5

FINANCIAL FUTURES

5.1 A brief history of futures markets

5.2 What is a financial future?

5.3 Futures trading – from pits to screens

5.4 Buying and selling

5.5 The clearing mechanism

5.6 Futures margins

5.7 Physical delivery versus cash settlement

5.8 Futures and cash markets compared

5.9 The advantages of futures

Futures contracts and futures exchanges have been in operation since the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Chicago Board of Trade first started to offer ‘to arrive’ and ‘time’ contracts on agricultural products. Surprisingly, more than 100 years were to pass before financial futures contracts were conceived in the early 1970s. Since then, financial futures have become a vital mainstay for the other financial markets. ...

Get The Financial Times Handbook of Financial Engineering, 3rd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.