Last week funds chased the weather rally into the July WASDE, and the report split the verdict — corn and wheat confirmed, soybeans and cotton left hanging on weather. This week they acted on the grade. Managed money pressed the longs the balance sheet had backed: corn added the most of any market on the board — buying into a price that actually slipped, accumulating the stocks cut rather than chasing the tape — while the crowded, unconfirmed soybean long simply stalled and the money rotated instead into soybean oil, back to the 97th percentile of its range. In the pens the two extremes we'd flagged finally resolved: cattle's record long shed 16,997 contracts, the biggest one-week liquidation on the board, while the hog "squeeze" we thought was lit fizzled — the record short got paid, not run over. And in gas, the specs vindicated on storage doubled down into a −105,501 short, the single biggest position change of the week.
Managed money net position (longs minus shorts) by market, CFTC Disaggregated COT week ending July 14, 2026. Red = net short, blue = net long. Gold and soybean oil now hold the board's top longs; the deepest short belongs to nat gas, where specs pressed hard this week. This snapshot is the first full read after the July 10 WASDE — it shows how funds re-set once they had the report's verdict.
Last week's roundup flagged five things the WASDE verdict would test. This is the COT that tested them — here's how they printed.
A week ago corn was the chase: a 58,868-contract flip riding a 7% rally. This week it was something steadier and, arguably, more telling. Corn managed money added another 30,732 contracts to +43,391 — the largest single add of any market on the board — even as the nearby slipped about 2% on the week. That is the opposite of chasing: funds bought into a soft tape on the strength of the WASDE's 170-million-bushel stocks cut. Open interest actually fell 18,651, so this was old shorts stepping aside while fresh longs stepped in front of the confirmed balance sheet. HRW wheat extended to +17,494 and SRW covered a heavy 25,527 to −36,798 as the wheat complex rallied nearly 4% — the confirmed grain longs did their job.
The soybean long, the one the report declined to confirm, went quiet. Managed money added just 4,009 to +72,688 on a roughly flat (+0.9%) week — neither the crack we watched for nor any fresh conviction, just a crowded position idling. But the oilseed bid didn't leave; it moved down the crush. Soybean oil ripped 6.2% and funds piled 23,801 back into it to +113,029 — the 97th percentile of the disaggregated record, and the biofuel-demand corner of the complex — while soybean meal added 28,827 to +47,852. The bean itself stalled; the products it crushes into ran. When the money rotates from the seed to the oil, it's telling you where it thinks the demand story actually lives.
Managed money net position — corn, soybeans, soybean oil — last ten weeks. Corn presses higher a second week (now buying a softer tape, not chasing it). Soybeans flatten after their early-July doubling. Soybean oil turns back up hard off its early-July trough toward the spring extreme, reclaiming the 97th percentile of the disaggregated record. CFTC Disaggregated COT.
For two months we tracked a record-length cattle long that refused to shrink even as price fell — a crowded position living on borrowed momentum. This week the momentum ran out. Live cattle managed money shed 16,997 contracts to +96,324 — the biggest one-week cut of a long anywhere on the board — as futures fell another 6.2%, a third straight down week. The 81st-percentile long is now the 68th; the "front edge of a long-liquidation" we described last week is simply the liquidation now. Commercials remain heavily short the other side, and a long this size unwinds in weeks, not days.
Hogs were supposed to be the mirror, and here we called it wrong. We flagged the record lean-hog short — the 0th percentile of sixteen years — as squeeze fuel after a WASDE-day pop, with "the fuse lit." Instead hog futures fell 7.2% on the week and managed money held the short at −30,438: the record short got paid. The lesson is in the asymmetry — an over-owned short is only squeeze fuel if something forces price up, and this week price went the other way and vindicated it. Feeder cattle, caught between falling fed-cattle prices and firm feed costs, eased to +9,880.
Live cattle managed money net position, last ten weeks. After holding a record-length long through two down-weeks, funds finally cut it hard — a 16,997-contract liquidation, the biggest one-week reduction of a long on the board, as futures fell a third straight week. The crowded long is now shrinking because price is forcing it to. CFTC Disaggregated COT; nearby CME futures.
Sugar's squeeze ran out of shorts. After two consecutive board-leading covers worth roughly 88,000 lots, the buying stopped: just +3,120 to −94,593, and price rolled back over (−1.7% on the week). The position is still net short at the 17th percentile of sixteen years — a short being held, not abandoned. Two weeks ago the cover looked like it might feed on itself; this week it simply ran out of covering to do.
Cotton is the survivor of last week's two unconfirmed longs. Where soybeans stalled against flat stocks, cotton added 10,578 to +49,684 into a 3.5% rally — right through a WASDE that raised its stocks. It's a spec long betting the weather over the balance sheet, and unlike soybeans it's still growing. Cocoa's slow squeeze ground on (+2,550 to −11,200), and Coffee C sat still in the snapshot (−544 to +24,967) on a 13,977-contract open-interest drop as the contract rolled — but watch the tape after: arabica fell about 4.7% in the three sessions following the COT date as the Brazilian frost premium bled out. Coffee's building long is a weather option, and the clock on it is running.
Natural gas was the standout of the week. Specs were short into a heavy-storage WASDE window and got paid; this week they pressed the winner. Managed money added 45,124 to a −105,501 short — the single biggest position change on the board — as Henry Hub fell another 8.4%. At the 15th percentile of sixteen years, the short is now genuinely crowded: still vindicated by the tape, but the kind of one-sided that a single bullish storage surprise can turn violent.
Crude tells the opposite story about scale. WTI managed money rebuilt 11,704 to +86,383 after two weeks of bleeding — but keep the number honest: even here the crude long sits at just the 6th percentile of sixteen years. Funds are barely long crude by their own historical standard; the "long" is a shadow of what the crude trade used to carry. Products cooled (RBOB −2,592 to +68,951; ULSD firmed to +10,919). Metals kept their bid: gold rebuilt 4,293 to +119,147, the largest single long on the board, copper held its stretched +61,932, and silver eased to +10,377. The conviction this week was in the confirmed grains, the crush, and the gas short — not the pits.
Natural gas managed money net position, last ten weeks. After trimming the short from −134k in late May toward −60k through early July, specs reversed hard and rebuilt it by 45,124 to −105,501 — the biggest one-week position change on the board — as Henry Hub fell another 8.4%. Vindicated, but back to a crowded 15th-percentile short. SoftSignal energy-COT bridge; EIA Henry Hub.
With no WASDE until August 12, the next two weeks are a weather-and-flows tape. The confirmed longs — corn and wheat — press or fold on Midwest conditions; the stalled bean long needs a demand number it still hasn't gotten; and two positions are now extended enough that the next surprise matters more than the last: the crowded nat-gas short and the still-large cattle long.
SoftSignal Research publishes weekly positioning across grains, livestock, softs, and energy — alongside USDA WASDE & attaché intelligence, drought, frost, and storage layers, with access through the MCP data layer for AI-assisted analysis. The numbers behind every chart above are yours to query.
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