Futures which should be careful when directly using their prices / quotes for returns calculation

I heard that some of the futures' prices / quotes which got from Bloomberg terminal could not be used directly for calculating the returns. I would like to ask what kinds of futures will be in this case.

Hi,



Can you give more context or source where you have found futures' data from the Bloomberg terminal not of any use. If you mean the futures data is simply added together to create a continuous series, then yes, this might be of limited use, because there will be a sudden drop (or increase) when we move from one expired future to the next.

However, there are methods which can be used to create a continuous series of the futures such as proportional adjustment. You can refer to the section 8 of the Futures Trading course, 

Futures Trading: Concepts & Strategies



Hope this helps.