December 14th, 2013, 9:08 am
QuoteOriginally posted by: AlanI thought I understood contango and backwardation, but wikipedia has confused me.Is backwardation, for example, the case where:1. The futures price is lower than the spot?, or2. The futures price is lower than the expected spot (where 'expected' means in some some 'objective/historical/actuarial' sense)? These are clearly different notions. Take VIX, for example, in very stressed markets. We would expect 1 to hold, but not necessarily 2.Presumably the same could be said for many markets.In some circles, they speak about normal backwardation (2) and backwardation. Not sure how well spread this convention his.