In contrast to directional trading which involves holding one side 

(long/short) of the market, arbitrage trades generally involve 

simultaneous execution of buy and sell orders of multiple contracts 

and make prots from normalizing an abnormal price or price 

relationship between two correlated contracts. Common forms of 

arbitrage trades include calendar spreads, inter-market or intercommodity spreads, which can be executed by simultaneously 

placing buy and sell orders or trading a spread contract.

Here is a demonstration of arbitrage trading using a calendar 

spread example: A merchant nds that the ICE July ULSD futures 

is traded at $3 per barrel lower than the August contract. After 

counting in the monthly storage cost of $1 per barrel and other 

cost factors for carrying over a July contract, there is still almost 

a $2 per barrel arbitrage window. As such, the merchant may 

immediately buy the July contract and simultaneously sell the 

August. If the spread converges by the end of July, the merchant 

can make a prot by closing out his positions. Otherwise, the 

merchant can choose to take physical delivery in July and pay $1 

per barrel for storage and other carry cost. Then make delivery at 

August for his short positions, making a risk-free net prot of $2 

per barrel.

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