A Glimpse into our New Futures Market Survey

Earlier this month we announced the release of our new Futures Market Survey: What Drives Futures Market Participants, which was compiled from the results of over 400 respondents. The responses came from four unique audiences: a General Online Audience, surveyed on Facebook; a Business Professional Audience, surveyed on LinkedIn; an Active Investor Audience, surveyed on Barchart.com; and a Listed Derivatives Audience, surveyed through the John Lothian Newsletter.

You’re probably curious why we created this futures market survey in the first place, and most importantly, why is it important? Since barchart.com has a significant following of futures traders using our site to analyze data and keep track of the market, we wanted to understand how these users - whether they’re professionals who work for investment banks, brokerages and hedge funds, non-professionals or individuals who speculate in the markets for their own accounts, or commercial hedgers - interact with the futures markets, on which platforms, and for what purposes.

What’s covered inside the futures market survey? We were able to discover a significant amount of meaningful information into how these audiences interact with the futures market, including the primary purpose individuals trade futures, what types of futures these investors trade, what drives futures trading decisions, where people get futures prices from, which brokerages individuals use, what platforms investors use to trade futures, for what reasons people do not trade futures, what users would like to see more of, plus so much more.

Some of the interesting facts that we discovered in conducting this survey include: over half of the Business Professional Audience, Active Investor Audience and Listed Derivatives Audience indicated they trade futures at least once per day, 88% of the Listed Derivatives Audience use real-time data to view futures prices, and 59% of respondents use a different platform for order entry and market analysis while 39% of respondents use the same platform..but these facts only scratch the surface. You can download the free futures market survey now to immediately access all of the information!

Through this survey, we were able to give futures market participants the capability to understand which tools and features matter the most to each audience while trading and analyzing the futures markets, as well as share valuable data which can be used by industry firms for guiding future decision making, marketing and product development. To download the futures market survey, please click here. To use and explore Barchart’s own tools and features made available for futures traders and investors, including both free and premium services, please visit www.barchart.com.