| ----------- 
 | Definitions: 
 | ----------- 
 | 1) COMMITMENT OF TRADERS. 
 |     Government regulations require Long and Short Futures Contract 
 |    positions above a specified limit to be reported. They are segregated 
 |    by Commercial and Non-Commercial(Speculator) Trader. These values are 
 |    the Commitment of Traders. 
 | 
 |    The Commodity Futures Trading Commission(CFTC) typically issues a 
 |    report every two weeks on a Friday showing the weekly (Tuesday) status. 
 |    This WWW site uses the 'Short Report' data, integrates it with 
 |    previous data, adds Futures Price data for key commodities and 
 |    calculates index and other values. Both Tabular and Graphical 
 |    data are provided. 
 | 
 |    1) COMMODITY. 
 |    The Commodity futures are those listed by the Commodity Futures 
 |    Trading Commission.(CFTC). The Commitment of Traders data includes 
 |    all Futures delivery months. 
 | 
 |    2) EXCHANGE. 
 |    The Exchange Symbols are listed for each Commodity.They are as follows: 
 |     CBOT - Chicago Board of Trade         CME - Chicago Mercantile Exch. 
 |     COMEX - Commodity Exchange Inc (NY)   IMM - International Monetary Fund 
 |     IOM - Index and Options Market.(Chig) KCBT- Kansas City Board of Trade 
 |     MA - Minneapolis Board of Trade.      CSCE- Coffee Sugar & Cocoa Exch 
 |     NYCTE - NY Cotton Exch                NYFE -NY Futures Exch 
 |     NYME - NY Mercantile Exch             NYBT- New York Board of Trade 
 | 
 |      3) NET NDX (C)OMM.   Net Index for Commercial Traders 
 |      A summary of the weekly number of Long & Short contracts (that 
 |      exceed reportable limits) that are held by Commercial Traders 
 |      each week is issued every two weeks by the CFTC. 
 | 
 |      For each commodity and weekly status a NET Value is calculated 
 |      by subtracting the number of reported Short positions from the Long. 
 |      i.e. NET = LONG minus SHORT positions. 
 |      (e.g. 5000 long minus 4000 Short gives a NET of 1000 positions) 
 | 	Spreads are excluded from the calculation 
 | 
 |      Over a given period (of weeks) the Index (NDX) is calculated by 
 |      assigning an index value of 100 to the  MAXIMUM NET position and 
 |      assigning an index value of zero to the MINIMUM NET position. 
 |      Pro-rata index values are assigned to IN-BETWEEN NET positions. 
 | 
 |      There may be an increased probability of a price trend reversal 
 |      at the zero or 100 value given a sufficient calculation span. 
 | 
 |      4) NET NDX (S)PEC   Net Index for Speculative Traders. 
 |      The Calculation is the same as in 3 but for Speculators. 
 | 
 |      5) SPAN (Weeks). 
 |      The number of weeks over which the Net Index is calculated. 
 | 
 |      If this span of time is too short, extreme index values of zero 
 |      or 100 will occur frequently and have little significance . 
 |      If the span is too long then the extreme index values will seldom 
 |      occur. Some experts believe that a minimm 18 mos (78 weeks) will 
 |      result in a significant net index value. The data provided 
 |      calculates a net index of 78 weeks (or less if there is 
 |      insufficient data.) 
 |      Note that the SPAN data is provided for each Commodity 
 |      on the first WWW page where the Commodity selection is made. 
 | 
 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 | 
 |          Use the Browser BACK Command to return. 
 | ________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 Click to Return to Commodity List