A basic question -- shouldn't Commitment of Traders Total Long be equal to Total Short? For every contract a buyer buys, there must be a seller selling that contract, no? Also, why is open interest different from total long or total short?

Example: EUR future

DATE
2014-11-25
OPEN INTEREST
465,339
NONCOMMERCIAL LONG
57,982
NONCOMMERCIAL SHORT
223,062
NONCOMMERCIAL SPREADS
9076
COMMERCIAL LONG
366,561
COMMERCIAL SHORT
144,526
TOTAL LONG
433,619
TOTAL SHORT
376,664
NONREPORTABLE POSITIONS LONG
31,720
NONREPORTABLE POSITIONS SHORT
88,675

Those totals are for reportable positions. If you net out the non-reportable positions it should equal.

I can buy 2 contracts from 2 different people that are only selling one. So in this operation you have 1 buyer and 2 sellers so no, there is no one buyer for each seller.

Open interest is the total amount of positions that still open.

Rhuz.