Reading Open Interest Changes with Bar Colors

Summary

The document describes an open interest indicator based on a symbol's total volume of open positions. It encodes the change in open interest with bar color: blue indicates growth from the bar's emergence, while red indicates a decline. This gives traders a visual way to track whether outstanding positions are increasing or decreasing over the indicator's bars.

The note also describes a resilience change in how the indicator handles recalculation. After its first launch, it avoids clearing and rebuilding its buffers when the platform reports an initial calculation state again, which the source associates with possible connection or history problems. This is an implementation detail intended to preserve ongoing display. The document does not explain how to interpret open interest alongside price, identify a market or contract context, or provide tests showing that the color signal predicts returns. Open interest and its changes are descriptive data; this note alone does not establish a trading signal.

Key ideas

• The indicator tracks total open positions for a symbol.
• Blue bars denote an increase in open interest, while red bars denote a decrease.
• A recalculation change preserves existing indicator buffers after the first launch.
• The document gives no trading rules or evidence of predictive performance.

Tags

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.