The essence of futures is to sign long-term contracts with others to buy and sell goods (or stock indexes, foreign exchange, interest rates) in order to achieve the purpose of maintaining value or making money. If you think the futures price will go up, go long (buy and open positions), go up (sell) and close positions, and earn: price difference = close positions-open positions. If you think the futures price will fall, short (sell the position), fall (buy) and close the position, and earn: price difference = opening price-closing price. It is generally easy to understand how long futures are, but it is not easy to understand how short futures are. Let's take shorting gold as an example (the seller may have no goods in hand when signing the selling contract) to explain the principle of futures shorting: when you are in 200 yuan for each gram of gold, it is estimated that the price of gold will fall, and you have signed a (first-class) contract with the buyer in the futures market, for example, it is agreed that you can sell it to him 1 1,000 grams (one hand 1 1,000 grams) at any time within six months. The price is 200 yuan per gram. (The value is 200×1000 = 200,000 yuan. If the deposit is 10%, you should provide a performance bond of 20,000 yuan, which varies with the contract amount. This is short selling (selling open positions). In fact, you are selling a gold futures contract. Why should a buyer sign a contract with you? Because he's awesome. When signing a contract, you don't necessarily have gold in your hand (generally you don't really want to sell gold). You are observing the market. If the market drops to 180 yuan per gram as you wish, you buy1000g of gold in the market at 180 yuan and sell it to the buyer at the 200 yuan per gram according to the futures contract price. After the contract is completed (your performance bond is returned to you), you earn: (200-180) × 1000 = 20,000 yuan (the handling fee is generally100 yuan, which is ignored). This is a profitable liquidation. In practice, you buy and close a futures contract with primary gold. The buyer (not specified) who signed the contract with you lost 2000 yuan (the handling fee was ignored). ● For the whole operation, it only needs to sell gold at 200 points, and buy flat at 180 points, which is very convenient. ● After the futures are opened, you can close the position at any time before the delivery date, or you can buy and sell it many times on the same day (generally, there is no handling fee for closing the position on the same day). If the price of gold rises within half a year, you have no chance to buy low-priced gold to close your position. You will be forced to buy high-priced gold to close your position (you must close your position when the contract expires), you will lose money, and the buyer who signed with you will make a profit. Liquidation at 220 o'clock, loss: (220-200)× 1000=20000 (yuan)+100 yuan. The buyer (not specified) who signed the contract with you earned 20,000 yuan (the cost was ignored).