Futures trading offers speculators the opportunity to use enormous leverage. For example, a standard size soybean contract is 5000 bushels of soybeans. At $10 a bushel, this represents roughly $50,000 of soybeans, but the margin required to control that contract may only be a few thousand dollars.
So, a movement of just a few percent in price of the underlying commodity could equal hundreds of percent movement in the value of the initial margin deposit. It is this extremely high margin that has led commodity futures trading to having a reputation as being a place for gamblers.
However, despite commodities gambling reputation there’s a perfect economic justification for its existence. Commodity trading allows hedgers the opportunity to offset price risk. Hedgers include people such as farmers, food manufacturers, oil refiners or anyone who commercially deals in the physical commodities market. What a hedger can do with commodity futures trading is lock in the price they are able to purchase or sell a commodity for at a future date.
For example, a farmer recognizes that, at current prices, he can make a sizeable profit from his corn crop; but he will not harvest it for another 60 days. His risk is that prices drop between now and crop time. So, he can sell his un-harvested crop today in the commodity futures market at current prices. This way should prices drop he has already locked in his profit.
The speculator, on the other hand, the person that assumed the risk is gambling that prices will go even higher, and he too can potentially make a profit by selling at even higher future prices (or lose money if prices drop). The farmer is happy as he was able to secure his profit, and the speculator is happy as he gets the opportunity to assume the farmers risk with the potential for profit.
Such futures trading leads to price stabilization in the marketplace. Without such risk transference mechanisms in place, consumers would be subjected to wild swings in commodity costs. Imagine if every time a shopper went to the supermarket their bill varied by 20-30 percent for the same groceries! This would also be the situation in countless other industries that use commodities. The bottom line is that regardless of its betting reputation, commodity futures trading serves a vital role in today’s economy.
For more information on our futures trading system Relativity, please contact us.
Dean Hoffman
DH Trading Systems
Commodity trading carries risks and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.
TAGS: Futures Trading
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