Reading the board: codes, months and the front

The commodities track taught that the chart is one month of many. Futures trading happens where the months are all visible at once - the board - and its first literacy is the code.

The symbol grammar

• Root: the contract family - the exchange's short code for the underlying and spec.
• Month letter: the fixed alphabet, F for January to Z for December - one letter, learned once, used for every contract on every exchange that follows the convention.
• Year digit: the final character - and the one ambiguity, since a single digit cycles each decade; platforms disambiguate, and the listed-months spec row says what actually exists.

Reading the column

A board shows each listed month with its own bid, offer, last, volume and open interest - the commodities lesson rendered as a table. The reading habits: find the front month by volume, not by nearness - the nearest month may already be dying into expiry while the next carries the market; watch the volume hand over from month to month as expiry approaches - the roll, visible as a migration down the column; and treat each row as its own instrument with its own book - because module 1 said exactly that, and the board is where it becomes operational.

Which month is 'the price'

Quoted prices, charts and headlines follow the most-active month, and platforms switch their continuous feeds when the volume hands over - not on expiry day. The practical consequences: know which month your chart is showing, especially near roll windows; expect the handover date to differ by contract family - equity index futures roll quarterly, energy monthly; and when precision matters, trade and chart the explicit symbol, never the continuous alias. The board is the primary source; everything else is a view of it.