Future delivery. Under a forward delivery contract, one of the counterparties commits to supply a certain quantity of a commodity, currency, or security at the specified price on a specified date to the other counterparty in settlement of the contract. The buyer of this contract is said to be in a 'long' position, and the seller to be in a 'short' position. A forward delivery contract is a basic type of standardized forward contract used in hedging and traded on futures exchanges such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). also called deferred delivery.