster open, transparent, competitive, and financially sound markets, to avoid systemic risk, and to protect the market users and their funds, consumers, and the public from fraud, manipulation, and abusive practices related to derivatives and other products that are subject to the Commodity Exchange Act”. To achieve these goals, every Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time, the CFCT releases the Commitments of Traders Report (CoT report) which provides market participants with a breakdown of open interest positions (i.e., the total number of futures contracts not yet liquidated by an offsetting transaction or fulfilled by delivery) of all major contracts that have more than 20 traders (including gold).

CFTC and Gold

The agency is behind one of the most important publications in the gold market, which enables investors to peek behind the scenes of the gold futures market and to see what large Comex gold traders are doing. It provides important data on trading positioning that drives trends in the gold market – this is why data from the CoT reports can be used as a sentiment indicator in the gold market.

We encourage you to learn more about gold – not only how it is affected by the publications of the CFTC, but also how to successfully use gold as an investment and how to profitably trade it. A great way to start is to sign up for our gold newsletter today. It's free and if you don't like it, you can easily unsubscribe.