Futures price limits are a rule you look up
Futures price limits are exchange rules about how far a contract is allowed to trade from a reference price during a session. This page will not quote a limit in points or in money. The rule for the contract in your hand is the only limit that matters, and it can change.
Write the contract name and month. Then open the exchange rulebook or the contract specification and find the heading that mentions limits, bands, or halts. Copy that heading. If you cannot find one, write ‘limit heading not found’ rather than assuming there is no limit.
Write the reference price the rule uses, if the page names it, such as a prior settlement. Copy their noun. Do not substitute a last trade you happen to see.
Write whether the rule is a daily ceiling and floor, a temporary pause, or something else the text describes. Futures price limits, on this page, means that classification, not a story about a locked market you did not check.
Limit up, limit down, and a pause are not synonyms
Traders say limit up when the price is at the top of an allowed range, and limit down when it is at the bottom. Use those phrases only if the exchange display uses them or you have read the rule that defines them.
A circuit breaker or a trading halt can be a pause, after which the session continues. A locked limit can mean trades are not occurring at the boundary. Copy the status word on the screen. Do not upgrade a pause into a lock, or a lock into a pause.
Expanded limits, if the rule mentions them, apply on the terms written there. Copy the condition that triggers the wider band. Do not memorize a wider band from a different crop year.
If the screen shows a price and also says the market is halted, write both. The price may be the last trade before the halt. Say so if the screen says so.
What the rule does not do for you
A limit does not cap your loss at the amount you deposited. A halt can delay an exit. The next session can move again. The CFTC’s futures primer is the place to read how futures obligations work, not a social post. See CFTC basics of futures trading.
A stop order is an instruction to your broker. It is not a promise that a trade will occur during a halt. Write what the broker’s order ticket says about stops during a limit condition. If it says nothing, write ‘stop behavior not stated.’
This page will not tell you a limit protects you, and it will not tell you limits are a reason to avoid a market. Both are advice. The task is to know the rule before the session, not after you wish you had.
This page will not list today’s limit for corn, cattle, or energy. Those figures are on the exchange notice. Copy them the day you need them, with the notice date.
A pre-session check
The day before a report you care about, read the limit rule again. Reports do not change the duty to read. They are only a reason the rule might matter.
Write the notice identifier or the page address. A paraphrase in your notebook should point back at that address.
Write the product and the month in the same line as the rule. A rule copied from the wrong month is a different rule.
If two contracts in a spread have two rules, write two lines. Do not assume the spread is exempt. The specification will say if it is.
During a session that looks stuck
Record the clock time, the bid, the ask, and any status flag. If the bid and ask are blank, write blank. A blank is information.
Do not invent a price ‘where it would be’ without the limit. That number is not a print. Label any such thought as a thought, or leave it out.
Call the broker only with the contract month and the status word. A general complaint that the market is broken is harder for them to match to a rule.
After the session, write whether a trade printed at the limit or the book simply sat there. You can know that only from the record, not from how it felt.
The next session
Write the next session’s first prices as a new row. Do not edit yesterday’s row to match. The gap between the rows is the record of what the limit deferred.
If the exchange publishes a settlement, copy it from them. A newspaper recap is a second source. Keep it separate.
If margin is mentioned on the broker statement the same day, file the statement. This page will not estimate a margin call. The statement has the figure, or it does not.
You can read other notes on Commodities Markets. Use them for vocabulary. Use the exchange notice for the limit. Use the CFTC page for what a futures contract obliges.
Words that smuggle a forecast
‘It will reopen lower’ is a forecast. Replace it with ‘I do not know the next print.’ The card survives that sentence.
‘Everyone is trapped’ is a crowd claim. You can write that your own order did not fill, if that is true. You cannot see everyone.
‘The limit was hit because of the report’ assigns a cause. You can write that the report was released and that the status flag appeared. The because is extra.
Concrete tip: before the session, copy the limit rule’s heading, the contract month, and the reference price the rule names, and do not store a point value you did not take from that notice.
Keeping the notice
Save the notice with its date in the filename you choose, and also keep the original filename if the download has one. You want to be able to show which text you relied on.
If the exchange amends the rule, save the amendment beside the old text. Do not overwrite. A later dispute about what the limit was is a documents question.
If you are paper-recording a practice session, mark the row ‘practice.’ A practice halt is still useful as a drill in reading the flag. It is not a result.
Futures price limits belong in the front of the notebook, not in a footnote you find after the fill fails. The check is boring on ordinary days. That is when you can still read.
Futures price limits, handled this way, stay a document and a status flag. They do not become a prediction about the reopen, and they do not become a promise that an order will fill.
Who publishes the status you are looking at
The exchange display, the broker display, and a news site can use different words for the same moment. Write the publisher of the screen you actually watched. Futures price limits are easy to misfile when the status word came from a headline rather than the matching engine.
If a headline says locked and the exchange says halted, keep the headline in a headline row. Do not overwrite the exchange word. You can reconcile them later, or you can leave them unresolved. Unresolved is allowed.
If you only heard the status from another person, write their name and ‘not seen.’ A spoken limit is not yet a flag. The flag is what you file.
Take one screenshot only if the platform allows it and the clock is visible. A picture without a clock is a poor exhibit. The written row still matters more, because pictures get separated from folders.
After the argument about what the limit was
Arguments usually fail because two people copied two documents. Put both documents on the table. Compare the product code first, then the month, then the notice date. Most disagreements end at one of those three lines.
If the documents match and the memories do not, trust the documents. Memory is not a source on this page. That rule is blunt because futures price limits are exactly the sort of detail people remember with confidence and without the PDF.
Write the lesson as a filing correction, not as a market opinion. ‘I copied the notice from the wrong month’ is a finished sentence. ‘The market was unfair’ is not a sentence this log can use.
Store the correction on the same page as the bad row. Do not hide the bad row. The bad row is what teaches the next check.
