Each contract has information listed in several fields, which are explained below:

• Delivery Date - This is the end date of the delivery period. This is a link which, when clicked, will open a separate window allowing you to specify the start and end date of the delivery period. Contracts are created automatically as time goes on, and by default, they each encompass a single month. You can, however, change the delivery period to any date range and even insert new contracts through the window accessed through this link. For example, this allows you to split a month into two separate contracts, one for the first half and one for the last half.
• Alternate Delivery - By default, published contracts are displayed in order by their delivery date. The alternate delivery allows you to enter tesxt which is displayed in place of the delivery date. The area in which the label is displayed is small, so it is best to keep any alternate delivery text as short as possible. Some examples of common alternate deliverys are "New Crop," "Cash," "Spot," and "1st Half."
• Futures Contract - This is where you select the future mobnth off which to base your bid. The drop down menu allows you to choose any actively traded future month.
• Contract Close - Displays the previous session's closing price for the selected futures contract.
• Basis - The basis price of the bid, or the difference between the closing price and the cash price. (see Calc Price Using)
• Cash Price - The cash price of the bid, or the sum of the closing price and the basis.
• Last Change - The date and time at which the bid was last updated.
• Calc Price Using - Determines how the cash price is calculated. Selecting Cash Price will fix the cash price as shown and automatically calculate the basis off the futures contract price. Selecting Basis will fix the basis and calculate the cash price off the futures contract price.
• Display - Essentially activates the bid, and ensures it will be shown on the Cash Bids Page.
• Homepage Visibilty - (Not applicable for Infomail) Displays this bid in your Homepage Component. Note: You can configure the component to display the nearby contract if no contracts are marked to be displayed in the Cash Bid Preferences page.

Tabbing & Arrows

In most browsers (Internet Explorer 5+, Netscape 4+, Mozilla), if you press the tab button immediately after the page loads, the cursor will be placed in the first basis field. As you continue to press tab, the cursor will move down through all the basis fields, move to the cash price column, and proceed downward through all those fields, and then through the rest of the page. When the cursor is in either a basis or cash price field, you can press the up and down arrows on your keyboard to change the vaule of the field by +/- 0.01, respectively.

Calculations

As you make changes to either the basis or cash price of a bid, the other will update to reflect those changes, always holding the relationship of Futures Contract Price + Basis = Cash Price. These calculations are done using the previous session's closing price for the Futures Contract price, even if the commodity is set up to use the last price of the overnight price. Thus, it is possible that the prices you see calculated on this page may not match what is seen on your webs site. This page was designed that way to provide a consistent reference of market conditions without the volatility that can occur.

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