Foster Business Library


Futures Resources


Foster Business Library research guides are aimed at University of Washington students, faculty, and staff, highlighting resources available to them; users not currently affiliated with the university may be unable to access some of these resources.
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Foster Business Library Databases:

The Foster Business Library offers an extensive collection of over fifty databases on its homepage; see under Databases. For a complete list of Foster databases, see the List of All Business Databases. Access to these databases from off campus requires that you first go to the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. These resources may not be accessed from off campus except by those with a valid UW Net ID and password. For more information on Foster business databases, click Databases, A-Z. For information on which Foster business databases to use, see the Database Index. For information on accessing Foster databases from off campus, see Database Access. For guidelines on responsible database usage, see Database Usage.

  • Gale Virtual Reference Library:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, listed under List of All Business Databases.   The Gale Virtual Reference Library is a database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research; go to Business for three major business sources:   the Encyclopedia of American Industries (4th ed., 2005), the Encyclopedia of Business and Finance (2001), and the Encyclopedia of Small Business (2nd ed., 2002).

    See SIC 6221: Commodity Contracts Brokers and Dealers, in the Encyclopedia of American Industries, for futures and futures trading.

  • Global Financial Data:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, under Other Business Databases.   This database provides access to over 20,000 series of long-term global financial and economic data, both current and historic, gathered from original sources and historic archives, for more than 200 countries. Data is in ASCII or Microsoft Excel format.

    See this database's information and data on futures contracts.

  • Investext:   Listed under Databases on the Foster Business Library homepage. Investext contains indexing and the full text of company and industry research reports prepared by several hundred Wall Street, regional and international brokerage and financial firms. Over 11,000 companies are included in this database as well as over fifty industries. All reports are in PDF format.

    A keyword search for Futures produced over five hundred reports.

  • JSTOR:   This database may be found under List of All Business Databases. JSTOR is a subject searchable index of 360 journals, with full-text backfiles of scholarly journals, some of which date back to the 1800's. Among the collections of scholarly journals on this site are ones for Business and for Economics, encompassing 72 journals.

    An advanced search in this database for Futures, limited to titles and abstracts, in business journals, produced over 640 articles.

    Web Resources:

    Unlike library databases, Web resources are available wherever you have web access; they do not require that you access them via the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. When using web resources, be sure to evaluate the credibility of these resources. For a subject index to web resources, see Business Resources on the Web on the Foster Business Library homepage.

  • Chicago Board of Trade:   "The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), established in 1848, is a leading futures and futures-options exchange. More than 3,600 CBOT member/stockholders trade 50 different futures and options products at the CBOT by open auction and electronically. Volume at the Exchange in 2005 surpassed 674 million contracts, the highest yearly total recorded in its history." See their Market Data and Publications (some of them free for downloading). In October 2006, the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange announced a plan to merge, with the new entity to be named CME Group Inc.; see the announcement CME & CBOT to Merge.

  • Chicago Mercantile Exchange:   A for-profit company, the "CME is the largest futures exchange in the United States and also owns and operates the largest futures Clearing House in the world. CME products fall into five major areas: interest rates, equities, foreign exchange, agricultural commodities and alternative investments." See their five-year Facts & Figures and Intro To Futures, for introductory information about futures and about trading. See also their Strategy Guide to Futures & Options (in 49 PDF pages). This site also offers a Broker Locator.

  • Commodity Futures Trading Commission:   The mission of this U.S. government agency is to "protect market users and the public from fraud, manipulation, and abusive practices related to the sale of commodity and financial futures and options, and to foster open, competitive, and financially sound futures and option markets." See their Exchanges and Products, Commitments of Traders, and Before You Trade.

  • Futures Industry Association:   This organization is "the only association representative of all organizations that have an interest in the futures market. FIA has more than 180 corporate members, reaching thousands of industry participants." See their Volume Statistics and Futures Industry Magazine.

  • Futures Prices:   This site provides delayed, daily futures prices for currencies, energies, financials, grains, indices, meats, metals, and softs, with open, high, low, and last prices, with links to quotes, charts, and options.

  • Introduction to the Futures and Options Markets:   This Institute for Financial Markets site, dated 1998, provides a short course in futures and options in the form of answers to eighteen frequently-asked questions. This webpage also offers a glossary to explain futures and options terms.

  • National Futures Association:   This organization is "the industrywide, self-regulatory organization for the U.S. futures industry." "Membership in NFA is mandatory, assuring that everyone conducting business with the public on the U.S. futures exchanges--more than 4,200 firms and 55,000 associates--must adhere to the same high standards of professional conduct." See their Investor Information, including educational materials (in PDF format) and their Background Affiliation Status Information Center, to look up futures brokers firms, and their long list of Disciplined Firms.

  • TFC Charts:   This site provides delayed, weekly, monthly, historical, quote, news and other data for futures in for grains and oilseeds, cattle, pork and meat, petroleum, interest rates and bonds, stock and commodity indexes, food and fiber, metals, and currencies. See also their Short Course on commodity markets and futures trading, in just a dozen chapters.

  • Wall Street Journal — Commodities & Futures:   Daily overview, current cash prices, complete commodities and futures data, spot prices, settlement prices, and futures options data.

  • Wikipedia:   This free online user-created and maintained encyclopedia can be a good starting point for an orientation to a topic. See their entry for Futures Contracts.

    Foster Business Library Reference Collection:

    The Foster Business Library Reference Collection consists of business handbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other quick reference tools. It is located behind the Reference Desk in Foster, arranged by call number. Reference materials cannot be checked out; they may only be used in the library.

  • A financial history of the United States.
    This three-volume encyclopedia covers U.S. financial history from 1492 to 2001, with a combination of "broad stroke history and lively anecdote," written single-handed by a law professor at the University of North Carolina.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG181 .M297 2001.

    See futures markets in the 1980s in volume three, on pages 161 to 163; futures markets in the 1990s in volume three, on pages 271 to 274; abuses in futures markets, in volume two, on pages 102 to 104; the Cotton Futures Act, in volume two, pages 95 and 96; the Federal Trade Commission and futures markets, in volume two, pages 100 and 101; financial futures, in volume three, pages 89 and 90; the Futures Trading Act of 1921, in volume two, pages 101 and 102; the Futures Trading Practices Act of 1992, in volume three, on pages 164 and 197.

  • The Irwin guide to stocks, bonds, futures, and options.
    This work includes chapters on treasuries securities, corporate fixed-income securities, municipal securities, and asset-backed securities, with market overviews, conventions, structure, etc.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG4521 .L637 2001.

    See Futures on pages 275 to 291.

  • The handbook of alternative assets.
    This handbook covers hedge funds, commodity and managed futures, private equity, credit derivatives, and corporate governance.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG4530 .A57 2002.

    See section II, chapters 10 to 13, for Commodity and Managed Futures, on pages 175 to 257.

  • Stocks, bonds, options, futures.
    This updated work covers all major securities markets, designed for creating optimum investment portfolios.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG4921 .S7945 2001.

    See Futures Contracts on pages 209 to 231.

    Foster Business Library Books:

    The Foster Business Library maintains a collection of over 70,000 books on all business topics. To search for materials on all three campuses of the University of Washington, go to the UW Libraries Catalog, in the upper left corner of the Foster Business Library homepage. Search by keyword, title, author, series, etc.

    To limit the results of your search just to materials in the Foster Business Library collection, use the Modify or Limit options at the top of the search results and change the library location to Foster Business Library. Availablity is indicated on the right of each online catalog record. First, note in which collection, within Foster, your materials are in, since the library has ten different Collections, each in a different location and often with differing arrangements. "Available" indicates that the book should be on the shelves under that call number and available for you to check out. "Due" and a date indicates that the book is already checked out to someone and is due back on the date indicated; you can have the "Request/Place Hold" feature to recall the book for your use.

    If the material you want is not in the collections of the University of Washington, you can use the "Search Summit" feature to repeat your search in the combined holdings of over thirty cooperating libraries in Washington and Oregon. Use the "Request This Item" feature in Summit to have books in those library sent here to Foster for you to check out.

    The Foster general stacks collection is located south of the main part of the Foster Business Library, through the two pass-throughs into the basement of Balmer. The arrangement is by call number, from A (at the east end, near the Copy Center) to Z (at the far west end).

    A subject search for Futures produced over 160 records in the UW Libraries, with over sixty records in the Foster Business Library, including:

    Related, narrower subjects (and Foster Business Library holdings) include:

    Foster Business Library Articles:

    Articles in academic journals, magazines, trade periodicals, and newspapers are one of the best sources for any kind of research. While the Foster Business Library offers a large periodicals print collection, comprising over 800 titles, articles are most easily accessed online, 24/7, in such fulltext article databases as EBSCO Business Source Premier, Factiva, LexisNexis Academic, Newsbank Infoweb, and ProQuest Databases. These article databases are available in the library or from off-campus, and provide access to over 10,000 periodicals and millions of articles.

    Library access to most ProQuest databases will terminate at the end of spring quarter 2008, except for ProQuest NewsStand, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, Historical New York Times, and the Historical Wall Street Journal. For more about this change, see UW Libraries Providing New Databases. After this change, comprehensive article searches should be performed in EBSCO Business Source Premier, Newsbank Infoweb, and ProQuest NewsStand. Also, after this change, links to the articles below will be broken.

    ProQuest Databases:

    This database--actually, a family of over two dozen databases--offers full text articles for over 10,000 publications, including scholarly journals, magazines, trade and industry periodicals, newspapers, and reports on a very wide range of topics. To find articles on specific topics, search by word or phrase by keying your search phrase into the search box--or search for your topic in the Topic Guide.

    Your search terms will be highlighted in red in each article.

    A subject search in this database for SUB(Futures) produced over 2,200 articles, including over 520 articles in scholarly journals, over 530 magazine articles, over 1,300 articles in trade and industry periodicals, and over 160 newspaper articles. Similar searches for SUB(Futures Market) produced over 4,200 articles while a search for SUB(Futures Trading) produced over 21,000 articles.

    Subject searches can be narrowed by combining them with other subjects, such as:

    • SUB(Futures) and SUB(Hedging)   (over 700 articles)
    • SUB(Futures) and SUB(Risk)   (over 240 articles)
    • SUB(Futures) and SUB(Interest Rates)   (over 230 articles)
    • SUB(Futures) and SUB(Portfolio Management)   (over 230 articles)
    • SUB(Futures) and SUB(Financial Futures)   (over 200 articles)
    • SUB(Futures) and SUB(Studies)   (over 200 articles)
    • SUB(Futures) and SUB(Options)   (over 180 articles)
    • SUB(Futures) and SUB(Investments)   (over 170 articles)
    • SUB(Futures) and SUB(Commodity Markets)   (over 150 articles)

    Examples of articles, from the searches above, include:

     Help:
    10 April 2006; updated 12 March 2008.   Peter Stevens, Business Librarian, stevens@u.washington.edu