Open interest and volume are two counts, not a direction
Open interest and volume sit beside a futures quote, and people talk about them as if they were a signal. This page treats them as counts you can copy. It does not treat them as a forecast.
Volume is the count of contracts traded in a stated period, often a day. Write the period the screen names. A volume figure with no period is not comparable to yesterday.
Open interest is the count of contracts still open. It is not the same as volume. A busy day can print heavy volume while open interest barely changes, if traders open and close inside the same period. That is a description of the counts, not a promise about the next day.
Write both numbers, the contract month, and the time the exchange says the figures were updated. Open interest and volume from different timestamps should not share a row.
How a new position changes the open count
If a new buyer and a new seller open, the open count rises. If an existing buyer and an existing seller both close, the open count falls. If one side opens and the other side closes, the open count can stay the same. These are bookkeeping cases, not market calls.
You usually cannot see which case happened from the two headline numbers alone. Write the numbers. Label any story about who entered as ‘not shown.’
Do not say rising open interest means new bulls. The count does not name the side that is ‘right.’ Both a new long and a new short are inside the same open contract.
Do not say falling open interest means the move is weak. Weak is a judgment. The fall is a smaller count than the prior row, if you actually have the prior row.
Where the official breakdown lives
The CFTC publishes Commitments of Traders reports that classify open interest by trader category. Read their page rather than a recap. The link is CFTC Commitments of Traders.
Copy the report date and the category names they use. Do not rename a category because a commentator uses a friendlier word.
Copy a figure only from the report you opened, and write the unit they print, usually contracts. Do not convert it into a notional amount unless the report prints that conversion.
The CFTC also explains what a futures market is, separately from the report. Basics of futures trading is the place for the contract idea. Open interest and volume assume you already know a contract is a two-sided promise under exchange rules.
Contract month and the roll
Each month has its own volume and its own open interest. Write the month code in the first column. A total you add across months is your sum, so label it as your sum.
Near expiry, activity often moves from the nearby month to a later month. Write both months if you are watching that shift. Do not describe it as smart money. You do not have that label on the screen.
A holiday, a halt, or a short session changes the volume period. If the exchange marks the session, copy the mark. If you are unsure the day was a full session, write ‘session length not checked.’
You can read other notes on Commodities Markets. Use them for vocabulary. Use the exchange page for the counts. Use the CFTC report for the category split.
What this page will not infer
It will not say a price rise with rising open interest confirms a trend. Confirmation is a trading claim. This page does not make trading claims.
It will not say light volume means the price is false. False is a judgment. Light means the count is smaller than some other day you name. Name the day.
It will not rank contracts by liquidity or tell you which month to trade. You can observe which month has the larger count today. Tomorrow is another row.
It will not tell you that a rule of thumb works a stated share of the time. That share would be a performance number. There is no performance number on this page.
A five-day sheet
Pick one contract month. Each day, write volume, open interest, the price field you chose, and the timestamp. Keep the price field the same all week, such as settlement if that is what you started with.
If open interest is delayed, write the delay the vendor prints. Do not align yesterday’s open interest with today’s volume and pretend they are one moment.
If a figure is revised, keep the old cell and add the revision. A clean spreadsheet that overwrites the past is harder to trust.
At the end of the week, describe only the cells. Higher, lower, or unchanged, versus your first row. Stop before a cause.
Quotes, charts, and the footnote
Some screens plot volume under price and leave open interest as a single number. Write which display you used. A chart you cannot hover is a weak source. Prefer the table.
If the vendor mixes electronic volume and a pit figure, copy their label. Do not add them unless they say the headline is already a sum.
Block trades or other special prints may be included or excluded. If the footnote says so, copy the footnote. If there is no footnote, write ‘footnote not seen.’
A downloaded file should keep its original filename and the download time. Renaming it ‘final’ does not make it final.
Using the counts without a signal
The counts tell you whether anyone traded and how many contracts remained open. They do not tell you what to do next. That gap is the point of separating the sheet from the plan.
If a commentator attaches a story, file the story with their name. Your sheet stays numeric and labeled.
If you trade, the statement from the broker is a third record. It is your fills, not the market’s volume. Do not confuse your own size with the exchange count.
Concrete tip: write the contract month, the session, the volume, and the open interest with its timestamp, and do not add a bullish or bearish label the screen did not print.
Open interest and volume, kept this way, remain counts. The moment they become a story, mark the story so a later reader can ignore it and still trust the counts.
A second pass on the same sheet
Read the sheet the next morning before you add a new row. You are looking for a blank timestamp, a missing month, or a volume cell that is actually a price. Those three mistakes are common and quiet.
If you imported a file, check the column headers against the vendor’s dictionary. A shifted column will still look like numbers. The header is what makes them volume or open interest.
Write the vendor name on the sheet. Two vendors can print two updates. Mixing them without a label creates a jump that is only a source change.
If you discuss the sheet with someone else, point at a cell. Speaking about ‘the market’ without a cell returns you to a story. The cell is the part you can both see.
Open interest and volume are finished for the day when the row can be read without you in the room. If a stranger would not know the month and the session, the row is not finished.
Leave the interpretation column empty on purpose
Make a column called note and leave it empty when you have only the counts. An empty note is a success. It means you did not smuggle a forecast into a census of contracts.
If you later learn a fact from the CFTC report, add it on the report’s date, not on today’s price row. Open interest and volume from the exchange and a category split from the regulator are related, and they are not the same clock.
