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The short answer to this question is no. Investors who purchase and sell futures contracts never directly interact with the clearinghouse. When investors purchase or sell futures contracts they are required to deposit the required margin with their futures commission merchant. Only FCMs who are members of the clearinghouse will transmit funds to the clearinghouse. Most clearinghouses operate on a continuous net settlement basis. This means that FCMs will net all of their long and short contracts for the same commodity and forward the required margin to the clearinghouse. For example, As a trading day is coming to a close ABC Futures Commission Merchant is reviewing its activity for the day. It sees that customers have opened 320 new long contracts in June crude. It sees that other customers of ABC have opened 80 new short contract positions in June crude. As a result of this activity ABC will forward the margin for 240 contracts to the clearinghouse. The funds must be there prior to the opening of the next trading day. When customers of an FCM offset a large number of contacts it may result in the FCM having excess margin at the clearinghouse. In these cases the FCM may withdraw the excess funds from its account. It is important to note that even though the FCM only transmits the net margin to the clearinghouse, it is required to collect the margin from all customers.