VI Energy Politics & Supply Security
Settlement price
The official daily price an exchange publishes for a futures contract at the end of each trading day, used to calculate margin on open positions.
How it works
Futures contracts trade continuously through the day, but the exchange publishes a single official price each day: the settlement price. Open positions are revalued against it every day, and profits and losses are credited to or debited from margin accounts at that price. ICE's Brent contract specification calls this process daily mark-to-market.
For ICE Brent, the settlement price is the weighted average of trades in a 2-minute window starting at 19:28:00 London time. The contract keeps trading until 23:00 London time, so on most days the last traded price and the settlement price differ. On 12 October 2026, for example, December Brent's settlement price was reported at 106.65 dollars, while the last price Investing.com gave for the same day was 106.12 dollars.
The measurement trap is mixing the two prices in the same series. News agencies usually report the settlement price as the close, while data sites often give the day's last traded price. Two sources reporting different Brent closes for the same day is therefore not an error. Daily changes should only be calculated between two prices of the same type.
Why it matters here
Geopolitical news often breaks in the European evening or the US afternoon, after the settlement window. News of an attack arriving after 19:30 does not enter that day's settlement price; it enters the last traded price. When we read when and how far a shock has passed into prices, we state which price we are looking at. Our headline Brent series tracks the last traded price; the gap with the settlement price quoted in agency reports is a measurement difference, not a market move.