What it is
The panel that translates COT into the pairs you actually trade. COT data is published on individual currency futures — Canadian Dollar, Euro, Yen — but you trade USDCAD and EURUSD. This does the arithmetic for you: pick a currency and it ranks all seven of its crosses by how strongly the commercials lean.
What it measures
Each cross is base currency COT index minus quote currency COT index. In the screenshot the US Dollar sits at 13.5 — a bear extreme, meaning commercials are aggressively net short USD. Against the Canadian Dollar at 93.1, USDCAD scores −79.6, EXTREME SHORT. The bar length is conviction; the sign is direction.
Why it's useful to you
This is the first panel to open when you bring a chart setup to the platform. It answers one question in a single glance — is COT with me or against me on this pair? — before you spend time on per-leg detail. Currency futures are quoted in USD terms, so a long CAD futures position means USDCAD falling. This panel handles that inversion for you, which is exactly where most traders misread COT.
The 10-second read
Find your pair in the ranked list. A long green bar means commercials favour the base currency; a long red bar means they favour the quote. The further from zero, the more the hedgers disagree with anyone taking the other side.
Use it with: Setup Scanner · COT Intelligence · Crowding Meter
1
Panel identity. Marked CROWN JEWEL — for a forex trader this is the highest-value board on the platform, and the one to open first.
2
Report stamp. The CFTC report date this board reads, plus the time the page last refreshed. COT is weekly: collected Tuesday, published Friday.
3
Learn ribbon. Tap to expand a plain-English primer on what the Cross Index is and how to read the bars. Written for someone seeing it for the first time.
4
AI read. Names the widest institutional conviction on the board in sentences — here NZD at 97.8 against USD at 13.5, an 84-point divergence, the widest across the whole FX complex.
5
Currency selector. All eight majors with their live commercial index. Click any one to re-rank the board around it. The numbers here are the raw material every cross below is built from.
6
Selected currency. The gold outline shows which currency the board is currently framed around — the US Dollar in this shot.
7
The gauge. The selected currency's commercial index on a 0–100 dial. 13.5 sits deep in the red bear zone; 50 is neutral; 100 would be an extreme bull reading.
8
Zone label. The plain-word version of the gauge — BEAR EXTREME. This is the headline, and every cross below inherits it.
9
Interpretation box. What the reading means in practice: commercials aggressively net short, a strong institutional headwind for the dollar, and the highest-conviction case for short-USD pairs.
10
Highest conviction pair. The single strongest read for the selected currency — NZDUSD long at +84.3. If you only look at one line on this panel, look at this card.
11
Ranked crosses. All seven pairs for the selected currency, sorted by conviction. Each line shows both legs' commercial index so you can see exactly where the score comes from.
12
A worked example. USDCAD at −79.6: USD commercials at 13.5 (bear extreme) against CAD commercials at 93.1 (bull extreme). Both legs point the same way — a strong hedger case against a long USDCAD position.
13
Conviction bar. Bar length is the size of the divergence, colour is direction: teal for long the pair, red for short. Colour always follows the sign, never the magnitude.
14
Score and direction. The signed number behind the bar, with LONG or SHORT spelled out so there is no ambiguity about which way the pair is being read.
15
Board summary. One sentence restating the selected currency's zone, the strongest cross, and how many of the seven show meaningful conviction — useful as the opening line of a weekly write-up.
