Futures are a different animal, so we’ve built in a feature to help you understand your delta exposure by providing traders a different point of view: ETF delta equivalency to futures. When enabled, this feature displays the future’s delta equivalent to its respective ETF. 

Where can I see ETF Equivalent Delta?

Displays as a column in the Positions tab

The ETF equivalent delta value displays in place of the “Net Delta” column of futures positions. When enabled, your Positions tab Net Delta column shows like this:. Additionally, ETF Equivalent Delta will only appear if your account(s) is enabled for futures trading. Enabling the ETF Delta Equivalent setting in a non-futures enabled account will not affect the display on your positions page. At the end of this article, you can find a table that has the delta equivalents, or share equivalents, of each futures contract that has a respective ETF.

Let’s do an example with this feature turned on. If you are short 1 /ES (E-mini S&P 500) futures contract, then the ETF equivalent delta would be -500∆ (or 500 short shares of SPY) since that is the ETF equivalent of one short /ES future. When this feature is disabled, the delta will be -50∆, instead of -500∆.

How can I turn on/off ETF Equivalent Delta

Visit the Desktop Platform Settings Menu

You may toggle this feature on or off by heading to the desktop platform Settings menu. You may access the Settings menu by clicking on the gear icon located throughout the platform. Once inside the Settings menu, head to the “Accounts” module and select the “Accounts” tab above. To disable it, uncheck the box next to “Show Futures Delta Using Equivalent ETF/Stock Symbol.” The screenshot below illustrates this feature location.

When you have an outright futures contract position the ETF delta equivalent value displays within the symbol detail area of the Active Trader interface. To learn more about Active Trader, then please click here. The screenshot below illustrates where you can find his metric.

Table of ETF Equivalent Delta to Futures

One outright futures contract vs. # of ETF shares*

If the area below is blank, then please give it one moment to load. Small Exchange products and CME Micro futures contracts are displayed in white rows.