(1) varieties are constantly updated. The development of the futures market in the first century basically revolved around commodity futures trading, mainly including agricultural products, metals, energy and other commodities. After 1970s, with the introduction of futures options trading of financial products such as interest rate, stock and stock index, foreign exchange, the global futures market entered a new era. At present, new financial derivatives are still emerging.
(2) Merger of futures exchanges. One of the important means of competition among futures exchanges in various countries is to expand the market scale and improve the competitiveness through merger. For example, there are 27 commodity futures exchanges in Japan at most, and the number is 1990, but it is reduced to 16 and 1997+0 1 7 through merger, forming a commodity futures market centered on Tokyo Industrial Products Exchange and Tokyo Grain Commodity Exchange. In Europe, the London International Financial Futures Options Exchange 1992 merged with the London options market, and 1996 acquired the London Mercantile Exchange. Its trading volume at 1996 surpassed the famous Chicago Mercantile Exchange for the first time and became the second largest futures exchange in the world after the Chicago Board of Trade. In the United States, NYMEX merged with the New York Mercantile Exchange on 1994, and became a futures exchange dominated by metals and fuel oil. Since 1996, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have also begun to consider merging.
(3) The globalization trend of futures trading is more and more obvious. Since 1980s, in order to adapt to the increasingly fierce international competition, it has become a new trend for futures exchanges to trade each other's listed products on the Internet. Online trading is a trading form in which the futures exchange connects with the host computer, so that exchange members can directly trade the listing contracts of the other exchange on this exchange. After networking, the exchange still maintains its independent legal person status. All transactions connected in succession: Singapore International Financial Exchange is connected with Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the New York Mercantile Exchange, International Petroleum Exchange, London International Financial Futures Options Exchange and German Futures Exchange respectively, London International Financial Futures Options Exchange is connected with Chicago Futures Exchange and Tokyo Futures Options Exchange respectively, Hong Kong Futures Exchange is connected with the New York Mercantile Exchange and Philadelphia Stock Exchanges respectively, and the New York Mercantile Exchange is connected with Sydney Futures Exchange respectively.
(d) Science and technology play an increasingly important role in futures trading. Networking between exchanges and remote transactions in different places, the first thing to be solved is technical problems. In the early 1990s, in order to meet the demand of investors in Europe and the Far East for trading contracts listed on the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in local time, the two exchanges cooperated with Reuters to launch the Global Futures Electronic Trading System (GLOBEX). Since then, other exchanges have followed suit and developed their own electronic trading systems, such as APT system of London International Financial Futures Options Exchange and NSC system of France International Futures Exchange. These systems not only have the characteristics of advanced technology, high efficiency and convenient operation, but also make the global futures trading 24 hours a day a reality.
(5) Strengthening supervision and preventing risks has become the knowledge of the futures market. As a high-risk market, government supervision departments all over the world strictly supervise the futures market without exception. In particular, the British Bahrain Bank, which had a history of 100 years from 65438 to 0995, suffered billions of dollars in losses due to its traders' illegal operation when passing 225 stock index futures on the trading day of Singapore International Financial Futures Exchange, which eventually led to the bankruptcy of the bank. After the serious incident, the regulatory authorities, exchanges and investors pay more attention to the risks in the futures market, and deeply reflect and review the contract design, trading, settlement and delivery in futures trading, with a view to