How Buying and Selling Futures Work

Futures trading has a three-fold purpose—to enrich traders, to guarantee farmers and producers a sale of their goods and manufacturers, and to provide suppliers with a guaranteed supply of the commodities they need to make their finished products. Both a highly pragmatic, workmanlike tool to arrange the flow of goods from producer to market and a complex, high-flying, high-stakes, big money gamble, futures trading is a fascinating world we rarely see the inside of. This book draws readers into this obscure world that provides us all with our most ordinary, everyday products—orange juice, cereal, bread, bacon, steak, and corn syrup. Beginning with a history of the Chicago stockyards and emergence of its legendary commodities and futures markets, the book charts the global spread of futures trading, explicates its basic tools, mechanisms, and strategies, and traces how all of this complex and esoteric wheeling-and-dealing affects the ordinary consumer at the supermarket or gas station. Special features include “Myths and Facts” and “10 Great Questions to Ask a Financial Adviser.”