Jurisprudential and Financial Investigation of Stock Index Futures and Suggestion of an Alternative Model

One of the most useful tools in the risk management and portfolio management is "stock index futures contracts". Applications such as various portfolio risk management, single stock risk management, index arbitrage, spreading and others have made them one of the most popular derivative securities with investment managers. However, sharia studies by Shia and Sunni scholars in the field of Islamic financial instruments have provided some reasons against using these securities due to their creating some challenges. To remove these jurisprudential inhibitions, this paper suggests "index funds futures" rather than stock index futures contract. Nowadays, there are mechanisms and legal infrastructures that are required for setting up index funds in stock markets. Index funds are therefore used that can create return after costs of fund along with minimum tracking errors. This study, while pointing out different dimensions of stock index futures and index fund, determines what type of stock index has similar behavior to index of Iranian capital market. The research is descriptive and relies on analytical – deductive methods and library documents.