futures

Commercial contracts calling for the purchase or sale of specified quantities of a good at specified future dates. The good in question may be grain, livestock, precious metals, or financial instruments such as treasury bills. Up until the time the contract calls for the delivery of the good, the contract is subject to speculation. Futures contracts originated in the trade in agricultural commodities; for example, American grain farmers were able to sell their harvest in advance on the Chicago Board of Trade, a commodity exchange.

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Failed industrialization campaign undertaken by the Chinese communists between 1958 and early 1960. Mao Zedong hoped to develop labour-intensive methods of industrialization that would emphasize manpower rather than the gradual purchase of heavy machinery, thereby putting to use China's dense population and obviating the need to accumulate capital. Rather than building large new factories, he proposed developing backyard steel furnaces in every village. Rural people were organized into communes where agricultural and political decisions emphasized ideological purity rather than expertise. The program was implemented so hastily and zealously that many errors occurred; these were exacerbated by a series of natural disasters and the withdrawal of Soviet technical personnel. China's agriculture was severely disrupted, causing widespread famine in 1958–62. By early 1960 the government had begun to repeal the Great Leap Forward; private plots were returned to peasants, and expertise began to be emphasized again.

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Forward may refer to:

• Relative direction, where forward is the opposite of backward
• Forward, the motto of the State of Wisconsin
• Forward, the motto of the City of Birmingham
• Forward contract, an agreement to buy or sell an asset at a pre-agreed future point
• The Forward, a Jewish-American newspaper

In physics:

• Forward pseudorapidity region, particles traveling very close to the beam in a particle accelerator.
• Forward converter, a DC-DC converter circuit

In sports:

• Forward, another term for Striker in association football, usually associated with a more deep-lying position than a conventional striker.
• Forward (basketball), including
• Point forward
• Power forward (basketball)
• Small forward
• Forward (ice hockey)
• Power forward (ice hockey)
• In rugby football:
• Forwards, in rugby league
• Forwards, in rugby union

In literature:

• Forward!, a collection of short stories by Gordon R. Dickson
• Forward Poetry Prize

In music:

• Forward (Ayla Brown album), an album recorded by American Idol semi-finalist Ayla Brown
• Forward (Turn album), an album recorded by Meath-based Indie Rock band Turn

In politics:

• Forward (Greenland), a social democratic political party in Greenland
• Kadima (Hebrew for forward), an Israeli political party

Forward may also refer to:

• Email forwarding, a mechanism by which a mail server sends the emails of one of its user's to another address.
• Isuzu Forward, trucks made by Isuzu

Forward is the name of:

• Bob Forward (born 1958), a United States film director; son of Robert L. Forward
• Robert L. Forward (1932-2002), a United States physicist and science fiction writer
• Eve Forward, author of fantasy novels, Villains by Necessity and Animist; daughter of Robert L. Forward

See also

• foreword