>What are futures, derivates, etc.?
Deritatives, that is. Derivatives are the broad category to which futures, options, and other exotic instruments belong. They're called derivatives because their price depends directly on the movement in other prices: the price of a futures contract rises or falls with the rise or fall in the price of the underlying commodity (pork bellies or T-bonds).
I devote many pages of Wall Street to more detailed explanations - probably more than you'd ever want to know.
Doug