The essence of futures is to sign long-term contracts with others to buy and sell goods (or stock indexes, foreign exchange, interest rates) in order to achieve the purpose of maintaining value or making money.
If you think the futures price will go up, go long (buy and open a position, sign a buying contract), go up (sell) and close a position (terminate the contract by cash settlement), and earn: price difference = closing price-opening price.
If you think the futures price will fall, short (sell the opening contract and sign the selling contract), fall (buy) and close the position (cash settlement and cancellation), earn: price difference = opening price-closing price.
Needless to say, buying up is similar to buying stocks.
Buying down (shorting) is like this: when you are at 5000 points in stock index futures, you can sign a contract with others, stipulating that you can sell the stock index to him at 5000 points (selling a stock index contract, the first-hand value is 5000× 300 = 1.5 million yuan, which is 300 times of the index points). If you press 65438,
When the stock index drops to 4000 points, you buy goods in the market and give them to the buyer at the price of 5000 points (buy a stock index contract). The first-hand profit is (5000-4000) × 300 = 300,000 yuan (excluding the handling fee).
The actual operation is to sell the first-hand stock index futures at 5000 points and buy and close the position at 4000 points, which is very convenient.