It refers to an operation mode in which the same member or investor establishes the same number of trading positions in opposite directions in different contract months of the same futures product for the purpose of earning the difference, and ends the trading by hedging or delivery. Intertemporal arbitrage is one of the most commonly used hedging profit transactions.

In practice, it is divided into bull spread, bear market arbitrage and butterfly arbitrage; Intertemporal arbitrage Intertemporal arbitrage has several main factors:

1, the recent monthly contract fluctuation is generally more active than the forward one.

2. The movement of short positions makes the spread bigger next month, while the movement of long positions makes the spread smaller next month.

3. Inventory is the decisive factor of monthly price difference.

4. Reasonable price difference is an important factor in the rational return of price difference. Intertemporal arbitrage is also called "position cost arbitrage", "cross-crop annual arbitrage" or "new and old crop annual arbitrage" Generally speaking, the same futures exchange buys futures contracts in one crop year and sells futures contracts in the next crop year, taking advantage of the price difference changes of futures contracts in the same growth year. This is a common form of crop futures arbitrage trading. The crop growing year is generally bounded by August, the old crop year is before August, and the new crop year begins in September. Because of the different growth periods of different crops, the monthly division of new and old crops is often slightly different.