Normal backwardation

Normal backwardation, also sometimes called backwardation, is the market condition wherein the price of a forward or futures contract is trading below the expected spot price at contract maturity. The resulting futures or forward curve would typically be downward sloping (i.e. "inverted"), since contracts for further dates would typically trade at even lower prices. In practice, the expected future spot price is unknown, and the term "backwardation" may be used to refer to "positive basis", which occurs when the current spot price exceeds the price of the future.