Trading Hours is basically the hours of a day where trading of a futures contract can take place in an exchange. Again, this varies widely according to the asset being covered. Some commodities futures are traded only a couple of hours a day and some index futures are traded 24 hours a day non-stop.
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With a number of exchanges around the world, trading takes place almost 24 hours a day, except on weekends. There are at least a dozen major exchanges that serve as a marketplace for commodities worldwide. Each of these specializes in certain commodities, while others trade in whole different set.
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Additionally, as the side effect of being such a huge market, the market is extremely liquid and numerous transaction volumes takes place daily.
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Instruments (contracts) traded on commodity exchanges include futures, options and other derivatives. Agricultural products, precious metals, industrial metals, and fossil fuels and other forms of energy are other products are among the primary goods that are traded in these exchanges.
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A concept is emerging for trading in movie futures. Media Derivatives, a division of Veriana Networks, and Cantor are racing to set up the first US exchanges to offer futures on movie box office receipts. They are closing in on their goal of offering hedging — and speculation — instruments to investors and movie studios wary of audience fickleness and box office volatility.
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The basic purpose of commodity futures markets is to allow suppliers/users of the product to sell/buy such contracts, whereby they can “lock in” a future price of the commodity and thereby eliminate the uncertainty and risk of doing business while facing an unknown future price. However, commodity trading has moved to electronic trading from open outcry systems, following the trend in financial securities trading. Electronic trading has been found to affect areas like bid-ask spreads, transaction costs and speed of information dissemination.
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