Futures Contract Date Definition

An exchange-traded futures contract indicates the quality, quantity, physical delivery time, and location of each product. This product can be an agricultural product, such as 5,000 bushels of corn to be delivered in March, or a financial asset, such as the U.S. dollar value of 62,500 pounds in December. A futures contract differs from a futures contract in two important ways: First, a futures contract is a legally binding agreement to buy or sell a standardized asset on a specific date or during a specific month. Second, this transaction is facilitated by a forward exchange. Futures – also known as futures – allow traders to set a price for the underlying asset or commodity. These contracts have fixed expiration dates and prices that are known in advance. Futures contracts are identified by their month of expiry. For example, a December gold futures contract expires in December. The term futures tends to reflect the entire market. However, there are many types of futures contracts available for trading, including: In finance, a futures contract (sometimes called a futures contract) is a standardized legal agreement to buy or sell something at a predetermined price at a certain point in the future between parties who don`t know each other.

The traded asset is usually a commodity or financial instrument. The predetermined price at which the parties agree to buy and sell the asset is called the forward price. The specified period in the future, i.e. when delivery and payment are made, is called the delivery date. Since it is a function of an underlying asset, a futures contract is a derivative. In a perfect market, the relationship between futures and spot prices depends only on the above variables; In practice, there are various market imperfections (transaction costs, different loan and loan rates, restrictions on short selling) that prevent full arbitrage. Thus, the price of futures contracts actually varies within the limits of arbitrage around the theoretical price. Investors can use futures to speculate on the direction of the price of an underlying asset Futures are derivative financial contracts that require parties to trade an asset at a predetermined future date and price. Here, the buyer must buy the underlying asset at the set price or the seller must sell, regardless of the current market price at the expiration date. If a trader has bought a futures contract and the price of the commodity increases and trades above the price of the initial contract when it expires, then he would have a profit. Before expiration, the buy transaction – the long position – would be balanced or settled with a sell transaction for the same amount at the current price, thus closing the long position.

The difference between the prices of the two contracts would be paid in cash into the investor`s brokerage account, and no physical product would change hands. However, the trader could also lose if the price of the commodity was lower than the purchase price indicated in the futures contract. A futures contract allows a trader to speculate on the direction of movement of the price of a commodity. To mitigate the risk of default, the product is launched daily, with the difference between the initially agreed price and the actual daily futures price being revalued daily. This is sometimes referred to as the variation margin, where the futures exchange withdraws money from the losing party`s margin account and deposits it into the other party`s account to ensure that the correct loss or profit is reflected daily. If the margin account falls below a certain value set by the exchange, a margin call is made and the account holder must replenish the margin account. Whether you buy a put or a call optionOptions: Calls and PutsAn option is a derivative contract that gives the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a certain price on a certain date, options with a longer expiration date have a higher fair value. The longer the expiration date, the longer an option has to reach its strike price and the higher the time value of the option. Consider two options: futures are always traded on an exchange, while futures are always traded over-the-counter or can simply be a contract signed between two parties. Therefore, if the deliverable asset is abundant or can be freely created, the price of a futures contract is determined by arbitrage arguments.

This is typical of stock index futures, Treasury bond futures, and physical commodity futures when they are on sale (for example. B post-harvest agricultural crops). However, if the available commodity is not in abundance or is not yet available – for example, in the case of pre-harvest harvests or futures contracts on eurodollars or federal funds futures (where the supposed underlying instrument must be created on the day of delivery) – the price of futures contracts cannot be determined by arbitration. In this scenario, there is only one force that sets the price, which is the simple supply and demand for the asset in the future, expressed by the supply and demand for the futures contract. A futures contract is an agreement between a buyer and seller of a contract to exchange money for a certain amount of the underlying product (commodity, stock, currency, etc.). For example, if a trader buys a CME crude oil (CL) futures contract for $63 expiring in July, the buyer agrees to buy 1,000 barrels of oil at a price of $63 per barrel when the contract expires in July. .

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