Who would have thought? We now have water being traded as a commodity. Water futures simply means investors get to trade water just as they have been doing with gold or copper or oil. We should have seen this coming because water is increasingly becoming scarce. Scarcer a commodity, more valuable it becomes. Let's now understand the futures part. Futures are short for futures contract—essentially a pact entered by two parties to buy a commodity (water in this case) at a time in the future they agree upon now. Futures enable traders to bet on the price of a commodity in the future. In this case, futures help investors make money on the assumption that water will become scant and ergo, costlier.