1 Different trading places:

Foreign exchange spot is generally traded between banks or market makers, so there is often a bid-ask spread, which is the cost charged by banks and market makers; Foreign exchange futures are traded through exchanges, such as the CME exchange in the United States, which trades a large number of drunken foreign exchange futures contracts on a global scale. It is a matchmaking transaction, which is similar to a stock, and there is no bid-ask spread.

Two different contractual restrictions:

Spot foreign exchange, generally speaking, the contract value is $6,543,800+as the standard hand, and the formal transaction is also conducted manually. The contract has no definite delivery period and can be held for a long time, but the interest between banks must be paid; As far as foreign exchange futures are concerned, the benchmark of trading contract is the standard contract under IMM settlement system. Generally speaking, the monthly contracts in March, June, September and 12 are the main contracts of the year, but there are basically monthly contracts. The normal trading period is the drunken delivery day on the third Tuesday of the contract month. If you have not closed your position before, you must go through the delivery procedures before delivery. Future positions doesn't need any interest on foreign exchange.

3 major investors are different:

It is undeniable that the trading volume of foreign exchange spot is also huge, but it is more between banks and market makers and speculators; While foreign exchange futures are mainly engaged in hedging in forex futures trading, mostly between foreign trade industries and companies, while individual speculators only account for about 5% of the forex futures trading market. From this perspective, the investment nature of the forward foreign exchange market is much heavier than that of the spot foreign exchange market.

4 The security and reliability of transactions are different:

It is undeniable that foreign exchange futures belong to the futures industry in all countries and are strictly supervised by the regulatory authorities in various countries, so the transaction security is high; However, the laws and regulations of foreign exchange spot trading are not perfect, and no country has a perfect supervision mechanism to supervise it at present. Generally, the regulations on foreign exchange futures are passed after the incident. In terms of reliability, foreign exchange futures are more reliable because there are special exchanges to organize transactions; Foreign exchange spot is a tacit understanding and spontaneous behavior between banks in various countries. Once there are political factors or other factors, the quotation will inevitably be affected, which is also a reason worthy of attention.