Open interest is one of the most misunderstood numbers on a futures screen. A market can trade millions of contracts… and still have relatively little open interest. Why? Because volume and open interest measure different things. Volume counts contracts traded during a period. Open interest counts contracts that remain open after those trades. Imagine two traders create a new futures position. One buys. One sells. That creates 1 contract of open interest. If they later close that position, open interest falls. But if one trader exits while another new trader takes the other side, volume can increase while open interest may barely change. That distinction matters. Because traders sometimes look at rising volume and assume: “More money is entering the market.” That isn’t necessarily what the data says. Volume tells you how much trading occurred. Open interest tells you how many contracts remain outstanding. Neither number, by itself, tells you whether price is going higher or lower. But together, they can give you another view of what is happening beneath the price. The chart shows where the market went. Volume shows how much was traded. Open interest shows how much exposure remains. Three different pieces of information. And confusing them can lead to a very different interpretation of the same market. The lesson Don’t just read price. Understand what the numbers underneath the price actually measure.