Lean hogs
- Small speculators
- 2,483
- Large speculators
- -76,468
- Commercials
- 73,985
- Open interest
- 296,786
Week ending 2026-10-06. Speculators are net short, and commercials are on the other side.Large speculators, week on week:237 contracts
Large speculators are holding their largest net short position in Lean hogs in three years. That is crowding, not a forecast: a crowded position can stay crowded, and it says nothing about which way the price goes next.
Reading this chart
Commercials are the companies with a reason to be in the market anyway: a miner selling forward, an airline buying fuel, a bank hedging a book of stock. Large speculators are the funds. Small speculators are everybody too small to have to report.
The three sum to zero every week, so when one group leans hard, some other group is holding the opposite side. A large speculator net short in stock index futures is often a hedge against shares held elsewhere, not a bet the market falls.
Others in this group
Each inside its own three year range, highest first.
Source: Commitments of Traders, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Figures are contracts held, not dollars.