Initial deposit: The minimum performance bond that futures market traders must have in their deposits received accounts when placing an order to buy or sell futures contracts.

Performance bond: the bond deposited by the buyer and seller of a futures contract or the option seller in the trading account to ensure the performance of the contract.

Maintain margin: customers must maintain the minimum margin amount in their margin account.

What is the daily mark-to-market system for futures trading? What is its function?

In futures trading, some profits must come from the losses of the other party. However, the profit and loss settlement is not carried out directly between the two parties to the transaction, but is realized by the exchange by transferring the profits and losses in the margin accounts of both parties. When the loss-making party's funds in the margin account of the exchange cannot bear its losses (the margin balance is negative after deducting losses), the exchange, as the guarantor of the contract, must bear this part of the losses on its behalf to ensure that the profit-making party can get all the profits in time. In this way, the loss is convenient for defaulting on debts to the exchange. In order to prevent this debt phenomenon, daily mark-to-market and daily debt-free settlement system (referred to as daily mark-to-market system) came into being.

The daily mark-to-market system refers to the settlement system in which the settlement department calculates and checks the balance of the margin account after the daily closing, and keeps the balance of the margin above a certain level by issuing the notice of additional margin in time to prevent the debt from happening. The specific implementation process is as follows: after the end of each trading day, the settlement department of the exchange calculates the settlement price of the day according to the trading situation of the whole day, and accordingly calculates the floating profit and loss of each member's position, and adjusts the available balance of the member's margin account. If the adjusted margin balance is lower than the maintenance margin, the exchange will issue a notice before the opening of the next trading day, requesting additional margin. If the member unit fails to add the margin on time, the transaction ownership will be forced to close the position.

The daily market-making settlement system plays an important role in controlling the risk of futures market and maintaining the normal operation of futures market.

(1) The daily mark-to-market system settles the transactions and positions of all accounts according to the contracts of different varieties and different months, so as to ensure that the gains and losses of each trading account can be timely, concretely and truly reflected, and provide a basis for timely adjustment of account funds and risk control.

(2) Because this system stipulates that one trading day is the longest settlement period, all the gains and losses of the transaction are required to be settled in time within one trading day to ensure that the debt phenomenon in the member's margin account does not exceed one day, so that the market risk can be controlled in a relatively minimum time unit of the whole trading process.