COT Index Lite - by NightbricksThe COT Index shows Managed Money (Non-Commercial) net positioning as a normalised
0–100 value, auto-detected from your chart symbol across 60+ futures markets. No manual
CFTC code required for supported assets.
**What it measures**
Net positioning (longs minus shorts) from the CFTC Commitment of Traders report,
normalised against a 3-year (156-week) lookback window:
- **100** — net longs at a 3-year high. The crowd is maximally long.
- **0** — net shorts at a 3-year high. The crowd is maximally short.
- **50** — the midpoint of the 3-year range.
- **Above 80** — historically crowded-long zone (red background shading).
- **Below 20** — historically crowded-short zone (green background shading).
Updated every Friday after the CFTC 3:30 PM ET release. The script reads the last
*completed* weekly value, so the printed reading does not repaint intra-week.
**Why a 3-year window?**
Many COT Index tools use a 26–52 week lookback. Short windows produce unstable readings
that jump as old extremes age out of the window. A 156-week window spans a full market
cycle, so an "extreme" reading is extreme relative to years of behaviour — not just the
last few months.
**Supported markets — auto-detected**
- Equity indices: S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, Dow, Russell 2000, Nikkei, VIX
- FX: EUR, GBP, JPY, CHF, CAD, AUD, NZD, MXN
- Rates: 30Y, 10Y, 5Y, 2Y T-Notes, Fed Funds
- Crypto: Bitcoin, Ethereum
- Energy: WTI, Brent, Natural Gas, Heating Oil, Gasoline
- Metals: Gold, Silver, Copper, Platinum, Palladium
- Grains: Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, Soybean Meal/Oil, Oats, Rice
- Softs: Cotton, Sugar, Coffee, Cocoa, OJ
- Livestock: Live Cattle, Lean Hogs, Feeder Cattle
For any unlisted instrument, type its CFTC market code into the "CFTC Code override" input.
**How to use it**
- Add it to a **Weekly** chart — COT data is weekly; the script warns you on other timeframes.
- Treat readings above 80 and below 20 as *context*, not signals. A crowded-long market
can stay crowded; the index tells you how stretched positioning is, not when it turns.
- Combine with price structure and your own risk rules.
**What the COT Index does — and does not — tell you**
The COT Index answers one question: *where is positioning within its 3-year range?* By
design it does **not** measure how statistically extreme the reading is, whether
positioning is accelerating or unwinding, or whether price and positioning are diverging.
Those are separate calculations on the same underlying data — useful to understand as
their own concepts, but out of scope for a single 0–100 line.
Open-source. Read the code, fork it, learn from it.
Pine Script® indicator
