148,388 gold contracts traded. How many positions stayed open?

Read the trade date printed on the document

The CME metals summary used here carries the heading FINAL and the date 14 April 2026. Its standard GC futures row records overall volume of 148,388 contracts, composed of 146,826 on Globex and 1,562 privately negotiated. The same row gives open interest of 362,274, up 4,413. These numbers belong to that April session. The exchange’s current-bulletin address can serve a different document on a later visit.

Source notes: [1] CME Group · final metals bulletin, section 02B

Three ways a contract can trade

Start a hypothetical session with 100 open contracts. Two new participants establish opposite sides of one additional contract, taking the total to 101. An existing long then sells one contract to a new buyer who opens a long. Ownership changes while open interest stays at 101. Finally an existing long and an existing short close against one another. The total returns to 100. Those three transactions generate three contracts of volume and zero net change in open interest.

Each trade has a buyer and seller. Counting both as two contracts of open interest would double count a single agreement. Further, one investor can trade repeatedly. The exchange’s aggregate count cannot identify the number of people who expressed a new opinion about gold.

Source notes: [2] CME Group · volume and open-interest fields

Apply that distinction to the April row

Subtracting the reported increase from the ending open interest gives 357,861 outstanding contracts for the comparison. The 4,413 increase was about 1.23 percent of that starting amount. Dividing it by daily volume instead would produce roughly 2.97 percent. That latter percentage is a ratio of net change to turnover. Treating it as the percentage of trades that opened positions would silently discard all the opening and closing activity that offset within the day.

The bulletin also contains separate products such as Micro Gold. Its contract count belongs on a separate row. If the research question concerns total metal exposure, contract sizes and whether a position is a hedge enter the calculation. Adding two columns of contract counts alone would not settle it.

Source notes: [1] CME Group · final metals bulletin, section 02B · [2] CME Group · volume and open-interest fields

Keep the bulletin version with the claim

For a contemporary study, save the trade date, product, contract coverage and publication status before interpreting a jump. CME distinguishes its end-of-day preliminary report from its subsequent official bulletin. A final figure obtained later can be appropriate for a retrospective study, while an analysis of what traders knew at the time requires the version then available. This article supplies a historical worked example. No November position total was independently established here.

Source notes: [3] CME Group · volume and open interest reports