Arbitrage can generally be divided into three categories: intertemporal arbitrage, cross-market arbitrage and cross-commodity arbitrage.
1. Intertemporal arbitrage is one of the most common arbitrage transactions. It is used to hedge the same commodity when the normal price difference between different delivery months changes abnormally, which is divided into two forms: bull price difference and bear price difference. For example, in the bull spread, buy the metal contract in the latest delivery month and sell the metal contract in the forward delivery month, hoping that the recent contract price will increase more than the forward contract price; Bear market arbitrage is the opposite, that is, selling the recent delivery monthly contract and buying the forward delivery monthly contract, expecting the price drop of the forward contract to be smaller than the recent contract.
2. Cross-market arbitrage is an arbitrage transaction between different exchanges. When the same futures commodity contract is traded in two or more exchanges, there is a certain price difference relationship between commodity contracts due to geographical differences between regions. For example, London Metal Exchange (LME) and Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) both trade cathode copper futures, and the price difference between the two markets will exceed the normal range several times a year, which provides traders with opportunities for cross-market arbitrage. For example, when LME copper price is lower than SHFE, traders can buy LME copper contract and sell SHFE copper contract at the same time, and then hedge and close the trading contract after the price relationship between the two markets returns to normal, and vice versa. When doing cross-market arbitrage, we should pay attention to several factors that affect the spread of each market, such as freight, tariff and exchange rate.
3. Cross-commodity arbitrage refers to trading by using the price difference between two different but related commodities. These two commodities can replace each other or be restricted by the same supply and demand factors. The form of cross-commodity arbitrage is to buy and sell commodity futures contracts with the same delivery month but different varieties at the same time. For example, metals, agricultural products, metals and energy can all carry out arbitrage transactions.
The reason why traders carry out arbitrage trading is mainly because the risk of arbitrage is low. Arbitrage trading can provide some protection to avoid unexpected losses or losses caused by sharp price fluctuations, but the profitability of arbitrage is also smaller than that of direct trading.
(Southern Fortune Network Futures Channel)
(Editor: Zhang Yu)