futures

futures, commercial contract calling for the purchase or sale of specified quantities of a commodity at specified future dates. The origin of futures contracts was in trade in agricultural commodities, and the term commodity is used to define the underlying asset even though the contract is frequently completely divorced from the product. It therefore differs from a simple forward purchase or sale in the cash market, which involves actual delivery of the commodity at the agreed time in the future.

From very early times, and in many lines of trade, buyers and sellers have found it advantageous to enter into contracts—termed futures contracts—calling for delivery of a commodity at a later date. Dutch whalers in the 16th century entered into forward sales contracts before sailing, partly to finance their voyage and partly to get a better price for their product. From early times, U.S. potato growers in Maine made forward sales of potatoes at planting time. The European futures markets arose out of import trade. Cotton importers in Liverpool, for example, entered forward contracts with U.S. exporters from about 1840. With the introduction of the fast transatlantic Cunard mail services, it became possible for cotton exporters in the United States to send samples to Liverpool in advance of the slow cargo ships, which carried the bulk of the cotton. Futures trading within the United States in the form of “to arrive” contracts appears to have commenced before the railroad days (1850s) in Chicago. Merchants in Chicago who bought wheat from outlying territories were not sure of the arrival time and quality of a delivery. The introduction of “to arrive” contracts enabled the sellers to get a better price for their product and buyers to avoid serious price risk.

Futures trading of this sort in grains, coffee, cotton, and oilseeds also arose in other centres such as Antwerp, Amsterdam, Bremen, Le Havre, Alexandria, and Ōsaka between the 17th and the middle of the 19th centuries. In the process of evolution, “to arrive” contracts became standardized with respect to grade and delivery period, with allowances for grade adjustment when the delivered grade happened to be different. These developments helped to enlarge the volume of trade, encouraging more trading by merchants who dealt in the physical commodity and also the entry of speculators, who were interested not in the commodity itself but in the favourable movement of its price in order to make profits. The larger volume of trading lowered the transaction costs, and by stages the trading became impersonal. The rise of the clearinghouse depersonalized the buyer-seller relations completely, giving rise to the present form of futures trading.

Commodity futures markets provide insurance opportunities to merchants and processors against the risk of price fluctuation. In the case of a trader, an adverse price change brought by either supply or demand change affects the total value of his commitments; and the larger the value of his inventory, the larger the risk to which he is exposed. The futures market provides a mechanism for the trader to lower the per unit inventory risk on his commitments in the cash market (where actual physical delivery of the commodity must eventually be made) through what is known as hedging. A trader is termed a hedger if his commitments in the cash market are offset by opposite commitments in the futures market. An example would be that of a grain elevator operator who buys wheat in the country and at the same time sells a futures contract for the same quantity of wheat. When his wheat is delivered later to the terminal market or to the processor in a normal market, he buys back his futures contract. Any change of price that occurred during the interval should have been cancelled out by mutually compensatory movements in his cash and futures holdings. The hedger thus hopes to protect himself against loss resulting from price changes by transferring the risk to a speculator who relies upon his skill in forecasting price movements.

For a better understanding of the process involved, the distinctive features of the cash market and the futures market should be made clear. The cash market may be either a spot market concerned with immediate physical delivery of the specified commodity or a forward market, where the delivery of the specified commodity is made at some later date. Futures markets, on the other hand, generally permit trading in a number of grades of the commodity to protect hedger sellers from being “cornered” by speculator buyers who might otherwise insist on delivery of a particular grade whose stocks are small. Since a number of alternative grades can be tendered, the futures market is not suitable for the acquisition of the physical commodity. For this reason, physical delivery of the commodities in fulfillment of the futures contract generally does not take place, and the contract is usually settled between buyers and sellers by paying the difference between the buying and selling price. Several futures contracts in a commodity are traded during a year. Thus, five wheat contracts, July, September, December, March, and May, and six soybean contracts, September, November, January, March, May and July are traded on the Board of Trade of the City of Chicago. The length of these contracts is for a period of about 10 months, and a contract for “September wheat” or “September soybean” indicates the month the contract matures.

Though hedging is a form of insurance, it seldom provides perfect protection. The insurance is based on the fact that the cash and futures prices move together and are well correlated. The price spread between the cash and futures, however, is not invariant. The hedgers, therefore, run the risk that the price spread, known as the “basis,” could move against them. The possibility of such an unfavourable movement in the basis is known as basis risk. Thus hedgers, through their commitment in the futures market, substitute basis risk for the price risk they would have taken in carrying unhedged stocks. It must be emphasized, however, that risk reduction is not the final objective with merchants and processors; what they seek to do is to maximize profits.

The availability of capital for financing the holding of inventories depends on whether they are hedged or not. The bankers’ willingness to finance them increases with the proportion of the inventory that is hedged. For example, the banks may advance loans to the extent of only 50 percent of the value of unhedged inventories and 90 percent if they are all hedged, a difference explained by the fact that hedging reduces the risk on which the amount of the loan and the interest rate depend. Merchants and processors can therefore derive a twofold advantage from futures trading; they can insure against price decline and they can secure larger and cheaper loans from the banks.