Futures, whose English name is futures, is completely different from spot. Spot is actually a tradable commodity. 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.
A contract or agreement to buy or sell futures is called a futures contract. The place where futures are bought and sold is called the futures market. Investors can invest or speculate in futures.
Futures bulls mean that a futures contract will rise in the future, so it belongs to the buyer. For example, if you think the price of cotton will rise in the next three months, you can buy cotton futures in three months. If the price of cotton really goes up, sell the futures in your hand. So it is through: buy at a low price first and sell at a high price.
Futures are short because futures contracts will fall in the future, so they are sellers. Suppose: the price of cotton is expected to fall, so we borrow cotton futures contracts from the exchange and sell them in the market. After the cotton really falls, we will buy it at a low price in the market and then return to the exchange, so as to earn the intermediate price difference by selling it first and then buying it.
The futures market is a T+0 trading system. If it is different from its expected direction, it can adopt a two-way strategy, buy more orders and then sell empty orders.
The difference between short futures and long futures is as follows:
1, the operation is different: bulls buy at a low price first, and then sell at a high price; Bears sell first, then buy at a low price.
2. Different forecasts: short-sellers predict that prices will fall, and long-sellers predict that prices will rise.
3. Different meanings: long futures refer to investors who hold multiple futures orders, while short futures refer to investors who hold short futures orders.