COT reports: Short positions held by producers and merchants 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 producers and merchants in crude oil futures of the kind "WTI-PHYSICAL - NEW YORK MERCANTILE EXCHANGE" stood at 355,184 contracts on 31 March 2026, compared to 357,788 on 24 March.
Sample. The weekly series plotted above has a total of 1,034 records. The time range covered by the series stretches from June 2006 to March 2026.
History. Take a look at some simple statistics calculated on the full sample: positions recorded a bottom of 207,542 contracts on 28 October 2008; they recorded their highest level of 703,430 on 14 February 2017; they had a mean of 404,644.
Latest values
| Date | Value - Number of contracts |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-17 | 387182.0 |
| 2026-03-24 | 357788.0 |
| 2026-03-31 | 355184.0 |
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Series Metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Short positions held by producers and merchants 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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