The emergence of futures trading provides a place and means for the spot market to avoid price risks. Its main principle is to use futures and spot markets for hedging transactions. In the actual production and operation process, in order to avoid rising costs or falling profits caused by changing commodity prices, futures trading can be used for hedging, that is, buying or selling futures contracts with the same quantity but opposite trading directions in the futures market, so that the gains and losses of futures and spot market transactions can offset each other. Lock in the production cost or commodity sales price of the enterprise, maintain the established profit and avoid the price risk. Delivery: there are generally two ways to close futures trading (that is, close futures), one is to hedge against closing futures; The second is physical delivery. Physical delivery is to fulfill the responsibility of futures trading through physical delivery.
Therefore, futures delivery refers to the behavior of buyers and sellers of futures trading to make physical delivery of their respective expired open contracts in accordance with the provisions of the exchange when the contracts expire and end their futures trading. Physical delivery accounts for a small proportion of the total futures contracts. However, it is the existence of the physical delivery mechanism that makes the futures price change synchronous with the related spot price change, and gradually approaches with the approaching of the contract expiration date. As far as its nature is concerned, physical delivery is a kind of spot trading behavior, but physical delivery in futures trading is the continuation of futures trading, which is at the junction of futures market and spot market and is the bridge and link between futures market and spot market. Therefore, the physical delivery in futures trading is the basis of the existence of the futures market and the fundamental premise for the two major economic functions of the futures market to play. The two functions of futures trading provide a stage and foundation for the application of the two trading modes in the futures market. The function of price discovery requires the participation of many speculators, which concentrates a lot of market information and abundant liquidity. The existence of hedging transactions provides tools and means for avoiding risks. At the same time, futures is also an investment tool. Due to the fluctuation of futures contract prices, traders can make use of arbitrage to earn risk profits through contract spreads.