What does it mean to open a futures position?

Opening a position, also known as opening a position, refers to the new purchase or sale of a certain number of futures contracts by traders.

The whole process of futures trading can be summarized as opening positions, holding positions, closing positions or physical delivery. Buying and selling a futures contract in the futures market is equivalent to signing a forward delivery contract. If traders keep futures contracts until the end of the last trading day, they must settle futures transactions by physical delivery or cash settlement.

However, only a few people make physical delivery, and most speculators and hedgers generally choose to sell their futures contracts or buy back their futures contracts before the end of the last trading day. That is to say, the original futures contract is written off by a futures transaction with the same amount and opposite direction, thus ending the futures transaction and relieving the obligation of physical delivery at maturity. This behavior of buying back a sold contract or selling a bought contract is called liquidation.

An open contract after opening a position is called an open contract or an open contract, also known as a position. After opening the position, traders can choose two ways to close the futures contract: either choose the timing of closing the position or reserve it for physical delivery on the last trading day.

Futures clearing instruction

(1) In the absence of historical positions, all four futures exchanges will close their positions in the order of opening positions, that is, the futures accounts will be closed first on the same day, which will not affect the returns of futures accounts.

(2) When there are historical positions, the futures exchange is slightly different, but it still does not affect the income of futures accounts.

Shanghai Futures Exchange: At present, there are only all closed orders, so when trading the futures products of the previous period, investors can choose to close their positions (new positions) or close their old positions first. Whether it is a new warehouse or an old warehouse, it still follows the principle of opening the warehouse first and then closing the position.