Second, futures, literally means forward, and goods are goods, that is, far futures. Yes, the general meaning of futures is related to forward commodities, but the details are far from perfect. Futures do have the meaning of forward, and the source is also developed from forward contracts.
A forward contract is a contract signed today, which stipulates that I will buy or sell a certain amount of goods at a certain price at a certain time in the future. The original forward contract is a verbal commitment by both parties to deliver a certain amount of goods at a certain time. Later, with the expansion of the scope of transactions, oral promises were gradually replaced by sales contracts. This kind of contract behavior is becoming more and more complicated, and it needs intermediary to guarantee in order to supervise the timely delivery and payment of buyers and sellers. At this point, the contract appeared. This contract is also a forward contract. Later, in order to better fulfill these contracts and reduce the possibility of breach of contract, these contracts were standardized, stipulating the number, scale and unit of transactions, and even the time and place of transactions. This constitutes a futures contract.
Third, the appearance of futures enriches trading varieties and disperses risks, which is helpful to stabilize the national economy and facilitate economic internationalization; Microscopically, it has the functions of hedging, hedging risks, price discovery and pricing. Futures contracts are essentially securities, which can be divided into equity, debt and hedging, while futures are hedging contracts. We often say that futures trading is not trading goods, but trading futures contracts, but the subject matter of these futures contracts is goods. Of course, these commodities are commodities in a broad sense, including corn, wheat, copper, oil and other commodities, as well as financial assets such as stocks and bonds.