Contract Month / Delivery Month Codes
The single-letter codes futures exchanges assign to each calendar month, appended to a root symbol with a year to identify a specific contract.
Contract month codes (also delivery month codes) are the standardized single letters that identify which month a futures contract expires or delivers in. A full symbol combines the product root, the month letter, and the year — so ESZ5 is the E-mini S&P 500 (ES) December (Z) 2025 contract, and CLM6 is WTI crude (CL) June (M) 2026.
The twelve codes, set decades ago and uniform across CME, ICE, and other exchanges, are: F January, G February, H March, J April, K May, M June, N July, Q August, U September, V October, X November, Z December. Equity index and many financial futures trade the quarterly cycle — H, M, U, Z (March, June, September, December) — while energies and ags often list every month.
Reading codes correctly is a basic survival skill: confusing the front month with a deferred month, or rolling into the wrong expiry, is a classic and avoidable error. Note that some data vendors use a two-digit year (ESZ25) while floor convention uses one digit (ESZ5).
Example
To find the symbol for the September 2026 Nasdaq-100 E-mini: root NQ + September code U + year 6 = NQU6 (or NQU26 in two-digit vendor notation). For March 2026 crude: CL + H + 6 = CLH6.
Related Terms
Back Month
Any futures contract month beyond the front month; typically less liquid and used for hedging or spread strategies.
BeginnerExpiration
The date on which a futures contract reaches the end of its life and is either cash-settled or triggers physical delivery.
BeginnerFront Month
The nearest-expiry futures contract with the highest liquidity and trading volume at any given time.
BeginnerRoll Date
The session when volume and open interest migrate from the expiring futures contract to the next contract month.
IntermediateRollover
Closing a near-expiry futures position and simultaneously reopening it in the next contract month to maintain exposure without taking delivery.
Intermediate