Explain what is meant by open interest. why does the open interest usually decline during the month preceding the delivery month? on a particular day, there were 2,000 trades in a particular futures contract. this means that there were 2,000 buyers (going long) and 2,000 sellers (going short). of the 2,000 buyers, 1,400 were closing out positions and 600 were entering into new positions. of the 2,000 sellers, 1,200 were closing out positions and 800 were entering into new positions. what is the impact of the day’s trading on open interest?

Total marketing effort is a term used to describe the critical decision factors that affect demand: price, advertising, distribution, and product quality. define the variable x to represent total marketing effort. a typical model that is used to predict demand as a function of total marketing effort is based on the power function: d = axb suppose that a is a positive number. different model forms result from varying the constant b. sketch the graphs of this model for b = 0, b = 1, 0< b< 1, b< 0, and b> 1. (we encourage you to use excel to do this.) what does each model tell you about the relationship between demand and marketing effort? what assumptions are implied? are they reasonable? how would you go about selecting the appropriate model?