Volume and Open Interest

It’s my opinion that successful trading for the long term is not possible without a sound understanding of both trader psychology and market psychology. Often individual traders focus so heavily on the results they are seeking that they forget that every other trader out there is doing the same thing: attempting to profit from price action. But it is the very nature of this conflict that creates price action because it is physically impossible for every executed trade to show a profit once each contract executed is liquidated. Futures trading is structured as a zero-sum environment. This means that in order for a price to print, BOTH a buying order and a selling order must be matched at the current traded price; otherwise no trade happens and no new price will print. Therefore, the issue of potential price change from orders being placed and filled is what ultimately creates the price action traders are attempting to capture as a profit to their individual accounts. As competing orders are matched, resulting in EITHER more futures contracts initiating a new position or closing an old open position (regardless of profit or loss to an individual account) is the issue of VOLUME and OPEN INTEREST.

One of basics to better understanding VOLUME and OPEN INTEREST is to understand it from the point of view that it represents individual traders who all can’t be right as far a profit is concerned. Someone must liquidate to take a loss. Since most traders have a large portion of losing trades as their results over time; it follows that a lot of what is causing a price change MUST be losing trades being liquidated. By understanding that a large portion of VOLUME and OPEN INTEREST (when it changes) must mean a CHANGE in the value of someone’s account balance; it becomes a bit better to understand where and when a turn in the market might be coming. Why? Because the people who helped put prices where they are now may have left the market completely; someone else has taken their place or not—that person has a completely different point of view on the market price and he might be in the wrong place too. He will liquidate sooner or later as well. With that in mind, let’s discuss someone the basics of VOLUME and OPEN INTEREST.

VOLUME is the total number of contracts being trading for a period of time. You can think of VOLUME as the AMOUNT of orders passing through the market place as a total; most commonly calculated on a per day basis (daily VOLUME)

OPEN INTEREST is the total number of contracts that remain open and held through at least one trading day (Overnight at least) You can think of OPEN INTEREST as the number of contracts someone is willing to hold at least for a period of time needed to realize a profit or loss.

When VOLUME is HIGH; individual traders in large numbers are participating.
When VOLUME is LOW; traders are not participating to a large degree.
When OPEN INTEREST is RISING; traders are opening positions and assuming the risk that price will create a gain for them over at least one day.
When OPEN INTEREST is FALLING; traders are closing positions (liquidating) and they are EITHER accepting their loss or taking their profit.

The study of VOLUME and OPEN INTEREST is the study of “Who is participating and are they getting in or out with a gain or loss?” Discerning what this means to potential price movement coming over the next period of time forward is where VOLUME and OPEN INTEREST can be a good clue as to whether a market is ready to fall in price or rise in price.

Good Luck!