Securities and futures trading, in financial terms, is a transaction of selling or buying securities at the current price with a specific date in the future as the delivery date. Its characteristic is that investors in futures trading can buy and sell more securities as long as they pay a small amount of margin even if they don't have enough funds or securities; Through hedging transactions, futures are sold and bought before the delivery date, and only the difference is settled.

Futures trading is obviously speculative. The buyer doesn't really buy securities, and the seller doesn't necessarily own securities. They often bet on market fluctuations: when the price of securities rises, buyers will bring more benefits with less capital; When the price of securities falls, the seller will get more benefits. Therefore, the possibility of this meager profit is very attractive to both buyers and sellers. Because when the delivery date comes, the settlement only needs to pay the price difference of market fluctuation, and buyers and sellers can make huge profits through "short selling" and "short selling". The United States first opened its securities and futures trading market in June 1975 and June 10, followed by Western Europe, Japan and other countries. Futures, completely different from spot, are actually tradable goods (commodities). Futures are mainly not commodities, but standardized tradable contracts based on some popular products such as cotton, soybeans and oil and financial assets such as stocks and bonds. Therefore, the subject matter can be commodities (such as gold, crude oil and agricultural products) or financial instruments. The delivery date of futures can be one week later, one month later, three months later or even one year later.

The characteristics of futures are that the commodity variety, trading unit, contract month, margin, quantity, quality, grade, delivery time and delivery place of futures contracts are established and standardized, and the only variable is price. The standards of futures contracts are usually designed by futures exchanges and listed by national regulatory agencies. Futures contracts are concluded under the organization of futures exchanges and have legal effect. Prices are generated through public bidding in the trading hall of the exchanges. Most foreign countries adopt public bidding, while our country adopts computer trading. The performance of futures contracts is guaranteed by the exchange, and private transactions are not allowed. Futures contracts can fulfill or cancel their contractual obligations through the settlement of spot or hedging transactions. Minimum fluctuation price: refers to the minimum fluctuation range of the unit price of futures contracts.