Generally speaking, there are two ways of futures delivery: physical delivery and cash delivery.
Physical delivery refers to the behavior of the buyers and sellers of futures contracts to close the positions of the expired open contracts by transferring the ownership of the subject matter of futures contracts in accordance with the rules and procedures formulated by the exchange. Commodity futures trading generally adopts the way of physical delivery.
The general process of physical delivery is as follows: the seller transports the goods to the warehouse designated by the exchange within the time limit specified by the exchange, and issues warehouse receipts after acceptance by the warehouse, which become valid warehouse receipts after registration by the exchange, or can directly purchase valid warehouse receipts in the middle; After entering the delivery period, the seller submits a valid warehouse receipt, and the buyer submits the full amount to the exchange for delivery procedures. The exchange will punish the buyer or seller for breach of contract. If, within a certain period of time after receiving the goods, the buyer thinks that the quantity, quality and other indicators of the goods are not in conformity with the provisions of the futures contract, he may propose mediation or arbitration, and the exchange has clear procedures and handling methods for this.
Because the purpose of futures trading is not spot trading, but to earn the difference through buying and selling contracts to preserve value, there are actually not many contracts for real physical delivery in futures trading. Too much transportation indicates poor liquidity in the midfield; Too few deliveries indicate that the market is speculative. In the mature international commodity futures market, the delivery rate is generally below 5%, and the delivery rate in China's futures market is generally below 3%.
Cash delivery means that when futures contracts are closed at the end of the period, the profit and loss of open contracts are calculated at the settlement price, and futures contracts are finally settled by cash payment. This delivery method is mainly used for financial futures and other futures contracts that cannot be delivered in kind, such as stock index futures contracts. In recent years, some foreign exchanges are also exploring the use of cash delivery for commodity futures trading. China's commodity futures market does not allow cash delivery.
The specific method of cash delivery can be illustrated by taking Hong Kong Hang Seng Index Futures as an example. Suppose an investor sells the Hang Seng Index futures contract for delivery in February at the price of 1 1 000 on June 5438+0 0, and has not closed his position on the last trading day of June 5438+02. If the final settlement price of the contract is 65,438+00,000 points, the profit of the investor at the time of delivery: (65,438+065,438+0000-65,438+00000) x50 = 50,000 Hong Kong dollars (excluding handling fees). Under the same circumstances, if the trading direction is reversed, the investor will buy the Hang Seng Index contract instead of selling 1 lot, then the investor will lose HK$ 50,000.