Trading Soft Market Futures Contracts

Futures contracts for commodities like cocoa, sugar, coffee, cotton and orange are often regarded as soft market futures. They provide opportunities to both hedgers and speculators to profit from changing commodity prices. Soft market futures are traded in different exchanges across the world, but the trading volume is less compared to currency, index and energy futures.

Like all other futures contracts, soft market futures are standardized contracts for quality and quantity. They are easy to short sell. Soft market futures contract specifications of NYBOT (New York Board of Trade) is as follows.

• Cocoa : Futures contract size is 10 metric tons. Minimum tick size is $10 per contract. Delivery months are March, May, July, Sep and Dec.
• Sugar : One of the heavily traded commodities in terms of total volume. Contract size is 112,000 pounds. Minimum tick size $11.20 per contract. Delivery months are March, May, July and Oct.
• Coffee : One of the most volatile soft market commodities. Contract size 37,000 pounds. Minimum tick size $18.75 per contract. Delivery months are March, May, July, Sep and Dec.
• Cotton : Contract size is 50,000 pounds. Minimum tick size is $5 per contract (if cotton exceeds $0.95 per pound, then minimum tick size becomes $25 per contract). Delivery months are March, May, July, Oct and Dec.
• Frozen concentrated orange juice : Contract size is 15,000 pounds. Minimum tick size $7.50 per contract. Actively traded in March, May, July, Sep and Dec.

Remember most futures exchanges do not offer electronic trading of contracts for soft market commodities. And also as the trading volume is less, there is always change of high price volatility and/or price stagnancy.

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