Conclusion. All I said is proven as correct:
- A Futures exchange acts as a counterparty to each trader. They match orders internally, so the orders become filled trades. When that happens, a contract is established between the exchange and each of the involved trader – that is actually: two contracts, because two traders are involved, and to each of them the exchange acts as the counterparty, that is: counterparty in a contract. Apart from those two contracts there is no other „contract“ involved – especially not a contract between the two traders themselves. Any talk of „contracts“ being traded, or of trader A and trader B being counterparties to each other, or of a contract between A and B is only inexact, abbreviated talk for this actual situation. There is no other contract apart from what I described here. This is the underlying reality and legal structure of an exchange or rather of a futures trade at an exchange. And this can be read by anyone in standard books on the topic (I pointed to John C. Hull), or wikipedia, or on the exchange’s website, or on many other sites when googling something like "who is the counterparty in a futures contract?“.
- Open interest of exchanges counts only one side of the trades they match, which is why OI tables can have odd numbers. Again, this can be read by anyone in standard technical books and on the exchange’s websites.
- Regulated and trustworthy CFD-brokers (I am not talking about the bucket shops), or their big liquidity providers, operate in a basically analogue way: they match corresponding orders internally; they can also fill a client’s order and hedge it externally, which is structurally the same. So with CFDs as well, the house acts as the counterparty to two traders, which means there are two contracts; there is no direct relation between two traders, only the internal matching of two clients. Again: All this can be read on the regulated CFD-broker’s websites, in their terms and conditions documents.
Apart from that, a word on the culture in this forum. I made the above statements and gave explanations, arguments and references. But from the beginning have been ridiculed, insulted, told via PM to fuck off and so on. Those insults and allegations are, by the way, not only violations of this forum’s rules, but of basic human decency. A forum where this kind of behavior reigns is a shit hole.
