A commodity market is in contango if the spot price is lower than the futures price. A contango position is the futures position you hold with a price higher than spot price.

The symbol for Contango Oil & Gas Company in the AMEX is: MCF.

As of July 2014, the market cap for Contango Oil & Gas Company (MCF) is $788,559,617.36

The main business of the Contango Group is an investment company. They are located in Sydney, Australia. This company encourages foreign investment in Australia.

In short, whether we have Backwardation or Contango depends on how the expected future spot prices are quantified and how the related commodity strips behave. Contango and Backwardation in Common Usage Investment professionals on financial TV channels and in newspapers colloquially refer to upward trends in futures prices as contango and downward trends in futures prices as backwardation. Contango and Backwardation in Economic TheoryIn economic theory regarding Backwardation and Contango, associated with John Maynard Keyns and John Hicks, for Contango to exist, expected spot prices (someday in the future) have to be lower than current futures prices for the same future moments, and reverse has to apply for Backwardation. Thus whether we have a contango or bacwardation depends on an arbitrary forward estimate of spot prices. For example, if we estimate that today's spot price, price at which a physical commodity is trading today, is an expected spot price someday in the future, and we see an upward trend in a commodity strip (series of future contracts prices), we see a contango. On the other hand, if the futures prices in a commodity strip trending upwards are considered unbiased estimates of the expected future spot prices, meaning they are equal, there is no Contango or Backwardation to speak of. By the way, upward trend of estimates may be a result of storage expenses.