Trader Resources : Futures Markets Basics : Traders on the Floor
There are typically three types of traders on the trading room floor at any time.

Brokers
Brokers charge a fee to trade on behalf of other people. They are limited to open outcry and hand signals for communicating their bids and offers.

Speculators
Speculators trade on behalf of their own accounts. They trade futures contracts for profit, not to hedge the risk they hold with a physical commodity. Speculators provide the market with "liquidity".

Hedgers
As mentioned earlier, hedgers buy and sell contracts to mitigate the risks of fluctuating market conditions. They are typically the producers who deal in the cash commodity.

Hedgers and speculators have different memberships in the exchanges, and get charged different fees and margins for a transaction. FACTSim simulates the role of a speculator dealing through a broker. You may think of FACTSim as the commodity equivalent of E-Trade or a similar online brokerage.

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