maybe i am the only one who is confused about this, but when we talk about price of a forward contract, are we talking about the exercise price or the value of the contract itself?
The price of a forward contract is the agreed price of the underlying at the expiration of the contract.
then what about the value of contract itself what is it called
And the value of the contract is the difference between the price on the contract and the price in the spot market.
It’s called the value.
Just as the price of an FRA is the fixed rate, or the price of a plain vanilla interest rate swap is the fixed rate; the value of each is what it’s worth to the long or the short.
I wrote some articles on pricing derivatives (http://financialexamhelp123.com/pricing-derivatives/) and valuing derivatives (http://financialexamhelp123.com/valuing-derivatives/) that may be of some help here.