A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell on date A, quantity B of stock C for price per share D. When date A comes around, you must buy the stock for that price. How this can backfire on you is pretty easy to understand. You bought a futures contract to buy 10,000 shares of GM for $30 per share on June 1, 2009. On June 1, 2009, GM declared bankruptcy and its stock closed at 75 cents per share. An instant loss of $29.25 per share (or $292,500 on the whole deal) is enough to forever discourage anyone from trading in stock futures. Futures have a purpose in life--stabilizing the price of commodities for their users--but stock trading isn't one of those purposes. Options are different: they are like futures but you have the right, not the obligation, to complete the transaction. If yo