Futures speculation refers to the futures trading behavior in the futures market for the purpose of obtaining the spread income. Speculators make a decision to buy or sell according to their own judgment on the trend of futures prices. If this judgment is the same as the market price trend, speculators can get speculative profits after closing their positions. If the judgment is contrary to the price trend, the speculator will bear the speculative loss after closing the position. Because the purpose of speculation is to earn differential income, speculators generally just close futures contracts and do not make physical delivery.

Speculation is divided into spread speculation and arbitrage trading. Spread speculation refers to the activities of speculators to obtain profits through the expectation of prices. Arbitrage enriches and develops the content of futures speculation, which makes futures speculation not only limited to the change of the absolute price level of futures contracts, but also turn to the change of the relative price level of futures contracts.