What Are Futures?
When any two organizations, or people, want to exchange something that is hard to deliver, they need to agree when the delivery will take place. For instance, if somebody wants to buy a barrel of oil, a basket of stocks, or 25000 pounds of copper, the seller could not physically make it available instantaneously. So, an exchange defines contracts which bind a buyer and a seller to certain terms. The terms of the contracts are standardized for all details like quantity and quality, depending on the asset or commodity. The exchanges create an array of identical terms, and indexes them by date. Typically these dates are periodic, and months apart, going into the future. These contracts, are called “futures”. Or, “Futures Contracts”.
Taking the data, from the settlement prices for the array of dated contracts, one can plot them on a graph with the bottom axis being time and the vertical axis being dollars. Connect the dots, and voila, a nice curve. The different curves can be used for many reasons including but not limited to; macro economic inferences, trading decisions, corporate hedging, and market speculation.
See Wikipedia, or Investopedia, for more information.