The Contract

A futures contract is an agreement to exchange a defined quantity of something at a defined date, traded on an exchange that stands between the two sides so that neither has to trust the other. Every piece of futures vocabulary follows from that standardisation.

Two groups of terms. The first covers the contract as an object: what it specifies, what it costs to hold, and how gains and losses move between accounts each day. The second covers the curve, which is what you get when you plot every delivery month at once and look at the shape.

Contract specifications change, and third-party summaries go stale quietly. Anything numerical here should be confirmed against the exchange’s own contract page before you rely on it.