Although they are all margin leveraged transactions, they are both two-way transactions, and they can be long or short, but there are still some differences between futures and spot. Spot is relative to futures, which is the expected price in the future and spot is the current price. Just like the meaning of auction and existing house in real estate is similar.

The spot market has a great influence on futures. Price discovery is an important function of stock index futures, but the basis of futures is spot market. Without the large-scale market of the spot market, it is impossible for the futures market to get out of the big market.

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The difference of delivery period is that the delivery period of futures is generally short, while the delivery period of spot is generally long.

(1) continuous contract:

Because most spot contracts have a delivery period (with or without a deadline), the longest contract period usually does not exceed one year. For the convenience of research, many market quotation systems have set up "continuous contracts", that is, there is no fixed delivery period.

(2) Contracts with delivery deadlines:

Delivery time specified by the exchange, physical delivery at maturity. For us investors, we don't need physical objects, as long as we release the warehouse receipts in our hands before the delivery date.