Front month

The front month is the futures contract with the nearest delivery date still being actively traded, and its price is usually what news reports quote as a commodity's price.

Exchanges list futures contracts for many delivery months at once, but trading concentrates heavily in whichever one is nearest, the front month. It usually has the deepest liquidity, the tightest bid-ask spreads, and is the contract that news reports mean when they cite “the price of oil” or “the price of wheat” without further detail.

As the front-month contract nears expiry, trading activity shifts to the next contract in line, a process visible in open interest moving from one month to the next. Because the front month sits closest to today’s physical market conditions, it typically reacts fastest to news, while contracts further out on the forward curve reflect longer-term expectations and move less on any single day’s events.