Any problems with holding futures contracts for the long term?

Let's say you want to hold futures contracts for the long term on the S%26amp;P 500. Can you just keep rolling over the futures contracts when they reach expiration indefinitely? Are there any hidden problems with this strategy? Will your returns over the long term match the S%26amp;P 500?|||That would be risky since a future contract costs a little but represents a large value. As the price declined in the past year you would have been subject to many margin calls or been wiped out.





You could get a mutual fund that represents the S%26amp;P and then other ETF's or mutual funds to diversify your risk and increase the possibilities of greater returns.





Include an International and Emerging market fund to improve your returns also. Your may want some funds in money market of bonds also to diversify.|||Actually you can. Most funds do like you said. But generally that's not good way in trading derivatives like futures. Because it's too difficult to keep the position for a long time as its nature and buy-and-hold strategy cannot guarantee profit as its historical record. If you really want to hold some asset for the long term, buy stocks.|||you could do that if you wanted. your returns would be less than the S%26amp;P 500 because of your rollover expenses and also when you buy futures with lots of time to expiration you pay a time premium that will erode so that when you rollover to a new futures contract you will again be paying a time premium. you could look at current futures prices to determine a years worth of time premiun and thus how much your strategy would lag the index itself.