Yahoo! now provides futures quote data. A futures contact is an agreement to buy or sell a set number of shares of a specific stock in a designated future month at a price agreed upon today by the buyer and seller. A futures contract differs from an option because an option is the right to buy or sell, while a futures contract is the promise to actually make a transaction. Futures contracts cover the sale of financial instruments or physical commodities (food, metal, or another fixed physical substance). We provide delayed information from the following commodities exchanges: New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX & COMEX), Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), New York Board of Trade (NYBOT), Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT).

How to read the futures data

Symbol:
Futures symbols are constructed of four different parts:
{root symbol}{contract month}{contract year}.{exchange suffix}.
To learn more about how futures symbols are constructed, visit our page on futures syntax.

Last Trade:
The time and price of the last trade made for the futures contract.

Change:
The change in price for the day. This is the difference between the last trade and the previous day's settlement price. The change is reported as "0" if the future has not traded today.

Previous Settlement:
A figure determined by the closing range that is used to calculate gains and losses in futures market accounts. Settlement prices are used to determine gains, losses, margin calls, and invoice prices for deliveries.

Open:
Opening price for the day; first trade of the day.

Bid/Ask:
The Bid price is the price you get if you were to sell the future. The Ask price is the price you have to pay to purchase the future.

Day's Range:
The high and low prices, recorded during the current or most recent trading day.

Volume:
The volume indicates the number of future contracts that have traded for the current day.

Open Interest:
The total number of derivative contracts traded that have not yet been liquidated either by an offsetting derivative transaction or by delivery.

Session:
A futures contract can trade during regular trading hours and/or during electronic trading hours. Each particular future has its own rules in terms of trading hours and sessions—please refer to the exchange where the particular commodities trade for additional information. Yahoo! Finance combines the session information so that the symbol is the same for regular and electronic trading; thus, the graphs and day's range number's reflect both sessions. Every trading day the information is reset.

Expiration Date:
Date upon which the future expires. Trading effectively ceases on the most recent trading day prior to the expiration date. Each future follows its own expiration schedule. Refer to the exchange where the particular commodities trade for additional information.