I’ve done just about every kind of research you can imagine when it comes to the COT. The answer to your question is that sometimes it’s good to delay and sometimes it’s not. You saw an example of that this year. If you had delayed your entry for a month or two when the commercials flipped to being long in March you would have missed much of the move. And then when they flipped to being short it would have been a good idea to delay to about now. There is no way to know these kind of things in advance.
The COT strategy is a great strategy but it’s not a perfect one. Sometimes you will be immediately profitable. Sometimes it will take some time. And every once in a while you won’t be profitable at all. That’s all you can ask from a great investment strategy.