Alongside the contract counts the CFTC publishes something more informative: how many distinct entities hold a reportable position. It is a headcount of institutional participation on one consistent definition across every major financial future in the United States.
| Contract | Open interest | Reporting traders | Asset managers long |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-year Treasury note | 4,432,451 | 494 | 161 |
| E-mini S&P 500 | 2,072,358 | 437 | 176 |
| 10-year Treasury note | 5,596,739 | 433 | 127 |
| Euro FX | 804,940 | 326 | 113 |
| Treasury bond | 1,894,436 | 249 | 88 |
| Nasdaq-100 mini | 297,931 | 302 | 81 |
| VIX futures | 417,768 | 200 | 21 |
| Bitcoin | 21,760 | 125 | 6 |
Asset managers’ net position in CME bitcoin futures
Net long minus short, in contracts, weekly. The level the headcount above is holding.
Source: CFTC Commitments of Traders, Traders in Financial Futures, futures only. Prices are Coinbase daily closes. Computed by Institutional Asset Journal.
One trade, counted twice
The long-standing structure of this market is asset managers long and leveraged funds short, and those are not two opposing views. They are the two legs of a cash and carry trade, in which one party holds the asset and sells the future against it to capture the spread. Reading the leveraged short as a bearish bet is the most common error made with this data.
How this was measured
- Figures are taken from the CFTC’s Commitments of Traders release, Traders in Financial Futures, futures only. That report covers positions held at the close on a Tuesday and is published the following Friday at 15:30 Eastern, so every reading here is three days old on the day it appears. Net positions exclude spread holdings, which the CFTC reports separately. Notional values apply the CME contract multiplier and the Coinbase daily close on the report date. Restatements by the CFTC are carried through rather than footnoted.
