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they're listing the contracts bought and sold on the exchange.
you have to remember, futures are used mainly for hedging.
so... lets just use silver for example.
you're a silver mining company. you estimate youre gonna mine 10000oz (for simplicity sake), over the next month. silver is at 30 bux now. but your analysts say silver may drop over the next month before you can mine it, refine it and sell it off to a major jewellery retailer.
what you would do is you would short the equivalent of 10000oz of silver contracts at 30 bux. therefore locking in your profit at 30 bux.
if silver drops to 20 bux, it's okay cuz you've made that 10 dollar difference on your silver future contracts.
if silver goes up to 40 bux, you lose that 10 dollars on the futures, but your actual physical silver asset goes up 10 bux, so no matter what you make 30 bux. it's locked in at that price.
private sales between companies are not listed and do not affect the exchange.
like say you (chronic) wants to make a deal with me (ulic) and we're both involved in the silver industry... but we don't like the prices (or the specifications in the contracts) or whatever... and we wanna do a custom deal...customized to suit our businesses... we can just buy and sell from each other at whatever we agree on. and it will never be listed or known. it's completely not related to the futures market.
you gotta remember, most futures are used for hedging cuz the companies that hedge are not in the business of speculation. they're just in the business of ... whatever commodity it is. silver, grains whatever. they wanna lock in a sure price. they want assurance, not risk. so they reduce their risk by a lot by hedging. makes sense?
not sure if that answers your question. but it should give you some insight to how futures works.
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