Report Overview - Report Date: July 2, 2025 - Report Title: Index Futures Basis Series: Maintaining the Strategy of Basis Convergence - Analysts: Yu Kan, Li Honglei 1. Report Industry Investment Rating - Not provided in the report 2. Core Viewpoints - The futures market's characteristic of following the upward movement but not the downward movement may indicate investors' expectations for the index market. Coupled with the improvement of fundamentals and the continuation of the low - interest - rate environment, the report is optimistic about the further improvement of the index beta, which will drive the basis to rise. Regulatory policies may bring trillions of incremental funds to the market, increasing the certainty of the index's upward trend. Currently, the basis has returned to a historical low, and the previous strategy ideas can be continued, including enhancing the long - position substitution strategy, mainly using near - month hedging for short - position hedging, and adopting the term reverse arbitrage strategy for inter - period arbitrage [6][20][26] 3. Summary by Directory 3.1 Recent Basis Review - **Market Performance in June**: The A - share market in June showed a "low - first - then - high" structural trend. At the beginning and middle of the month, despite favorable policies, the market risk appetite was not significantly repaired. In the last week, with multiple positive factors, the market risk appetite rapidly increased, trading volume significantly expanded, and the index rose rapidly. Small and micro - cap stocks led the gains, with a monthly increase of over 5% [6][7][8] - **Basis Changes**: In June, the arbitrage trading of eating the basis increased. The basis of IC and IM has been continuously converging since mid - June, while IH and IF remained stable throughout the month. At the end of the month, due to market adjustments and institutional profit - taking pressure, the basis widened rapidly, and each variety's basis returned to a low level in the past three years. The intraday 1 - minute frequency basis of each variety remained highly consistent, indicating systematic expectations. The futures market's characteristic of following the upward movement but not the downward movement reflects investors' expectations for the index market [6][14][20] - **Strategy Performance in June**: The return of the long - position substitution strategy further increased. The excess returns of the IC and IM main contracts compared to the index increased to 2.8% and 12.6% respectively, nearly 2% higher than in May. For short - position hedging, near - month contracts had lower costs, especially in the IC variety. In inter - period arbitrage, the long - far - month and short - near - month strategy gained some profits but suffered a retracement at the end of the month [22] - **Product - End Strategy Adjustment**: In June, there were adjustments in the strategy positions of the product end, showing the characteristics of quick entry and exit. Index - related products were stable with a slight decline, but the scale of A500ETF stabilized and rebounded, and the new issuance of index - enhanced products increased compared to May. The neutral strategy suffered a certain retracement, but the long - short positions increased as the hedging cost decreased. The long - position substitution strategy of futures was evident, and the CTA strategy's futures positions increased rapidly during the index's rise but decreased rapidly at the end of the month, causing the basis to fall back to a historical low and creating an arbitrage space [24][25] 3.2 Long - Position Roll - Over Performance Review - **Performance Data**: In the past 250 trading days, the annualized excess returns of IF, IH, IC, and IM in the long - position roll - over strategy were - 3.6%, 0.9%, 2.1%, and - 4.1% respectively. The benchmark portfolio was set as a weighted combination based on the previous trading day's closing positions of each contract, without considering handling fees. The trading prices in the calculation were the TWAP prices in the first half - hour of the opening [38] 3.3 Short - Position Roll - Over Performance Review - **Performance Data**: In the past 250 trading days, the annualized excess returns of IF, IH, IC, and IM in the short - position roll - over strategy were - 0.2%, - 0.5%, 1.2%, and - 0.3% respectively [45]