Commodities: Flying blind as U.S. shutdown halts COT reporting

The three-week U.S. government shutdown has left commodity traders without one of their most valuable tools — the weekly Commitment of Traders (COT) report from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). For a market that thrives on transparency, the absence of positioning data has created an unusual vacuum. The last report, dated September 23, offered a snapshot that now feels ancient given the major price swings seen across energy, metals, and agriculture since then. The last time this happened — during the 35-day shutdown from December 2018 to late January 2019 — the COT backlog wasn’t fully caught up until March 8. That episode showed how speculative accounts can effectively “operate under the radar” for weeks. In the meantime traders are left focusing on changes in the open interest on the individual futures markets, ETF flows, futures curve shape, and visible stock movements Energy: Selling pressure mounts amid oversupply focus Energy has borne the brunt of the recent ...