The last delivery date refers to the time limit for stopping delivery.
The last trading day refers to the last trading day of the futures contract in the delivery month. The final trading day of the contract must be settled by spot, financial instruments or according to the agreement of futures contracts. After this trading day, the open contract must be delivered in kind or in cash according to the regulations.
Delivery date: refers to the date when both parties agree to exchange money. Generally, there are stock delivery date, futures delivery date and stock index futures delivery date. As far as futures contracts are concerned, the delivery date refers to the date when the goods must be delivered. If you don't want to make delivery, you must close the futures contract before the delivery date or the last trading day.
The last trading day is the last trading day of the delivery month of the futures contract. Futures contracts that have not been settled within the time limit shall be settled by spot or cash settlement. Since the deadline is usually at the end of the month, the last trading day is usually set as the last trading day of a month. However, some exchanges such as Hong Kong set this day as the penultimate trading day of each month. The last trading day is also an important clause in futures contracts. As long as there are still open positions after the last trading day, these positions must be settled whether traders buy or sell futures contracts. If a trader does not want to deliver, he must close his position on or before the last trading day.
As far as futures contracts are concerned, the delivery date refers to the date when the goods must be delivered. In commodity futures trading, individual investors have no right to hold positions before the final delivery date. If they don't close their positions themselves, they will be forced to close their positions by the exchange. All the consequences arising therefrom shall be borne by the investors themselves. Only the spot enterprises that have applied to the exchange for hedging qualification and obtained approval can hold their positions until the final delivery date and enter the delivery procedure, because they have hedging needs and qualifications.
The delivery price of stock index futures in China is calculated according to the arithmetic average of the last two hours of the spot index, so the futures price will be forced to converge to the spot price on the delivery date. Here, the difference between the closing price of the delivery contract futures and the settlement price of the delivery contract reflects the convergence of the current price of the delivery contract. Because in the actual trading process, due to the influence of transaction costs, stock index futures liquidity and other factors, the difference between the closing price of delivery contract futures and the settlement price of delivery contract may not necessarily converge to zero.