Independent ground traders
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- Category: Beginners Guide
Other hedgers of futures contracts embrace banks, insurance coverage firms and pension fund corporations who use futures to hedge towards any fluctuations within the money price of their products at future dates.
Speculators include independent ground traders and personal investors. Usually, they don’t have any connection with the money commodity and simply try to (a) make a profit shopping for a futures contract they count on to rise in value or (b) sell afutures contract they anticipate to fall in price.
In different phrases, they spend money on futures in the identical manner they could invest in stocks and shares - by buying at a low value and selling at the next price.
The Benefits of Buying and selling Futures
Buying and selling futures contracts have a number of benefits over other investments:
Futures are highly leveraged investments. To ‘personal’ a futures contract an investor only has to put up a small fraction of the worth of the contract (often round 10%) as ‘margin’. In other words, the investor can commercea much larger quantity of the commodity than if he purchased it outright, so if he has predicted the market motion accurately, his earnings will likely be multiplied (ten-fold on a 10% deposit). This is a wonderful return compared to shopping for a bodilycommodity like gold bars, cash or mining stocks.
The margin required to carry a futures contract will not be a down payment however a form of safety bond. If the market goes towards the dealer's place, he may lose some, all, or probably greater than the margin he has put up. But if the market goes with the dealer's place, he makes a revenue and he will get his margin back.