The World Blog by humble servant.

Righteousness Defined [2:177] Righteousness is not turning your faces towards the east or the west. Righteous are those who believe in GOD, the Last Day, the angels, the scripture, and the prophets; and they give the money, cheerfully, to the relatives, the orphans, the needy, the traveling alien, the beggars, and to free the slaves; and they observe the Contact Prayers (Salat) and give the obligatory charity (Zakat); and they keep their word whenever they make a promise; and they steadfastly persevere in the face of persecution, hardship, and war. These are the truthful; these are the righteous. In the above verse, God gives us more understanding what righteousness is. We need to strive to follow all of these traits of a believer. [51:20] The earth is full of signs for those who are certain. [15:99] And worship your Lord, in order to attain certainty. [25:77] Say, “You attain value at my Lord only through your worship. But if you disbelieve, you incur the inevitable consequences.” All...

Imagine you're a trader named Alex, sitting at your desk on a crisp December morning in 2025, watching the stock market tick by on your screen. You've got positions in S&P 500 futures, and as the third Friday of the month approaches—December 19, to be exact—you start feeling that familiar tension. This is expiration day for your quarterly contracts, a pivotal moment in the world of stock index futures where everything comes to a head.Stock index futures, like those tied to the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, or Dow Jones, aren't about owning actual stocks; they're bets on where the index will land in the future. They're cash-settled, meaning no one hands over a basket of shares at the end—just a payout based on the difference between your contract price and the index's final value. For major U.S. indexes, expiration hits on that third Friday of March, June, September, or December, often overlapping with options expirations in what's dramatically called "qu...