[JumpCrisscross]

> Only if you consider the trade in the quantity of the goods traded, and not in a prevailing unit of accounting

Nope, this is microeconomics. If you and I have the same funding costs and we trade a commodity derivative, any gain you have is a gain I gave up. Any loss you have is one I avoided.

This is true irrespective of the unit of account of point in time at which one measures it; it's an identity. The only

[someguydave]

You are carefully defining the word “trading” to meet a narrow academic category which excludes many cases normal people consider integral to “trading”.

Someone who buys wheat, holds it and sells it the next day is definitely not “trading”, he merely engages in a series of discrete trades? Daft.