Positioning reached a defined extreme 15 times across 31 futures markets in this week's Commitments of Traders report, covering 22 September 2026. 17 markets are holding speculative positioning within 20 percentage points of an all-time extreme.
Russell 2000 speculative positioning sits at the 5th percentile of its all-time range.
Soybean Meal speculative positioning sits above the 99th percentile of its all-time range.
5-Year T-Note saw the week's largest positioning change, speculators having added 114,547 contracts.
Where positioning reached an extreme this week
A trigger is when a trader cohort's net position reaches a defined threshold. The count is how many times that has happened in that market since 2010.
Week 39 - active COT positioning extremes historical analog
Where positioning is most stretched
Low end of the historical range: Russell 2000 (at the 5th percentile), 10-Year T-Note (at the 6th percentile), Cocoa (at the 8th percentile), Swiss Franc (at the 9th percentile), Canadian Dollar (at the 14th percentile). High end of the historical range: Soybean Meal (above the 99th percentile), Soybeans (above the 99th percentile), Corn (above the 99th percentile), Copper (at the 97th percentile), RBOB Gasoline (at the 97th percentile).
A percentile carries no direction on its own. It states where the current net position sits within everything that cohort has held in that market since the data begins, and nothing more.
What happened the last time positioning looked like this
That is the question this week's analogs letter answers. For every trigger above it lists every previous instance since 2010, with the forward return at 1, 2, 4, 8, 12 and 26 weeks, the deepest fall and the highest rise along the way, and the calendar seasonal for the same week — so the median sits beside the dispersion it came from rather than standing in for it.
Returns are computed on a back-adjusted continuous price series built from a committed roll ledger, so a contract change is never counted as a price move. No price levels are shown, because an adjusted level is not a quote.
This week's letters
Attached: seven asset-class letters — equities, energy, metals, grains, softs, FX and treasuries — plus the analogs letter. Positioning by cohort, seasonality on back-adjusted prices, and the historical analog tables. Free with a subscription.