What is the price of commodity at delivery day for a futures contract?

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: William Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/124735 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. If I hold a futures contract till the delivery day, what price should I pay for the commodity delivered to me, the price of the futures contract when I bought it, the price of the last transaction at the last trading day, the average price of the last trading day, or the average price of the futures contract over all trading days?

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: D Stanley Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/124741 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. A futures contract is a contract to buy a commodity (or stock, or whatever) for a specified price at a specified time. So if you enter into a contract at a certain price, that's the price you'll pay. The market (spot) price is irrelevant (other than to measure opportunity cost or to determine how much it costs you to get out of the contract at the last minute). Note that technically you don't "buy" a futures contract. There's no upfront cost for futures. The "price" quoted is the price you must pay at delivery.