Economy & PolicyExtended setlive in productionNew

Cot Positioning

Updated weeklyData needs: mediumlong onlyshort onlylong short

1992

Bessembinder, H., Chan, K. (1992). "Time-Varying Risk Premia and Forecastable Returns in Futures Markets." Journal of Financial Economics, 32(2), 169-193.

Read the paper →

In plain terms

CFTC weekly: when commercial hedgers are extreme-long crude or gold, the related ETF drifts up 1-3 months.

How it works

Commercial-net-long extremes relative to 52w history predict 4-12wk drift in futures + linked equities.

Live results

0 times picked on its own · 3 times inside a blend (0 beat the stock) · updated 2026-06-06

This strategy is a frequent ingredient in blends that combine a few strategies on one stock. It has contributed to 3 such blended picks (0 of which beat simply holding the stock). Picking it on its own is only one of the ways it shows up.

How its picks scored vs. buy & hold

Each pick is graded on a recent year it was never tuned on, against simply owning the same stock

Where its edge concentrates

Share of picks in each company-size group that beat buy & hold

How often it trades

Active vs. patient. Bars on the left mean it waits for rare setups; bars on the right mean it trades often

Return vs. buy & hold

How much each pick beat or trailed simply owning the stock over the test year (extreme microcap moves trimmed)

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Data dependencies

Cftc cot
A data feed this strategy reads, refreshed on its normal schedule.
Daily prices
Adjusted-close OHLCV for every US-listed ticker; primary price feed.

Expected edge

Reported return: ~4-8% over 30-90d
Tested over: T+0 to T+60d

Bessembinder-Chan 1992: 4-8% over 30-90d.

Example tickers where this is likely to fire

XLE GLD USO UNG XLI

Illustrative only, the signal fires based on the live data, not a fixed list.

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Explore Cot Positioning on alphactor.ai

See which tickers this family is currently firing on, with live signals and rankings.

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