Intertemporal trading refers to buying and selling two futures contracts at the same time. Intertemporal traders are concerned about the relative changes of contract prices in different trading months, rather than their absolute trends. Intertemporal trading has hedging function, so its trading risk is lower than that of general unilateral stock index futures trading.

There are two basic methods of intertemporal trading, namely intertemporal trading in the same market and intertemporal trading across commodities or markets.

Intertemporal trading in the same market refers to buying and selling the same kind of futures contracts in different months in the same market at the same time.

Cross-commodity or cross-market intertemporal trading refers to buying a futures contract within one month and selling another futures contract with different related assets within the same month.