Roll cost calculator
A commodity position does not just sit there. Every expiry it moves to the next month, at the next month's price - and the difference is the standing cost of being exposed at all.
Why rolling costs money
Futures expire, and exposure that outlives the contract must move to the next month. When later months trade higher than nearer ones - contango, the usual state, because storing a physical commodity costs money - each roll sells cheap and buys dear. No single roll looks like much. Twelve of them a year, every year, compound into one of the largest costs a commodity position carries, and the only one that never appears on a statement as a fee.
It is not a broker charge
A CFD or spread bet rolls automatically, and the adjustment can look like something the broker did to you. It is not. The price gap between contract months is set on the exchange by storage economics and the physical balance, and a futures trader rolling by hand pays exactly the same gap. When the curve inverts - backwardation, nearer months dearer - the same mechanism pays a rolling long instead, and this calculator's negative numbers show it.
What this tool will not tell you
Whether to hold, roll or close anything. The annualised figures multiply today's curve by a year of rolls - a snapshot extended, not a forecast, because the curve reshapes constantly. What the number gives you is the honest running cost of the exposure at today's prices, which is the figure any decision about holding it should have started from.
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