Trading underlying and futures contracts
Hey guys, I was wondering why can’t you just buy/sell a futures contract and take the opposite position in the underlying for risk free profit as the price of the underlying and future converges on the day of expiry?
For example AAPL is currently trading at 213.49 and AAPL futures (expiry 2025-07-18) is trading at 216.01 (trading view). why can’t someone just buy AAPL and sell the future for guaranteed profit as the futures price must converge by the expiry?
I must be missing something obvious but can’t seem to figure out how this isn’t an unlimited money glitch?
That's indeed something that is often misunderstood. To buy the stock you would have to borrow so there is a "cost of carry". Ignoring dividends the no-arbitrage forward price should be something like spot-price x (1 + interest rate * time-to-maturity of the future). There are also subtleties like futures margining which will play a role. But the main thing should be cost of carry. In general the formula is forward price = spot-price * e^(cost-of-carry * time-to-expiry). Here I am using continuous compounding instead of simple interest.
I'm not familiar with single stock futures in the US which are pretty illiquid but generally there is a going to be a basis between the cash stock or index and the future due to interest rates and dividends. Assuming these single stock futures are like almost every other future in the world to go long the stock and short the single stock future requires paying for the cash stock now but only receiving payment for the future at delivery. Given current interests and 4 months until expiry this cost of capital is a not insignificant difference which would presumably create at least a 1% spread between cash and the future.
Even if for whatever reason the AAPL single stock future was mispriced it would still not be an infinite money glitch as liquidity at arbitragable prices is going to be very limited and you will need to pay increasingly wide bid-ask spreads. I am not entirely sure where AAPL single stock futures trade but I don't think it's on any major US exchange so there is the possibility of very wide spreads or large transaction fees as well.
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