Futures Terminology

Pyth Pro provides price feeds for futures feeds across multiple asset classes including commodities and more. This guide explains how to interpret futures ticker symbols.

Ticker Symbol Format

Futures tickers on Pyth follow the standard format:

[ROOT][MONTH][YEAR]

For example: WTIJ6 breaks down as:

• WTI = West Texas Intermediate (Crude Oil)
• J = April (month code)
• 6 = 2026 (last digit of year)

Month Codes

Futures feeds use single-letter codes to represent expiration months:

Why these letters? The letters skip I, L, O, P, R, S, W, and Y to avoid confusion with numbers (1, 0) and other abbreviations commonly used in trading.

Year Codes

The year is represented by the last digit of the year:

• 5 = 2025
• 6 = 2026
• 7 = 2027

Examples

Crude Oil (WTI)

Brent Crude Oil

Copper

Natural Gas

LS Gasoil

Corn

Pyth Symbol Format

On Pyth, futures symbols include the asset class prefix. The table below lists all available futures assets:

Commodities

Equity Indices

Chain Metadata

Every dated feed belongs to a chain: the family of feeds on the same underlying that differ only by expiration. The symbols API exposes three chain-level fields on each feed, with identical values across the whole chain. See Symbology & Reference Data for the full field definitions.

For the WTI chain (WTIV6, WTIX6, WTIZ6, ...):

{
  "symbol_chain_id": "WTI",
  "expiration_pattern": [
    "jan",
    "feb",
    "mar",
    "apr",
    "may",
    "jun",
    "jul",
    "aug",
    "sep",
    "oct",
    "nov",
    "dec"
  ],
  "availability_pattern": [
    "F",
    "G",
    "H",
    "J",
    "K",
    "M",
    "N",
    "Q",
    "U",
    "V",
    "X",
    "Z"
  ]
}

symbol_chain_id is the bare symbol root (WTI), not a fully-qualified Pyth symbol. expiration_pattern is the chain's full annual expiration cycle, written as month abbreviations; availability_pattern is the subset Pyth prices, written as the month codes above.

Values are per-chain. WTI expires monthly and Pyth prices every month, so both patterns cover all twelve. Copper (CC) also expires monthly, but its availability_pattern is ["H", "K", "N", "U", "Z"] — only the March, May, July, September, and December feeds are published.

Expiration and Rollover

Futures feeds expire on specific dates. When a feed approaches expiration:

1. Liquidity shifts to the next feed month
2. Price feeds transition to the new front-month feed
3. Rollover dates vary by commodity — check the Symbology and Reference Data API for exact expiration dates, or see Symbology & Reference Data for the field definitions

Which feed months exist at all is given by the chain's expiration_pattern, and which of those Pyth publishes by its availability_pattern — see Chain Metadata above.

Expiration Handling: Ensure your application handles feed rollovers gracefully. Monitor for feed transitions as feeds approach expiration.

Additional Resources

• Symbology & Reference Data — Field reference for the symbol metadata served by the symbols endpoint
• Symbology and Reference Data API — Full list of available futures feeds with expiration dates
• Market Hours — Trading hours for futures markets