Futures refers to a standardized forward contract that can be traded with a certain commodity or financial asset as the target. Simply put, the essence of futures is not commodities but contracts, and investors earn profits or bear losses by buying and selling contracts.
For example, speculator A bought 1 hand M2209 soybean meal contract at the price of X in the futures market, expecting the soybean meal price to rise in the future. When the price of soybean meal rose, he closed his position in the futures market and sold 1 lot of M2209 contract to earn the difference. There is no physical participation in the whole transaction.
Futures operate in a similar way to stocks, trading by buying and selling. The difference is that futures are two-way transactions and reverse positions. In other words, you can open a position to buy a contract or sell a contract, but before the last trading day, you must hedge your position by reverse liquidation, that is, the bought contract needs to be sold out, and the sold contract needs to be bought out.
China's futures market implements margin system and T+0 trading mode.
Major investors involved in futures trading.
According to the purpose of futures trading, investors who participate in futures trading can be divided into speculative trading and hedging trading.
Speculation means that you don't want to participate in physical delivery in the end, and you only make money by buying and selling futures contracts.
Hedging transaction means that investors buy or sell a spot in the spot market and sell or buy similar futures contracts in the futures market at the same time, so as to achieve the purpose of hedging.
For example, A is a corn dealer who bought 65,438+0,000 tons of corn at a certain price one day. In order to prevent the inventory from depreciating due to the falling corn price, he can open a position in the futures market and sell 10 lots of corn at a suitable price. If the spot market falls, it can be compensated by the profits earned in the futures market. If the spot market rises, it can be used to make up for the losses in the futures market.
In other words, profits can be locked in advance through hedging.
Profit model of new futures investors entering the market
For new futures investors, hedging seems far away, and it is a realistic choice to earn the difference through speculative trading. Generally speaking, novices can trade through the following three strategies:
1, trend trading mode
Before investors enter the market, they must first recognize the running trend of the current contract, whether it is an upward trend, a downward trend or a shock trend. Because futures can be long or short, it is particularly important to determine the trend and trade unilaterally.
The method to determine the trend is to determine it through technical indicators (average arrangement and K-line chart), and comprehensively consider the variety fundamentals and market news.
2. Arbitrage trading mode
Arbitrage trading mode is a low-risk trading mode in the futures market. It mainly uses the contract price difference changes of the same variety in different contract months, different markets and the same month to make profits.
For example, investors can sell contracts in the near month and buy contracts in the far month. When the price difference between the near-month contract and the far-month contract becomes smaller, they can buy the near-month contract and sell the forward contract to close the position.
Using the arbitrage model, it is necessary to carefully observe the spread range of arbitrage varieties, and once it exceeds the normal range, consider arbitrage.
3. intraday trading mode
Intraday trading mode is the trading mode adopted by most speculative traders. Because the futures market adopts T+0 trading mode, it can repeatedly open and close positions on the same day, and the futures market price changes sharply, which provides a very good profit opportunity for short-term speculators.
As the margin system of futures enlarges the income and the trading risk is particularly large, please pay attention to the following points when trading:
1, novices must not rush to repeat two-way opening and frequent operations. Pay special attention to control positions and avoid Man Cang and heavy trading.
2. Don't trade in the day. The more transactions, the greater the probability of making mistakes.