For futures contracts specifying physical delivery, the delivery month is the month in which the seller must deliver, and the buyer must accept and pay for, the underlying. For contracts specifying cash settlement, the delivery month is the month of a final mark-to-market. The exact dates of acceptable delivery vary considerably and will be specified by the exchange in the contract specifications.
For most futures contracts, at any given time, one contract will typically be traded much more actively than others. This is called variously the front month or the top step contract.
Financial contracts traded on US futures exchanges (such as bonds, short term interest rates, foreign exchange and US stock indexes) tend to expire quarterly, in March, June, September and December. For financial contracts traded on non-US futures exchanges, the expiration schedule may not be quarterly.
This table lists the conventional letter codes used in tickers to specify delivery month:
Read more about Delivery Month: Month Codes
Famous quotes containing the words delivery and/or month:
“There was no speculation so promising, or at the same time so praisworthy, as the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)