1. A contract transaction means that the buyer and the seller agree to acquire a certain amount of certain assets at a specified price at a certain time in the future. The object of contract trading is the standardized contract formulated by the exchange, which stipulates the standardized information such as the type of goods, trading time and quantity. A contract represents the rights and obligations of the buyer and the seller. Simply put: make an appointment to trade a certain amount of a certain commodity at a certain time and place in the future now. Contract trading is a kind of financial derivative, which is relative to spot market trading. In futures contract trading, users can judge the ups and downs, choose to buy long contracts or sell short contracts, and obtain the benefits brought by price rise or fall. According to different delivery methods, contracts can be divided into permanent contracts and fixed-term contracts. The main difference between the two is that a fixed-term contract has a fixed delivery date, while a permanent contract does not. Among them, fixed-term contracts are divided into three categories according to the different delivery time: this week's contract, next week's contract and quarterly contract.
2. For example, suppose that Zhang San is a bitcoin miner and can dig up 10 bitcoins every month. The price of bitcoin has soared recently. Although Zhang San is very happy, he is also worried that the price will fall back in the next month, because it is far from halving the bitcoin mining reward in 2020. It is speculated that the bull market will not come so soon.
Zhang San's friend Li Si is an optimist who thinks that the bull market has already started and the price will be higher in the coming month. Therefore, Zhang San and Li Si agreed to sell all the 10 bitcoins dug up in June to Li Si at the current price of 54,000 yuan on June 30. The transactions of Zhang San and Li Si belong to futures trading. In this example, the transaction took place in the future (June 30th), and the transaction price was agreed in advance (RMB54,000), and the transaction was in kind (bitcoin). Therefore, a futures transaction at least includes: trading time (called "delivery time"), price (called "delivery price") and trading object (called "target").
4. In this example, although the traded bitcoin is "virtual" in form, it still belongs to "physical delivery" because Li Si will get the real bitcoin in the end. In the futures trading of physical delivery, the seller needs to really hold the physical object (Zhang San needs bitcoin).