Volume & Open Interest 101
The following is reprinted from the Chicago Board of Trade
Volume and Open Interest
Next to price, volume is the most frequentlycited statistic in reference to a futurescontract’s trading activity. Each unit of volumerepresents a contract traded. When a traderbuys a contract and another trader sells thatsame contract, that transaction is recordedas one contract being traded. Therefore,the volume is the total number of long orshort positions.Open interest, on the other hand, refers to thenumber of futures positions that have not beenclosed out either through offset or delivery. Inother words, the futures contracts that remainopen, or unliquidated, at the close of eachtrading session.To …