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The Roles of People at the Commodity Exchange
A number of people are involved in making sure that your commodity order is executed as smoothly and efficiently as possible, and your order goes through an extensive supply chain before it’s executed. [more…]
How to Own a Piece of a Commodity Exchange
One of the biggest trends in the global investment game in the beginning of the 21st century is the increasing popularity of commodities in investor portfolios. Driven by high commodity prices, many investors [more…]
Introduction to Futures, Options, and Commodities
Some investors think that “futures and options” and “commodities” are basically the same, but they’re not. Commodities are a class of assets that includes energy, metals, agricultural products, and similar [more…]
How to Trade Commodities in Futures Contracts
The commodity futures market is divided into two segments: one that’s regulated and another one that’s unregulated. Trading in the regulated portion of the futures market is done through designated commodity [more…]
Hedgers Who Trade Commodities in Futures Contracts
One group who trades commodities in the futures market is commercial producers and consumers of commodities who use the futures markets to stabilize either their costs [more…]
Speculators Who Trade Commodities in Futures Contracts
One group that trades commodities in futures contracts consists of individual traders, investment banks, and other financial institutions who are interested in using the futures markets as a way of generating [more…]
The Pieces of Commodity Futures Contracts
Trading commodities through futures contracts takes a lot of discipline, patience, and coordination. One of the biggest deterrents to participating in the futures markets is the number of moving pieces [more…]
Information Involved in Commodity Futures Contracts
Because commodity futures contracts can be traded on only designated and regulated exchanges, these contracts are highly standardized. Standardization simply means that these contracts are based on a uniform [more…]
Time and Location Information in Commodity Futures Contracts
There are many moving pieces involved in trading commodity futures contracts. The regulatory bodies that are responsible for overseeing and monitoring trading activities on commodity futures exchanges [more…]
Margin in Commodity Futures Contracts
One of the unique characteristics of commodity futures contracts is the ability to trade with margin. If you’ve ever traded stocks, you know that margin [more…]
Contango and Backwardation in Commodity Futures Markets
You need to be familiar with a couple technical terms related to movements in the commodity futures markets if you want to successfully trade futures contracts. [more…]
The Metallgesellschaft Debacle with Commodity Futures
Trading commodity futures contracts certainly isn’t for the fainthearted. Even the pros can run into lots of trouble in the futures markets. Consider what happened in the 1990s to a company called Metallgesellschaft [more…]
The Difference between Futures and Options in Commodity Markets
There’s a big difference between futures and options. Often folks think of futures and options as being one and the same in the commodities markets — that’s understandable, because whenever you hear “futures [more…]
Commodity Options in Action
Understanding commodity options can be challenging because they’re, in fact, derivatives used to trade other derivatives (futures contracts). So here’s an example that applies the concept of options to [more…]
Commodity Options Trader Talk
Commodity options traders have their own language. Options contracts give you the option to buy futures contracts for commodities such as wheat and zinc. When talking about options, you need to know certain [more…]
