MY question... For options to work, don't there need to be people on the other side of the bet? Who would. and who is (For these housing futures)?
And for the futures, the same question holds true -- who will buy on the long side? So basically lets say I go short, and am successful - where does the money actually come from? It seems the market maker is forced to sell and buy at an indexed price. So who's holding the other side of every transaction?
because these contracts correllate to an index, I'm very curious how the actual money flow works.
For stocks and commodity futures, there's always people on both sides, letting the free market dictate a fair price.
But on an indexed commodity correllated to an arbitrary # (average of house sales/etc.), where 90% of betters are on one side, how does this fall into the definition of zero sum game?