Stock futures?

[michaelday]

Hello,

Can someone explain concept of stock futures in more detail.

Thanks.

 

[andrasnm]

are you asking about index futures or the december rendition
of futures on individual stocks ? if the later I know
nothing about them but I am sure the futures exchange
has ample resources.
http://www.cbot.com
http://ww.merc.com

 

[Babak]

Stock futures are basically what the name implies a contract to deliver a certain amount of stocks in the future. Not a basket (index) but a single stock, for example NT.

Similar to options they are based on a set amount of stocks (100) and have certain margin requirements like futures set by the exchange.

They are already trading in some mkts (eg Canada, Spain) but havent yet been approved for US by the SEC although they are going through the pipeline.

If you want to find out more about how they are being traded right now take a look at:

http://www.me.org/en.ssf.html

and

http://www.meff.es/ing/indexi.htm

there you can see how those countries and exchanges handle the trading of single stock futures