Price graphs - synabu.com Commodity price graphs Agricultural Raw Materials Index | Aluminum Price | Average Petroleum Price | Average Price of Oil | Average Price of U.S. West Coast Softwood Sawnwood | Banana Price | Barley Price | Beef Price | Coal Price | Cocoa Price | Coconut Oil Price | Coffee Price | Coffee Prices | Copper Price | Corn Price | Cotton Price | Edibles Price Index | Energy Price Index | Fishmeal Price | Food Price Index | Fuel and Non Fuel Index | Groundnut Price | Hardwood Log Price | Hog Price | Index Coffee Cocoa and Tea | Index of Industrial Inputs | International Price of Sugar | Iron Ore Price | Lamb Price | Lead Price | Metals Price Index | Nickel Price | Non Fuel Primary Commodity Index | Olive Oil Price | Palm Oil Price | Price of Brazilian Oranges | Price of Chicken | Price of Coarse Wool | Price of Dark Red Meranti | Price of Dubai Oil | Price of Fine Wool | Price of Fresh Salmon | Price of Hides | Price of Natural Gas in America | Price of Natural Gas in Japan | Price of Rice | Price of Rubber | Price of Russian Natural Gas in Germany | Price of Shrimp | Price of Soybean Meal | Price of Soybean Oil | Price of Sugar | Price of Uk Brent Oil | Price of Uranium | Price of West Texas Intermediate Oil | Price of Wheat | Price of Zinc | Softwood Log Price | Soybean Price | Sugar; Us Import Price Contract Number 14 Cif | Sunflower Oil Price | Tea Price | Tin Price Background on commodity markets from Wikipedia Commodity markets Commodity markets are markets where raw or primary products are exchanged. This article focuses on the history and current debates regarding global commodity markets, and is not specific to the markets of any country in particular. It discusses also concerns arising in political economy regarding commodity markets, notably their safety, fairness, and ability to guarantee clearance and closure. It covers physical product (food, metals, electricity) markets but not the ways that services, including those of governments, nor investment, nor debt, can be seen as a commodity. Articles on reinsurance markets, stock markets, bond markets and currency markets cover those concerns separately and in more depth. One focus of this article is the relationship between simple commodity money and the more complex instruments offered in the commodity markets. History The modern commodity markets have their roots in the trading of agricultural products. While wheat and corn, cattle and pigs, were widely traded using standard instruments in the 19th century in the United States, other basic foodstuffs as soybeans were only added quite recently in most markets. For a commodity market to be established, there must be very broad consensus on the variations in the product that make it acceptable for one purpose or another. The economic impact of the development of commodity markets is hard to over-estimate. Through the 19th century "the exchanges became effective spokesmen for, and innovators of, improvements in transportation, warehousing, and financing, which paved the way to expanded interstate and international trade." Early history of commodity markets Historically, dating from ancient Sumerian use of sheep or goats, or other peoples using pigs, rare seashells, or other items as commodity money, people have sought ways to standardize and trade contracts in the delivery of such items, to render trade itself more smooth and predictable. Commodity money and commodity markets in a crude early form are believed to have originated in Sumeria where small baked clay tokens in the shape of sheep or goats were used in trade. Sealed in clay vessels with a certain number of such tokens, with that number written on the outside, they represented a promise to deliver that number. This made them a form of commodity money - more than an "I.O.U." but less than a guarantee by a nation-state or bank. However, they were also known to contain promises of time and date of delivery - this made them like a modern commodity contract. Regardless of the details, it was only possible to verify the number of tokens inside by shaking the vessel or breaking it. At which point, the number or terms written on the outside originally became subject to doubt. Eventually the tokens disappeared, but the contracts remained on flat tablets. This represented the first system of commodity accounting. However, the Commodity status of living things is always subject to doubt - it was hard to validate the health or existence of sheep or goats. Excuses for non-delivery were not unknown, and there are recovered Sumerian letters that complain of sickly goats, sheep that had already been fleeced, etc. If a seller's reputation was good, individual "backers" or "bankers" could decide to take the risk of "clearing" a trade. The observation that trust is always required between market participants later led to credit money. But until relatively modern times, communication and credit were primitive. Classical civilizations built complex global markets trading gold or silver for spices, cloth, wood and weapons, most of which had standards of quality and timeliness. Considering the many hazards of climate, piracy, theft and abuse of military fiat by rulers of kingdoms along the trade routes, it was a major focus of these civilizations to keep markets open and trading in these scarce commodities. Reputation and clearing became central concerns, and the states which could handle them most effectively became very powerful empires, trusted by many peoples to manage and mediate trade and commerce. Commodity and empire Europe did not establish a central banking system until the Knights Templar in the 13th century. A series of commodity markets prevailed in medieval Europe throughout that time, as wheat and cheese and iron and wood were traded in more local markets. The gold standard acquired its pre-eminence to back trade, as it did not depend on the constantly-shifting medieval feudal alliances. Modern commodity markets Despite the shift to fiat money, and credit money, direct commodity trade and barter has always remained active in the background in some form or another, and seems to have been revived due to global capitalism, wherein nearly every currency is widely traded as a commodity. Traditionally, "money-changing" or "banking" was one of the prime functions of commodity markets. The key difference between the ancient and modern commodity markets appears to be degree to which banking and clearing has been separated and regulated by consent of many governments which have surrendered some national sovereignty to enable the Bank for International Settlements, for instance, to back currencies in global trade, establish common risk and reserve standards, and, in the words of its chairman Andrew Crockett, "hardwire the credit culture". With credit concerns minimized or at least standardized, the commodity markets can then trade equity in enterprises as a "stock market", national currencies in a "money market", and everything else in a "commodity market" of its own. Hedging "Hedging", a common (and sometimes mandatory) practice of farming cooperatives, insures against a poor harvest by purchasing futures in the same commodity. If the cooperative has significantly less of its product to sell due to weather or insects, it makes up for that loss with a profit on the markets, since the overall supply of the crop is short everywhere that suffered the same conditions. Whole developing nations may be especially vulnerable, and even their currency tends to be tied to the price of those particular commodity items until it manages to be a fully developed nation. For example, one could see the nominally fiat money of Cuba as being tied to sugar prices, since a lack of hard currency paying for sugar means less foreign goods per peso in Cuba itself. In effect, Cuba needs a hedge against a drop in sugar prices, if it wishes to maintain a stable quality of life for its citizens. Delivery and condition guarantees In addition, delivery day, method of settlement and delivery point must all be specified. Typically, trading must end 2 (or more) business days prior to the delivery day, so that the routing of the shipment (which for soybeans is 30,000 kilograms) can be finalized via ship or rail, and payment can be settled when the contract arrives at any delivery point. Standardization U.S. soybean futures, for example, are of standard grade if they are "GMO or a mixture of GMO and Non-GMO No. 2 yellow soybeans of Indiana, Ohio and Michigan origin produced in the U.S.A. (Non-screened, stored in silo)," and of deliverable grade if they are "GMO or a mixture of GMO and Non-GMO No. 2 yellow soybeans of Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin origin produced in the U.S.A. (Non-screened, stored in silo)." Note the distinction between states, and the need to clearly mention their status as "GMO" ("Genetically Modified Organism") which makes them unacceptable to most "organic" food buyers. Similar specifications apply for orange juice, cocoa, sugar, wheat, corn, barley, "pork bellies" (pigs), milk, feedstuffs, fruits, vegetables, other grains, other beans, hay, other livestock, meats, poultry, eggs, or any other commodity which is so traded. The concept of an interchangeable deliverable or guaranteed delivery is always to some degree a fiction. Trade in commodities is like trade in any other physical product or service. No magic of the commodity contract itself makes "units" of the product totally uniform nor gets it to the delivery point safely and on time. Regulation of commodity markets Cotton, kilowatts of electricity, board feet of wood, long distance minutes, royalty payments due on artists' works, and other products and services have been traded on markets of varying scale, with varying degrees of success. One issue that presents major difficulty for creators of such instruments is the liability accruing to the purchaser: Unless the product or service can be guaranteed or insured to be free of liability based on where it came from and how it got to market, e.g. kilowatts must come to market free from legitimate claims for smog death from coal burning plants, wood must be free from claims that it comes from protected forests, royalty payments must be free of claims of plagiarism or piracy, it becomes impossible for sellers to guarantee a uniform delivery. Generally, governments must provide a common regulatory or insurance standard and some release of liability, or at least a backing of the insurers, before a commodity market can begin trading. This is a major source of controversy in for instance the energy market, where desirability of different kinds of power generation varies drastically. In some markets, e.g. Toronto, Canada, surveys established that customers would pay 10-15% more for energy that was not from coal or nuclear, but strictly from renewable sources such as wind. Proliferation of contracts, terms, and derivatives However, if there are two or more standards of risk or quality, as there seem to be for electricity or soybeans, it is relatively easy to establish two different contracts to trade in the more and less desirable deliverable separately. If the consumer acceptance and liability problems can be solved, the product can be made interchangeable, and trading in such units can begin. Since the detailed concerns of industrial and consumer markets vary widely, so do the contracts, and "grades" tend to vary significantly from country to country. A proliferation of contract units, terms, and futures have evolved, combined into an extremely sophisticated range of financial instruments. These are more than one-to-one representations of units of a given type of commodity, and represent more than simple "futures", future deliveries. These serve a variety of purposes from simple gambling to price insurance. Futures markets are no longer restricted to commodities. Oil and fiat Building on the infrastructure and credit and settlement networks established for food and precious metals, many such markets have proliferated drastically in the late 20th century. Oil was the first form of energy so widely traded, and the fluctuations in the oil markets are of particular political interest. In part this is because transport, agricultural equipment, and protections of supplies by states' military fiat remain critical to trade, and all of this tends to run on oil. At times this leads to some rather ghoulish forms of trade, which demonstrate the interdependence of oil and military matters: Some commodity market speculation is directly related to the stability of certain states, e.g. during the Gulf War, speculation on the survival of the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Similar political stability concerns have from time to time driven the price of oil. Some argue that this is not so much a commodity market but more of an assassination market speculating on the survival (or not) of Saddam or other leaders whose personal decisions may cause oil supply to fluctuate by military action. The oil market is, however, an exception. Most markets are not so tied to the politics of volatile regions - even natural gas tends to be more stable, as it is not traded across oceans by tanker. Commodity markets and protectionism Developing countries (democratic or not) have been moved to harden their currencies, accept IMF rules, join the WTO, and submit to a broad regime of reforms that amount to a "hedge" against being isolated. China's entry into the WTO signaled the end of truly isolated nations entirely managing their own currency and affairs. The need for stable currency and predictable clearing and rules-based handling of trade disputes, has led to a global trade hegemony - many nations "hedging" on a global scale against each other's anticipated "protectionism", were they to fail to join the WTO. There are signs, however, that this regime is far from perfect. U.S. trade sanctions against Canadian softwood lumber (within NAFTA) and foreign steel (except for NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico) in 2002 signaled a shift in policy towards a tougher regime perhaps more driven by political concerns - jobs, industrial policy, even sustainable forestry and logging practices.   Web synabu.com

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