Contract scale
Generally speaking, the contract size of overseas futures contracts is larger than domestic futures. For example, the standard contract of Dalian soybean is 10 ton per lot, while CBOT soybean is about 136 ton per lot, which is nearly 14 times of the former. Therefore, the risk of absolute price fluctuation of overseas futures contracts is greater than that of domestic futures. This design, first, determines the ownership of commodity pricing power to a certain extent in order to expand the market scale; The second is to raise the investment threshold and filter out some small investors, thus improving the risk tolerance of individual investors in the market. Of course, in order to provide investment channels for investors with low risk tolerance, most of the trading products of overseas exchanges have mini contracts. In order to make investors more aware of the differences in contract size, the following will introduce different contract size measurement units at home and abroad.
Universal unit of measurement
Tonnage and ton are two confusing units. Metric unit is tone or metricton, abbreviated as MTS. Metric unit is widely used, and people often abbreviate metric ton as ton, which is confused with the concept of ton. China's ton actually refers to metric tons, which means 1000 kg. Ton means British unit ton. Britain and America have different definitions of ton. In Britain, 1ton is equal to 10 16 kg, so the British ton is also called longton. In the United States, 1ton is equal to 907 kilograms, so it is called shortton.
Pound is a unit of mass used in Britain and the United States, abbreviated as lb. At present, the most common definition is international weight (international pound), and one pound (international pound) is equal to 453.37 grams.
Oz is a British unit of measurement, and the symbol is oz, or ounce. The ounce is the international unit of measurement for gold. A troy ounce, commonly used in the measurement of precious metals such as gold and silver, is abbreviated as oz.tr (English system) and oz.t (American system). 1 (troy ounce) = 31.1035g.
Bushel: abbreviation bu, an English unit of capacity and weight, is commonly used in Britain and the United States, and is mainly used to measure the weight of dry goods, especially agricultural products. In the American agricultural futures market, "cents/bushel" is widely used as the price unit. The conversion between bushels and kilograms is different in different countries and different agricultural products. 1 bushel of agricultural products is about 20 to 30 kilograms.
The summary is as follows: 1 metric ton (MTS) =1000 kg; 1 long ton =1016 kg (br); 1 short ton = 907kg (American). 1 lb =0.45359237 kg; 1 oz = 0.028349523 1 25kg (troy system:1oz = 0.031034768kg).
Minimum variable price
Tick size \ minimum flux refers to the minimum fluctuation value of the unit quotation of the contract subject matter in the open bidding process of the futures exchange. The minimum change price multiplied by the trading unit is the minimum change value of the contract value. The minimum change price of a contract usually depends on the type, nature, market price fluctuation and commercial norms of the goods involved in the contract. The minimum variable price has a wide impact on market transactions. The minimum change price is too large, and the trading volume is reduced, which affects the market activity and is not conducive to the normal operation of arbitrage and hedging; If it is too small, it will complicate the transaction, increase the transaction cost and affect the data transmission speed. The minimum change price of overseas futures contracts is generally accurate to cents (except for some small and mini contracts).
Delivery unit
In China, the delivery unit and the trading unit of some contracts are different, and the delivery unit will be larger than the trading unit. For example, the trading unit of cathode copper in Shanghai Futures Exchange is 5 tons/lot, and the delivery unit is 25 tons/lot; Because the trading unit of overseas futures is relatively large, the general delivery unit and the trading unit are the same, so investors are not required to adjust the number of contracts in the delivery month to meet the multiple of the delivery unit.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that CMECOMEX (the New York Mercantile Exchange) is engaged in electronic miniature gold futures delivery. The contract size of this variety is 10 ounce of gold. Its delivery medium is cumulative exchange certificate (ACE), not 10 ounce gold bars. After the e-mini gold futures contract is delivered, the buyer receives/the seller delivers the ACE issued by CME settlement center. An A stands for 65,438+00% of 65,438+000 ounces of gold bars. After the customer owns 65,438+00 ACE, it can be converted into 65,438+0 official gold warehouse receipt authorized by COMEX, which is equivalent to owning actual gold bars with serial number.
Contract expiration date/first notification date
In the domestic futures contract setting, the contract expiration date is the last trading day. In foreign futures markets, in addition to LastTradeDate day, some varieties (such as ice cotton) have the first notice day. The last trading day refers to the last trading day when futures contracts are traded in the delivery month. After this trading day, open contracts must enter the delivery process as required. The first notification date refers to the first working day when the seller of a futures contract has the right to apply for delivery; For buyers, if they don't want to deliver, they must close their positions before the first notice date. Therefore, before the first notification date, most speculative positions in any direction were closed or moved.
Hong Jing, headquarters of overseas futures business