E-Mini - basic understanding

[dzhu]

Hi,

I'm a newbie in the world of futures trading.

I'm interested in the E-mini S&P500 futures contract.

I have read a few intros on E-mini, but a few questions lingers to be answered:

1. Does the delivery price of the contract correlate to the real S&P500 index on the day of the delivery? - if I had bought a contract e.g. @ 1000, and held it until the delivery day, how is the profit/loss calculated - has the actual value of the S&P500 index got anything todo with the calculation of the profit/loss?

2. Is there any correlation between the contract price and the real S&P500 index value?

3. What type of investors actually invest in the emini? - e.g. technical traders (e.g. intraday traders who relies more on the technical analysis rather than the fundamentals), fundamental traders (who have a longer hold on the contract), etc?

Thanks in advance and sorry if these questions are dumb...

 

[dzhu]

Also what is 'spot/cash' price of the S&P500?

 

[NasiWarrior]

Futures contract - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[NasiWarrior]

spot/cash is what the stocks are trading at "now".

 

[timsk]

Hi dzhu,
Have a read of this and see if it clears a few things up for you:
A Trader’s Guide to Futures
Enjoy!
Tim.

 

[The Leopard]

Hi,

I'm a newbie in the world of futures trading.

I'm interested in the E-mini S&P500 futures contract.

I have read a few intros on E-mini, but a few questions lingers to be answered:

1. Does the delivery price of the contract correlate to the real S&P500 index on the day of the delivery? - if I had bought a contract e.g. @ 1000, and held it until the delivery day, how is the profit/loss calculated - has the actual value of the S&P500 index got anything todo with the calculation of the profit/loss?

2. Is there any correlation between the contract price and the real S&P500 index value?

3. What type of investors actually invest in the emini? - e.g. technical traders (e.g. intraday traders who relies more on the technical analysis rather than the fundamentals), fundamental traders (who have a longer hold on the contract), etc?

Thanks in advance and sorry if these questions are dumb...

Have you checked the CME website? There is a lot of stuff about this kind of thing on there: CME Group - Futures & Options Trading for Risk Management .

Look in the "Education" section as well.

ES is one of the most liquid contracts in the world. People trade it using fundamentals, technicals, charts, the ladder and all sorts of things.

It's used for speculating, investing, hedging - really any kind of trading / investment purpose imaginable.

EDIT:

Oops! Just seen Timsk has already provided a link to the CME website. Sorry!

 

[dzhu]

Cool thanks for the links. I will take a look

 

[datamonkey]

Hi dzhu,
Have a read of this and see if it clears a few things up for you:
A Trader’s Guide to Futures
Enjoy!
Tim.

Yes I remember seeing that quite a while ago, it's a good starting point for futures, though from what I remember a lot of it applies to trading in general eh?