COT reports: Short positions held by money managers in crude oil futures: WTI-PHYSICAL - NEW YORK MERCANTILE EXCHANGE (number of contracts) - United States - CFTC - Weekly
This series is part of the dataset: Crude oil futures COT reports (CFTC)
Download Full Dataset (.xlsx)Latest updates. According to the Commitments of Traders (COT) reports published by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), short positions held by money managers in crude oil futures of the kind "WTI-PHYSICAL - NEW YORK MERCANTILE EXCHANGE" stood at 129,436 contracts on 29 September 2026, compared to 121,362 on 22 September 2026.
Sample. There are 1,060 observations overall in the weekly series presented in the graph above. The series covers the time period extending from June 2006 to September 2026.
History. Here’s a quick look at some descriptive statistics we calculated on the entire sample: positions averaged 74,443 contracts; they recorded their highest level of 232,202 on 9 August 2016; they reached a trough of 14,132 on 17 July 2018.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Number of contracts |
|---|---|
| 2026-09-15 | 115617.0 |
| 2026-09-22 | 121362.0 |
| 2026-09-29 | 129436.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Short positions held by money managers in crude oil futures |
| Country | United States |
| Economic concept | Stock |
| Data type | Quantity |
| Seasonally adjusted | No |
| Deflation method | Not applicable |
| Rescaling | None |
| Measure type | Level |
| Frequency | Weekly |
| Unit | Number of contracts |
| Source | Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) |
| Source type | Government agency |
| Data licence | Public domain information |
| Other information | Specific future: "WTI-PHYSICAL - NEW YORK MERCANTILE EXCHANGE |
| FSR temporal aggregation code | LW1 |
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