Commodity Month Symbols

Most U.S. Exchanges and some non-U.S. Exchanges use commodity month symbols to indicate the contract month being traded.

At first, the month symbols may look a bit confusing, but there is a reason for doing it this way. Letters are not used if they resemble numbers or are already used as commodity symbols.

F = January

G = February

H = March

J = April

K = May

M = June

N = July

Q = August

U = September

V = October

X = November

Z = December

Some exchanges, such as CME, add the year after the commodity month symbol; for example, the CME March Euro FX contract for 2008 is listed as ECH8, where the "EC" is the contract symbol, the "H" is for March and the "8" is for 2008.

Some exchanges may use 2 digits for the year, such as BM&F; for example, the 2007 March Corn contract is listed as CNIH07.

Some exchanges don't use any contract or commodity month symbols at all. They simply use the name of the contract; for example, on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM), they simply list their gold contract as "Gold," and spell out the contract month.

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