mr lester maddox gambles with food as he buys thousands of tons of rice and wheat in the future in other words he buys clothes that don't yet exist gernot trading the actual cash physical grain or trading promises for grain to be delivered a month or six months or twelve months or eighteen months in the future so you might be trading grain that actually exists but you might just as well more often be trading grain that doesn't even exist yet so your trading promises and your trading back and forth and if you make a promise to buy at a certain price at a certain time you can tassel that by selling that same contract back into the market and that's what happens with most contracts they're never actually delivered upon their traded back and forth and they cancel each other out.