Expiry: cash or delivery

Four tracks have taught calendars with teeth. The futures module closes by sorting the teeth into their two kinds - because the spec already told you which kind your contract carries.

The cash ending

A cash-settled contract expires into arithmetic: a final settlement value is computed from the underlying - often via a special opening or closing procedure the spec names - the last variation margin moves, and the position simply ceases. No delivery, no notice period, no barrels. The gentlest ending on the platform - with its own sharp edge: the final settlement procedure concentrates enormous obligated flow into one calculation window, and the indices track's auction lessons explain the crowd.

The physical ending

• The commodities machinery, unchanged: last trading day, first notice day, and the delivery obligation for positions that linger - that track's lessons apply verbatim to every physical contract here.
• The retail rule is also unchanged: accounts not equipped for delivery are out before notice, and brokers enforce it by force-closing - the date was on the spec, and surprise remains a process failure.
• The families differ in danger, not in discipline: cash expiries end positions politely; physical ones end them with logistics - but both end them, which no other instrument on this platform ever promised.

The module, closed

Nine lessons assemble to one description: a futures position is a standardised promise (1), guaranteed by architecture (2), traded among a mostly-mechanical cast (3), defined entirely by a one-page spec (4), settled in truth nightly (5), priced by the market's own book (6), tethered to its underlying by carry (7), sized at institutional scale (8), and ended - by cash or by barrels - on a published date (9). Everything is explicit, everything is scheduled, and everything collects. The rest of the track prices, reads, risks and reviews exactly that machine - and module 8 concludes the roll and the curve, as promised from the first lesson.