Guide · Markets
Spot Price vs. Futures Price: What's the Difference?
Every asset technically has two prices at once — what it costs right now, and what a contract says it will cost later. The gap between them tells its own story.
The spot price is the current price at which an asset can be bought or sold for immediate delivery — it's what people usually mean by 'the price' of something in everyday conversation. The futures price is the price agreed today for a transaction that will actually settle at a specific date in the future, via a futures contract.
These two prices are related but rarely identical. The gap between them reflects factors like the cost of holding the asset until the future date (storage, financing costs), expected supply and demand changes, and — especially in fast-moving markets — how much uncertainty exists about where the price is headed before the contract settles.
When the futures price sits above the spot price, the market is said to be in 'contango' — often normal for assets with storage or financing costs. When it sits below, that's 'backwardation,' which can signal near-term supply tightness or unusually strong demand for immediate delivery rather than future delivery.
Trade2Spike's Spot Trading mode deals exclusively in real spot prices — no futures contracts, no expiry dates, no financing costs baked in — which keeps the mechanic simple: the price you see is the price your position tracks, directly and immediately.