Forward contracts or Futures were originally created to offer market participants (primarily producers, processors and traders of commodities) the opportunity to hedge against price fluctuations in commodities and to buy and sell goods "forward" at a predefined price. In addition to commodity futures for physical commodities, numerous other futures for underlyings such as currencies, bonds and share indices have been developed over the years. Among active traders, commodity futures are still popular trading instruments that are frequently used. In this article, we give you an overview of the most important commodity futures.
What are commodity futures?
A commodity future is an exchange-traded futures contract whose underlying is a commodity. Commodity futures play a very important role in global commodity trading and are traded daily, sometimes at very high volumes. Therefore, they are also suitable for speculative traders.
What commodity futures are there?
Commodity futures can be divided into the following categories:
- Energy
- Metals
- Grains
- Softs
- Meats
Energy
Among energy commodities, the two crude oil grades Brent and WTI are the best-known futures. Natural gas is also a very liquid tradable contract. Heating oil, gasoline and ethanol are also among the energy commodities.
Metals
Among the metals are precious metals and industrial metals. The most widely used futures in this category are gold, silver, platinum, palladium and copper.
Grains
Grains" refers to various types of cereals, such as soybeans (as well as soybean oil and soybean meal), corn, wheat, rice, beans and others.
Softs
Softs" include raw materials such as coffee, cocoa, sugar, cotton, orange juice and timber.
Meats
Among meat futures, live cattle (Live Cattle), feeder cattle (Feeder Cattle) and (Lean Hogs) are the best known underlyings.
The most important commodity futures at a glance
| Designation Future | Category | Symbol Future |
| Crude Oil WTI | Energy | CL |
| Crude Oil Brent | Energy | BB |
| Gasoline Rbob | Energy | RB |
| Heating Oil | Energy | HO |
| Natural Gas | Energy | NG |
| Soybeans | Grains | ZS |
| Soybean Meal | Grains | ZM |
| Soybean Oil | Grains | ZL |
| Corn | Grains | ZC |
| Wheat | Grains | ZW |
| Gold | Metals | GC |
| Silver | Metals | SI |
| Platinum | Metals | PL |
| Palladium | Metals | PA |
| Copper | Metals | HG |
| Coffee | Softs | KC |
| Cocoa | Softs | CC |
| Sugar | Softs | SB |
| Cotton | Softs | CT |
| Orange Juice | Softs | OJ |
| Lumber | Softs | LB |
| Live Cattle | Meats | LE |
| Feeder Cattle | Meats | GF |
| Lean Hogs | Meats | HE |