Abbreviations of contracts in simple terms

[akash03]

Hey there,

Can you please help me with the abbreviations of the contracts in simple terms please? Its been really confusing for me. So if you can please explain or direct me to a documents or to a video which can help that would be great. Thank you.

Kind regards
Akash

[QuantKey_Bruce]

A futures contract in NinjaTrader is made up from two parts - the "root" and the "expiration". For instance, the current contract for ES today, "ES 06-23," has a "root" of ES which is short for "Emini S&P 500" and the expiration month and year of June 2023. The expirations are in MM-YY format where MM is 06 for June and 23 for 2023. This is different than the CME description which would be ESM3 - in that case the "M" means June and the "3" means 2023. You may want to do an internet search like "understanding trading futures contracts" to get the basics of how these contracts trade, what the front months are, and how they and roll over from expiration to expiration.

[NinjaTrader_JustinD]

Hello akash03,

Thank you for using NinjaTrader.


QuantKey_Bruce did a great job of explaining how each Futures symbol and contract is labeled, and I would also recommend bookmarking this publicly-available Contract Month Codes page from the CME website for quickly finding the symbol for each month in case you see a contract listed that way instead of using the symbol and the month which is the default inside of NinjaTrader.

As always, please feel free to write in with any additional questions you have regarding NinjaTrader.