Investors can trade futures to speculate or hedge on the price direction of a security, commodity, or financial instrument. To do this, traders purchase a futures contract, which is a legal agreement to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price at a specified time in the future.

Futures came about in the mid-19th century, allowing grain farmers to sell their wheat for forward delivery. Futures trading provides investors with a fast and cost-effective means of accessing global financial and commodity markets.

Basics of Futures Trading

As its name suggests, a futures contract is a financial instrument through which a buyer and seller agree to transact an asset at a fixed price at a future date. Despite a futures contract providing the opportunity for the delivery of an asset, most don’t result in physical delivery but are rather used by investors to speculate on a security’s price or hedge risk in a portfolio.

Traders can speculate on a wide range of securities and commodities by trading futures. Key futures markets include stock indexes, energy, currencies, cryptocurrencies, interest rates, grains, forests, and livestock. Most futures contracts are traded through centralized exchanges like the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Many cryptocurrency brokers, such as Binance, offer perpetual futures—a contract without an expiry date—allowing traders not to worry about an expiry month.

Advantages of Futures Trading

Leverage

Leverage is an investment strategy of using borrowed money—specifically, the use of various financial instruments or borrowed capital—to increase the potential return of an investment. Futures are traded with leverage on margin, allowing investors to control larger positions with a small initial outlay. However, this can be a double-edged sword if the asset’s price moves in the unintended direction. Traders should be aware they can lose more than their initial margin when trading futures contracts.

Diversification

Investors can trade futures on everything from stock indexes to orange juice, helping to provide a diversified portfolio across multiple asset classes.

After-Hours Trading

Futures allow traders to take advantage of opportunities nearly around the clock. For example, a trader may wish to go to long futures contracts on the Nasdaq 100 Index if several mega-cap technology stocks report better than expected earnings after the market close.

Hedging

Investors can use futures to protect unrealized profits or minimize potential losses. The wide selection of futures products available allows traders to take a cost-effective hedge against the broader market or specific sectors and individual commodities.

Disadvantages of Futures Trading

Over-Leverage

Leverage is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be advantageous to amplify returns with less of a cash outlay. However, if markets turn against you, you will be responsible for the full amounts of the losses and be subject to margin calls. In other words, leverage will also amplify losses.

Managing Expiry Dates

Most futures contracts have an expiry date that traders need to monitor. As the contract approaches its expiry, its price may rapidly lose value or even become worthless. To combat this, investors frequently roll forward their futures contract to a longer-dated one as the expiry date approaches.

Selecting a Futures Trading Platform

When selecting a futures trading platform, investors should ensure that it is intuitive to use, offers multiple order types to help with risk management, and has competitive fees and commissions.

More advanced traders may want a platform that provides application programming interface (API) access to allow algorithmic trading functionality. Active traders should select a futures platform with a mobile trading app that lets you execute trades and manage positions on the go.

Today, most full-service online brokerages and trading platforms have access to futures trading. You will need to request and be granted approval to begin trading these markets.

Developing a Futures Trading Plan

As with trading stocks or other financial assets, it’s important that investors develop a plan for trading futures that outlines entry and exit strategies as well as risk management rules. For example, if a trader uses technical analysis to locate entries, they may decide to open a long futures trade on a golden cross signal—when the 50-day simple moving average (SMA) crosses above the 200-day simple moving average. The trading plan could also include a stop-loss order placed 5% below the entry price to manage downside risk.

Alternatively, a futures trading plan centered around fundamental analysis might generate buy or sell signals based on crop or energy inventory reports. For instance, a trader may short an oil futures contract if weekly oil inventories grow at a faster pace than analysts had expected. Of course, some traders may incorporate both technical and fundamental analysis into their futures trading plan.

In general, there are three futures trading plans:

• long: buy futures and profit when the prices increase
• short: sell futures contracts and profit when the prices decrease
• spread: simultaneously buy different futures contracts and profit when the relative price difference widens (or narrows). These can be on the same underlying but using different expiration dates, or on futures in two closely-related products like crude oil and gasoline.

Contract Specifications

Before trading futures, investors need to know several key elements about futures contracts to help determine position size and manage risk. These include contract size, contract value, and tick size. We’ll use the popular E-mini S&P 500 futures contract offered by the CME as an example.

Contract Size

As its name suggests, contract size refers to the deliverable quality of the asset that underlies the futures contract. For example, the E-mini S&P 500 is $50 times the price of the S&P 500 index.

Contract Value

Investors calculate the contract value by simply multiplying the contract size by the current price. Let’s say a trader holds one contract of the E-mini S&P 500, and the underlying index is trading at $4,800. This means the contract value equals $240,000 ($50 x $4,800).

Tick Size

Tick size refers to the minimum price change of a futures contract. In other words, the smallest amount that the price of a particular contract can fluctuate. For instance, the E-mini S&P 500 has a tick size equal to one-quarter of an index point. As one index point equals $50 in the E-mini, one tick is the equivalent of $12.50 ($50/4).

Futures Markets You Can Trade In

Futures contracts are listed on several different products comprising many different asset classes. Among the most popular include:

• Equity indexes: e.g., the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100
• Hard commodities: precious metals
• Soft commodities: agricultural products like livestock or crops
• Energy: crude oil, natural gas
• Currencies: pairs like EUR/USD or GBP/JPY
• Treasuries: U.S. government bonds and rates
• Crypto: Bitcoin, Ether

Putting It All Together

Let’s put it all together in a trading example using the E-mini S&P 500 futures. The S&P 500 index recently broke out to a new all-time high, and we’d like to fade the move, hoping to book profits on a retracement to the initial breakout area around $4,720. Our money management rules stipulate that we risk no more than 1% of our futures trading account on any one trade. Additionally, our broker requires a margin of $12,000.

Therefore, we decide to open a short position, trading one contract and managing risk by placing a stop-loss $25, or 100 ticks, above our entry price at $4,786. As we are risking $1,250 ($12.50 per tick x 100), we should have at least $125,000 in our futures trading account to meet the 1% risk per trade rule ($1,250 = 1% of $125,000). Ideally, we should have more in our account to cover the $12,000 margin requirement and guard against margin calls if the price of the S&P 500 moves against us.

We then place a take-profit order at the initial breakout area at $4,720—264 ticks, or $66, below our entry price. If the market moves in our favor and hits the order, we make a profit of $3,300 ($12.50 per tick x 264).

Conversely, we incur a $1,250 loss if we get stopped out. In any case, the future trade offers a favorable risk/reward ratio of 1:2.64 ($1,250 risk per contract versus $3,300 reward per contract).

The Bottom Line

Futures are derivative contracts that let you speculate on the future price of some asset or commodity, or to let you hedge against existing positions. Because they utilize leverage, futures can amplify your bets, making for larger returns – but also larger losses. Futures also have expiration dates, so you need to be careful to roll over or close out positions so not to be stuck with physical delivery of unwanted commodities. To start trading futures, you will need to find a brokerage that offers access to these markets and then get approval.