About Expiration Dates

Getting this information about futures is a bit more tricky because futures do not have a fixed ticker symbol and different futures change their ticker symbols in different ways. Overall, determining the ticker symbol for a future has two steps.

  1. For today's date, determine what month and year the current contract is trading for. For example, if today's date is 15 Dec 2011, then Future XXX's current contract month and year might be 2/2012, then I want to know 2/2012.

  2. Once I know the month and year (2/2012 in the example above) I can use that information to generate the ticker symbol for the future.

Generating Futures Ticker Symbols

Futures tickers are a little different from stocks. Each futures market has a ticker symbol that is followed by symbols for the contract month and the year. For example, crude oil futures have a ticker symbol - CL. The complete ticker symbol for December 2012 Crude Oil Futures would be - CLZ12.

The "CL" stands for the underlying futures contract.

The "Z" stands for a December.
  (F=Jan, G=Feb, H=Mar, J=Apr, K=May, M=June, N=July, Q=Aug, U=Sep, V=Oct, X=Nov, Z=Dec)

The "12" stands for the year – 2012."