Specifically, there are about 20 kinds of agricultural and sideline products, including corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, oats, barley, rye, pork belly, pigs, live cattle, calves, soybean meal, soybean oil, cocoa, coffee, cotton, wool, sugar, orange juice, rapeseed oil and so on. Among them, soybean, corn and wheat are called the three major agricultural futures. 9 kinds of metal products, including gold, silver, copper, aluminum, lead, zinc, nickel, rake, platinum and steel; 5 kinds of chemical products, including crude oil, heating oil, unleaded gasoline, propane and natural rubber; There are two kinds of forest products, including wood and plywood.
Financial futures refer to futures contracts with financial instruments as the subject matter. As a kind of futures trading, financial futures has the general characteristics of futures trading, but compared with commodity futures, its contract subject matter is not physical goods, but traditional financial goods, such as securities; Currency, exchange rate, interest rate, etc.
On April 6, 20 10, the first batch of four Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 stock index futures contracts were listed and traded, which means that China financial futures once again entered the capital market stage after being silent for nearly 15 years. For a long time, the profit model of China stock market is single, and investors can make money only when the stock price rises. The lack of short-selling mechanism also makes domestic stock market manipulation prevalent. Bankers and some large institutions use their capital and information advantages to push up the stock price, which makes the stock price deviate from its normal value range for a long time, which will lead to the accumulation of systemic risks in the stock market and increase the risks faced by stock investors. Stock index futures not only enrich investors' asset portfolio, but also prevent the accumulation of systemic risks. Stock index futures provide an internal balance mechanism, which makes the stock index fluctuate within a more reasonable range.
With the gradual maturity and perfection of the trading rules, information technology system and staff training in the stock index futures market, the regulatory authorities' restrictions on participating in stock index futures are expected to be relaxed in the future. In the future, institutional investors such as Public Offering of Fund, trust wealth management products and Sunshine Private Equity will join the hedging and arbitrage trading of stock index futures. Compared with international mature markets, the proportion of institutional investors participating in domestic stock index futures is still very low.
According to the data of CICC, institutional investors only account for 3% of the investor structure of stock index futures. However, the hedging transactions of CME institutions and legal persons in the United States account for 6 1.3% of the total stock index futures trading volume, of which 7.5% are non-hedging large transactions, 20.6% are small traders and 8.8% are spread transactions. With the deepening of investors' understanding of stock index futures, the scale of futures positions and transactions will continue to expand on a stable basis, and the functions of stock index futures such as hedging risks, stabilizing the market and promoting price discovery will be better reflected.