Futures positioning harness

Experimental comparison of methods that turn weekly index-futures positioning into price-axis context on the same S&P 500 spine. Four stacked panels share one time axis.

• Spine — SPX with regime shading (D), extreme markers (E), cost-basis line (F), and anchored levels (G).
• A · Raw net — leveraged-funds and asset-manager net positioning with open interest context.
• B · COT index — 0–100 normalization over a 156-week rolling window; 90/10 bands.
• C · Z-score — rolling standard-score with ±2σ bands.

Positioning is aligned to its public release date (Friday, three days after the Tuesday snapshot) so the chart does not front-run the weekly report. Cost basis is a running entry proxy for the leveraged-funds cohort — meaningful when positioning is directional, not for basis trades.

Experimental comparison harness — not investment advice.