SPECULATIVE TRANSACTIONS IN 1926 MAY WHEAT FUTURE 3 
been necessary to add new terms. In each instance when a new 
expression has been employed, the attempt has been to make it as 
nearly descriptive of the subject matter as possible. 
The terms ‘‘long’” and ‘short’? are employed by the trade to 
designate the position of a trader in the market. A trader might 
buy during one day’s trading 30,000 bushels of May wheat future 
and sell that day 10,000 bushels of the same future. He would then 
be net long at the close of trading 20,000 bushels, assuming he had 
no position, i. e., was ‘“‘even,” at the beginning of the day. If on the 
following day he should buy 5,000 bushels and sell 40,000 bushels of 
the same future, his net position would then be short 15,000 bushels 
at the close of trading on the second day. 
From each of the clearing members of the Chicago Board of Trade 
daily reports are received by the Grain Futures Administration of the 
total purchases and total sales and of the aggregate of all long accounts 
and the aggregate of all short accounts. Thus for a given clearing 
firm, a particular day’s business might show that its customers had 
bought a total of 1,205,000 bushels of May wheat and sold a total of 
2,230,000 bushels of the same future. At the close of the day’s 
trading this clearing firm’s records would doubtless show some of its 
customers to be long and others to be short. Adding together all of 
the long accounts, and in turn all of the short accounts, an ‘‘aggre- 
gate long”’ figure and an ‘‘ageregate short” figure is obtained. ‘The 
difference between the aggregate of the long and the aggregate of the 
short accounts gives the “‘combined net position” for the customers 
of the firm. 
By adding the purchases together and the sales together of all of 
the clearing firms, the total volume for the board is obtained. The 
total of the sales should of course equal the total of the purchases. 
Likewise by adding together the aggregate long of all clearing firms 
and in turn the aggregate short of all clearing firms, the total “custo- 
mers’ open commitments’”’ (contracts open at the close of trading, 
long or short, both sides being the same) is obtained. It should be 
added that the accounts on the books of clearmg members are not all 
accounts of individuals. The accounts of nonclearing firms and cor- 
respondent commission firms outside of Chicago who have their own 
customers, some of which are long and others short, are treated on 
the books of the clearing member as a single account. 
IMPORTANCE OF EIGHT LEADING SPECULATORS 
This bulletin relates mainly to the trading of the eight largest 
speculators in the 1926 May wheat future on the Chicago Board of 
Trade. These eight were selected because they were the only traders 
whose net position reached at any one time 2,000,000 bushels or over 
in this particular future. In the 1925 May wheat future there were 
also only eight speculators whose position, long or short, reached 2,000- 
000 bushels or over. They were not, however, the identical eight, 
only five being in the market extensively in both futures. There 
were several firm accounts which exceed 1,000,000 bushels but did 
not reach the 2,000,000-bushel level. There were also several hedge 
accounts of considerable size, but being accounts growing out of 
cash-grain operations and changing in position relatively slowly from 
day to day, they are not here considered. 
