Understanding Open Interest

Techniques for analysing and trading equities, looking at price and volume, can be applied to precious metal futures markets. Futures, however, introduce another data point – open interest – that has to be considered. With equities, the quantity of shares on issue is generally fixed and rarely changes. Therefore all buying is done from sellers who hold the shares.

With futures, the amount of contracts “on issue” or “open” changes daily, as a future is a contract to trade metal in the future and an exchange will create, or open, as many new contacts as people wish to enter into. If a seller of metal and buyer of metal want to enter into a contract, then a new contract will be opened. If an existing seller of a contact (a “short”) and an existing buyer of a contact (a “long”) want to exit their contract, then the contact will be closed.


Open interest represents the number of contacts created and in existence at a point in time. The table below summarises how open interest will change, depending upon who is buying and who is selling.



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