Closing position refers to the closing position of a party in futures trading in order to cancel the futures contract bought or sold before. Buying and selling a futures contract in the futures market is equivalent to signing a forward delivery contract. If traders keep futures contracts until the end of the last trading day, they must settle futures transactions by physical delivery or cash settlement. However, only a few people make physical delivery, and most speculators and hedgers generally choose to sell their futures contracts or buy back their futures contracts before the end of the last trading day. That is to say, the original futures contract is written off by a futures transaction with the same amount and opposite direction, thus ending the futures transaction and relieving the obligation of physical delivery at maturity.
This behavior of buying back a sold contract or selling a bought contract is called liquidation.
Holding a position means that an investor (short or short) holds a futures contract, instead of doing the reverse operation (selling or buying) for the same number of months.
Because before the physical delivery or cash delivery expires, investors can voluntarily decide to buy and sell futures contracts according to market conditions and personal wishes.
However, if an investor (long or short) holds a futures contract and does not perform the reverse operation (selling or buying) in the same delivery month and quantity, it is called a "position".
The whole process of futures trading can be summarized as opening positions, holding positions, closing positions or physical delivery.
In the stock market, the meanings of opening position, closing position and holding position are the same as above. Simply put, these three meanings are: buy, sell and continue to hold shares.