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I have a rather silly question, from my understanding in the futures market (commodities in this case) There should be a buyer and a seller for every futures position that is initiated.

  • Open interest: Total number of outstanding futures contracts for a given commodity

So the total Long open interest and the total of all the short interest positions of all the players should add up to 0. However in the ESMA data I have noticed it is not always the case.

In the EU regulation the number of positions is defined as following:

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Does anybody have a pointer where my understanding is wrong?

Below is an example:

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  • $\begingroup$ Pure guess (do you have a direct link to the data?), but according to Article 58(3), reporting obligations apply only to members of trading venues and MiFID-regulated investment firms. Most likely the missing data is the residual (non reporting firms). $\endgroup$
    – AKdemy
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 16:17
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you I have been looking at OTC trades which is not entirely sure to me if its used in the reports but I am still awaiting a reply from ICE. Here is a link to the data registers.esma.europa.eu/publication/… $\endgroup$
    – Jorisdrees
    Commented Aug 2, 2022 at 7:40
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks. If you go back to the main page, you will see on registers.esma.europa.eu/publication/… that it is showing the positions of persons required in Article 58 of MiFID II which exceed the thresholds established in Article 83 of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU). If you have access to BBG, you can check COT to see that for example CL1 (WTI futures) on NYMEX have a Non-Reportable section, which will net the Reportable positions. So I think the difference is indeed a residual. $\endgroup$
    – AKdemy
    Commented Aug 2, 2022 at 8:02

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