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Contracts in the futures market are between a buyer and seller. The contract states that the seller must provide the buyer a very specific quantity of a certain item, such as cotton, oil etc, for a price agreed today, but at a date in the future. It is important not to get confused about what the word future refers to. Futures traders are not trading future prices, we are trading today's prices, but the settlement is taking place in the future. So we buy if we think prices will increase and sell if we think prices will drop. If I buy (or sell) a futures contract today, I don't have to hold it until the contract expires, I can simply choose to sell it (or buy it) in the market at the prevailing price. Futures contracts are bought and sold in the regulated environment of a futures exchange, such as the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) in the U.S. and the London International Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) in the U.K. The futures market was originally started to help people like farmers and merchants manage the risk of their products against the potential supply and demand of the market. In farming for example when there is a bumper crop of say corn the price can fall dramatically and hurt the farmer, but if they have already sold a contract at a certain price they can still get a fair price for their products. The farmer and the merchant are often trading against each other, trying to get the best price at both ends of the trade. By using futures they can limit the risk of waiting until the crop is actually harvested when the supply and demand can change dramatically. It also helps them to be able to plan a head knowing what profits they can expect to obtain. Normally the farmer and the merchant will form a contract early in the season long before harvest time for the price of the crop, this is in effect a futures contract. Both the farmer and the merchant are able to reduce their trading risks in this way. Futures markets have evolved to include markets whose underlying asset is a financial asset, such as a bond or a portfolio of stocks. Most of the contracts traded can be classified as either commodity futures or financial futures, depending on whether the underlying asset is a commodity or a financial asset. The CBOT was started in 1848 for the benefit of the farmers and merchants. The exchange was to regulate both the quality and quantity of the actual crop that was being traded. Today the CBOT offers many contracts on items like wheat, silver, corn, bonds and soybeans. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) was created in 1919 and has managed a futures market in such things as pork bellies, live cattle and the SP500 index. In London the big financial futures exchange is the London International Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE). Here financial instruments such as the FTSE100, the GILT and Short Sterling are traded, the exchange is relativily new and opened in 1982. EUREX started life as the DTB, the German futures exchange. The DTB has always been an electronic exchange and started back in 1990, when electronic exchanges were still considered to be inferior to the open outcry system. The German Bund was a very heavily traded financial contract and one of the biggest markets on the LIFFE. You can make a lot of money very fast by trading futures, mainly because of the leverage that can be obtained. At the same time of course it is just as easy to loose money if you don't know what you are doing. It is very important when trading futures to have a good trading plan as well as having the discipline to stick to the plan and follow the rules.
Article Source: http://technologynetwork.info
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