The so-called spread speculation refers to the activities that speculators buy when the price rises, sell when the price falls, and then sell or buy the original futures contract at a favorable opportunity to obtain profits through the expectation of the price. The key to spread speculation lies in the accuracy of analyzing and forecasting the price change trend of futures market. Because there are many factors that affect the price change in the futures market, especially accidental factors such as speculative psychology, it is difficult to judge correctly, so this kind of speculation is risky. Arbitrage trading is a special way of futures speculation, which uses the relative price difference between different months, different markets and different commodities in the futures market to buy and sell different kinds of futures contracts at the same time to obtain profits. Just as the spot price and futures price of a commodity are often different, so is the contract price change of the same commodity in different delivery months; There are also differences in the price changes of the same commodity in different futures exchanges. Because of these price differences, arbitrage trading in the futures market is possible.
Arbitrage enriches and develops the content of futures speculation, which makes futures speculation not only limited to the change of the absolute price level of futures contracts, but also turn to the change of the relative price level of futures contracts. Arbitrage trading is of positive significance to the stable development of the futures market. Specifically, the role of arbitrage is mainly manifested in two aspects: on the one hand, arbitrage provides opportunities for risk hedging; On the other hand, arbitrage helps to form a reasonable price level.
However, for a long time, people still hold prejudices and misunderstandings about futures speculation:
One is people's superficial understanding of speculators' business activities. All speculators earn the price difference by predicting the price trend of commodities, which seems to be a bad motive.
Second, all speculators do not participate in physical delivery, and all transactions are carried out before the delivery of goods, which seems to create no value.
Third, all speculators speculate in the same place, which seems to be of little help to the circulation of goods.
Fourth, all speculators are trying to make money, and the money will eventually come from hedgers. This way of wealth transfer is unacceptable.
Fifth, the futures market originated in the west, and some people regard it as a capitalist factor and reject it. However, these people only see one aspect of the problem, and it is a very superficial and superficial aspect. They did not look at the problem from the objective effect of futures speculation, and did not correctly understand futures speculation from the height of market development.