Skip to main content

What is Future Trading?

1. What are Stock Futures?
Stock Futures are financial contracts where the underlying asset is an individual stock. Stock Future contract is an agreement to buy or sell a specified quantity of underlying equity share for a future date at a price agreed upon between the buyer and seller. The contracts have standardized specifications like a market lot, expiry day and unit of price quotation, tick size and method of settlement.


2. How are Stock Futures priced?
The theoretical price of a futures contract is the sum of the current spot price and the cost of carrying. However, the actual price of futures contract very much depends upon the demand and supply of the underlying stock. Generally, the futures prices are higher than the spot prices of the underlying stocks.
Futures Price = Spot Price + Cost of carrying
The cost of carrying is the interest cost of a similar position in the cash market and carried to the maturity of the futures contract less any dividend expected until the expiry of the contract.

4. What are the opportunities offered by Stock Futures?
Stock futures offer a variety of usages to the investors. Some of the key usages are mentioned below:
·         Investors can take long term view on the underlying stock using stock futures.
·         Stock futures offer the high leverage. This means that one can take a large position with less capital. For example, paying a 20% initial margin one can take a position for 100 i.e. 5 times the cash outflow.
·         Futures may look overpriced or underpriced compared to the spot and can offer opportunities to arbitrage or earn a risk-less profit. Single stock futures offer arbitrage opportunities between stock futures and the underlying cash market. It also provides arbitrage opportunities between synthetic futures (created through options) and single stock futures.
·         When used efficiently, single-stock futures can be an effective risk management tool. For instance, an investor with a position in the cash segment can minimize either market risk or price risk of the underlying stock by taking a reverse position in an appropriate futures contract.

5. As an investor, how do I start trading in Stock Futures?
You need to first register yourself as a client with a Registered Broker by fulfilling all the KYC or Know Your Client rules. Then, sign up the client agreement form and risk disclosure document provided to you by your broker.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bullish vs Bearish Markets – What’s the Difference?

What is a Bull Market? A bull market is a financial market (whether it’s currencies, metals or commodities) where prices are rising or are expected to rise. General optimism, investor confidence, and expectations of continuous strong uptrends characterize a bull market. These uptrends usually last for weeks, months, or even years, but can be as short as a few days, depending on the surrounding circumstances. Predicting changing trends is sometimes difficult as trader psychology and speculator behavior can play a role. Markets become bullish generally when the economy is doing well or coming out of a previous slump. For instance, individual currencies may rise in line with a strong GDP output, or drop when unemployment figures or interest rates aren’t favorable. Supply and demand forces still govern in a bull market, so weak supply but strong demand (as in the case of commodities such as oil or natural gas) will see prices rise as more investors want to purchase the asset than ar...

Benefits Of Investing In Stock Market

Diversification: Purchasing stocks of companies operating in different sectors as well as segments are possible, which helps in optimizing the asset-allocation and provides diversification. Protection against inflation: Over the years, ordinary shares are said to have won the battle against inflation rate providing enough returns and growth. Great Post Tax Earnings: Tax is another factor eating up gains, investing in ordinary shares help you maintain the rate of returns on investments. Ease of Access: Updates and innovations in technology especially in the area of Fintech is the reason, one gets the ease of access to stock markets with considerable reliability. Input a few information asked from you by the exchange and brokerage houses or mutual fund houses, and you are ready to partner India’s growth story within a few seconds. Invest in smaller amounts: With mutual fund industries picking up in the last decade, now investment is possible inequit...