Courses 1Lesson 1

6.

There are Many Futures Vehicles

In addition to the traditional buy and sell short positions, there are many vehicles in

futures trading.  These include options, spreads, option spreads, futures versus options

positions and combinations of the above.

Summary

The bottom line of all futures trading is to either make money or to keep from losing it.  The futures

markets provide an excellent vehicle for doing this.

Additional Uses of the Futures Markets

This course has, to this point, briefly outlined preliminary concepts and applications of futures trading.

Naturally, as a vehicle for speculating, hedging, or spreading risk, futures trading has significant

importance.  As a vehicle for stabilizing costs to producers and end-users, futures trading is a vital tool.

On a more pervasive level, however, an understanding of futures trading can prove very valuable to the

investor not interested in actually trading futures.

This course gives considerable attention to the hypothesis that a knowledge of futures price trends and

futures market behavior can assist one in understanding economic trends as well as in forecasting the

short-term to intermediate-term direction of prices.  There may also be long-range implications for

investors.

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C1L1-11

© 2000 MBH Commodity Advisors, Inc.

Conclusions

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