Currency Futures

A currency futures contract is an exchange-traded agreement to exchange one currency for another at a set price on a set date. It does much the same economic job as a forward, with the differences that come from being listed: standardised contract sizes and delivery dates, prices formed on a public order book, and a clearing house standing between the two sides so neither is exposed to the other's credit. Being listed is also why futures data gets cited where over-the-counter data does not exist. Exchanges publish settlement prices, traded volume and open interest for their currency contracts, which gives a public and dated record of activity in a market whose largest part is private. That record is partial — it covers the listed contracts and not the far larger over-the-counter market — and it is backward-looking, so it describes what was held rather than what is being done now. Contract sizes, delivery months, last trading days and settlement method are set by each exchange and published in its contract specification, which is where any specific figure should come from rather than from a secondary summary.