The two dates, and which one matters

Last trading day (LTD) is when a contract stops trading. Every contract has one.

First notice day (FND) is the first day a long position may be assigned a delivery obligation. Only physically-delivered contracts have one, and where it exists it usually comes before the last trading day — which makes it the date that actually binds. Our metals contracts are the case in point: gold trading runs into the delivery month, so the notice date lands about four weeks before trading stops.

Not every physically-delivered contract has a meaningful FND. WTI crude, natural gas and the refined products all stop trading before the delivery month begins, so there is no separate "close before notice" window — the last trading day is the deadline. We show no FND for those rather than print a date that implies a safety margin that does not exist.

Cash-settled contracts have no FND at all. The equity indices, FX futures, crypto and the 1-ounce gold contract all settle in cash, so there is nothing to deliver and nothing to be noticed for.

How these dates are produced

They are computed from each contract's published termination rule, not copied from a published table. Gold, for instance, terminates on the third-to-last business day of the delivery month, with first notice on the last business day of the month before. Given a correct US market-holiday calendar, that rule reproduces the date exactly — and it keeps working for contracts that have not been listed yet.

Every build runs consistency checks: each date must be a business day, first notice must precede last trading, and dates must advance monotonically through the cycle. Those catch arithmetic and holiday errors mechanically. They cannot confirm that the rule we encoded is the rule the exchange publishes — that requires a human comparison, which is why unverified contracts are labelled as such above.

What we deliberately do not compute

ZT, ZF, ZN, ZB, SR3, BZ are not listed here. Their termination rules are more intricate than the families above — the Treasury complex in particular has delivery mechanics we are not confident enough to reproduce. For those, use the exchange's own calendar. A plausible-looking wrong date is worse than no date.