What are the characteristics of stock index futures?
Stock index futures have the advantages of low transaction cost, high leverage ratio, fast execution of orders, introduction of hedging, arbitrage, speculation and other market functions. Moreover, futures are favored by speculators who tend to operate frequently because of their high liquidity, low impact cost and small price changes caused by market transactions.
Stock index futures is a contract. By predicting the changing trend of the stock index, the two sides agreed to trade at some time in the future under certain conditions. In stock index futures trading, you don't need to pay all the contract value, you only need to pay a certain percentage of margin to sign a contract with greater value. The trading of stock index futures is based on an expectation of the future, and the accuracy of the expectation will directly determine the profit and loss of investors.
Because of the leverage of stock index futures, stock index futures have higher risks than the stock market, and there are other credit risks and settlement risks in stock index futures. It cannot be ignored that the price of stock index futures index is closely related to the change of stock index.
The stock index has a great influence on the price changes of stock index futures, and it is the expectation of future prices, so it also reflects the stock index to some extent.