Order flow
How do I interpret Dealers and Asset Managers allocations inside the Disaggregated COT report?
By Easy Money Scanner · Educational reference · Not investment advice
The short answer
The Disaggregated COT report (for physical commodity futures markets) splits positions into Producer/Merchant/Processor/User, Swap Dealers, Managed Money, and Other Reportables, isolating dealer hedging flow from speculative fund activity. Financial futures (e.g., equity index, interest rate, and currency contracts) instead use the separate Traders in Financial Futures (TFF) report, which uses a different four-category breakdown: Dealer/Intermediary, Asset Manager/Institutional, Leveraged Funds, and Other Reportables.
How it works
Analysts compare Swap Dealer and Managed Money net positioning shifts week-over-week in physical commodity markets to infer institutional sentiment relative to pure commercial hedging. For financial futures, the comparable analysis uses TFF's Leveraged Funds and Asset Manager/Institutional categories instead, since those contracts are not covered by the Disaggregated report.
An example
In the Disaggregated COT, Managed Money increases net-long positions sharply in corn futures; in the TFF report, Leveraged Funds data would be the comparable metric for Treasury futures.
Risk & limitations
Categorization is self-reported by traders and can misclassify intent; also, mixing up Disaggregated COT categories (for commodities) with TFF categories (for financial futures) produces incorrect comparisons since the two reports cover different markets and classifications.
Examples are hypothetical, not trade recommendations. US contract and regulatory references do not automatically apply in Canada. Rules, margin requirements and broker policies can change; confirm them with the relevant authority and your broker.