An investor can trade the ‘entire stock market’ by buying index futures instead of buying individual securities with the effi ciency of a mutual fund.
The advantages of trading in Index Futures are:
• The contracts are highly liquid
• Index Futures provide higher leverage than any other stocks
• It requires low initial capital requirement
• It has lower risk than buying and holding stocks
• It is just as easy to trade the short side as the long side
• Only have to study one index instead of 100s of stocks