In finance, refers to a standardized contract to buy or sell a specified commodity of standardized quality at a certain date in the future, at a market determined price (the futures price). The contracts are traded on a futures exchange. Futures contracts are not "direct" securities like stocks, bonds, rights or warrants as outlined by the Uniform Securities Act.
| Symbol | Name | Last Trade | Change | Related Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| ^DJA | Dow Jones Composite Average | 5,261.60 |  50.26 (0.96%) |
| ^DJI | Dow Jones Industrial Average | 15,354.40 | 121.18 (0.80%) |
| ^DJT | Dow Jones Transportation Averag | 6,549.16 | 81.47 (1.26%) |
| ^DJU | Dow Jones Utility Average | 516.70 | 4.83 (0.94%) |
| Symbol | Name | Last Trade | Change | Related Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| DJM13.CBT | Dow Jones Indus. Jun 13 | 15,315.00 | 102.00 (0.67%) |
| ESM13.CME | E-Mini S&P 500 Jun 13 | 1,663.00 | 15.75 (0.96%) |
| YMM13.CBT | Mini Dow Jones Indus.-$5 Jun 13 | 15,315.00 | 113.00 (0.74%) |
| NQM13.CME | Nasdaq 100 Jun 13 | 3,022.75 | 26.75 (0.89%) |
| SPM13.CME | S&P 500 Jun 13 | 1,663.00 | 17.00 (1.03%) |
DJIA ($10) Dow Futures Price Chart
The Chicago Board of Trade's DJIA Futures contract is a futures contract on the entire Dow Jones Industrial Average. This one's REALLY weird, so hang on:
The value of this contract is 10 times the Dow Jones Industrial Average. If the Dow is 10,000 today, the price of a futures contract on it is $100,000.
Next, on the date of settlement cash is delivered, not 300 shares of stock.
Third, this futures contract requires daily settlement payments, and this is why the DJIA futures contract is so weird. You and I are counterparties to one of these things. You're the futures buyer, or the long; I am the futures seller, or the short. The Dow was at 9000 when we did the deal, so you paid me $90,000, which went into my brokerage account. If the Dow closes tomorrow at 9010, I have to pay you $100--ten times the delta in the Dow. Similarly, if the Dow closes tomorrow at 8990, you pay me $100.
Dow Futures have built-in leverage, allowing traders to make substantially more money on price fluctuations in the market than they could by simply buying stock outright. The multiplier for the Dow Jones is 10, essentially meaning that Dow Futures are working on 10-1 leverage, or 1,000%. If the Dow Futures are trading at 7,000, a single futures contract would have a market value of $70,000. For every $1 (or "point" as it is known on Wall Street) the Dow Jones Industrial Average fluctuates, the Dow Futures contract will increase or decrease $10. The result is that a trader who believed the market would rally huge could simply acquire Dow Futures and make a huge amount of profit as a result of the leverage factor; if the market were to return to 14,000, for instance, from the current 8,000, each Dow Futures contract would gain $60,000 in value (6,000 point rise x 10 leverage factor = $60,000).
