Hedger: The purpose is to prevent the fluctuation of commodity prices in the spot market from bringing losses to oneself, so it is a kind of risk aversion to establish an equal amount of futures contracts in the futures market, thus establishing a hedging mechanism between spot and futures.
Speculator: an institution or individual who specializes in buying and selling futures contracts in the futures market, that is, "buy when bullish and sell when bearish" to make a profit. Speculators are risk lovers, who take risks on their own initiative to make profits. Accordingly, speculative trading requires high knowledge, experience, economic strength and risk management ability of speculators, while futures retail investors in the market are generally low in all aspects, and their comprehensive strength and institutions are incomparable, so most of them are in debt.
Arbitrator: I hope to buy and sell two futures contracts at the same time in the futures market and realize risk-free arbitrage. I am also a risk-averse type. Arbitrage can be divided into cross-market arbitrage, cross-period arbitrage and cross-variety arbitrage. Cross-market arbitrage means that the same futures contract is traded in different futures markets, but the transaction prices in different markets are different. At this time, you can buy at a low price and sell at a high price, and realize the income without risk. Correspondingly, intertemporal arbitrage is the arbitrage between different contracts of the same commodity. Cross-variety arbitrage is the arbitrage of different commodities in the same futures market.