After the extensive development of agricultural products futures, the metal futures market gradually began to form and made great progress. In the sixties and seventies of last century, the metal futures trading market first appeared in Britain, and then several exchanges were launched one after another. With the rapid development of American futures market, the European futures market, represented by LME London Metal Exchange, has also begun to accelerate its formation and development.

/kloc-In the middle of 0/9th century, Britain became the largest producer of tin and copper in the world. With the increasing industrial demand, Britain began to import copper ore and tin ore for domestic refining. However, under the conditions at that time, due to road transportation and other problems, the prices of copper ore and tin ore often fluctuated greatly and the risks were great. At that time, British businessmen and consumers faced the price risk of copper and tin and adopted the method of pre-pricing. Before the goods arrive,

The London Metal Exchange was formally established on 1876, mainly engaged in futures trading of copper and tin. After that, the trading mode of the London Metal Exchange developed rapidly, especially the futures trading in the trading circle became the most important trading mode of the London Metal Exchange at that time and even now. At that time, pig iron, lead and zinc were only traded outside the trading circle, which was also called "OTC trading". 1920. Lead and zinc are officially traded in the trading circle, and pig iron trading is terminated at the same time. In the next few decades, only four metals, copper, tin, lead and zinc, were traded on the London Metal Exchange. Since its establishment, the London Metal Exchange has been doing a brisk business. With the continuous expansion of the scale of the exchange, the trading varieties are further increased, the trading scale is continuously expanded, and the market mechanism is gradually improved, becoming the world's largest international metal products exchange recognized by the industry. The metal futures of the London Metal Exchange have developed from the original two varieties of copper and tin to seven futures varieties of copper, aluminum, lead, zinc, nickel, tin and aluminum alloy, forming these seven futures varieties.

American metal futures appeared later than Britain, 19. At the end of the 20th century, the American economy turned from agriculture to the establishment of a modern industrial system, and the types of futures contracts gradually expanded from traditional agricultural products to metal and energy commodities. The New York Mercantile Exchange was founded in 1933, which was Comex by the merger of leather, raw silk, rubber and metal exchanges. The New York Mercantile Exchange's trading varieties are gold, silver, copper and aluminum.

Among the exchanges engaged in metal futures trading in the world, the main trading places are London Metal Exchange, the New York Mercantile Exchange and Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE). After World War II, metal futures trading has made great progress and gradually moved towards internationalization. Between the New York Mercantile Exchange and London Metal Exchange, and between London Metal Exchange and Shanghai Futures Exchange, speculators make use of the price difference of metal futures commodities in different exchanges to carry out arbitrage trading, which makes the prices of the three major metal futures exchanges tend to be consistent.