Introducing the financial markets
What are commodities?
Commodities are physical assets. Unlike shares, indices or currencies they are raw materials mined, farmed or extracted from the earth. Some examples include:
To be officially tradable, a commodity must be entirely interchangeable with another commodity of the same type, no matter where it was produced, mined or farmed.
For example, to a commodity trader, gold is gold. It doesn't matter where it was extracted. An ounce of gold mined in Australia is worth exactly the same amount as an ounce of gold mined in China, the USA or Tanzania.
The same can be said of other commodities such as natural gas, cotton and copper, so long as they meet certain minimum quality or purity standards.
Economists call this being fungible and it means large quantities of commodities can be traded relatively quickly and easily on an exchange. This is because every trader can be confident they are buying/selling equivalent assets without needing to inspect them, or find out where or how they were produced.
Question
Which of the following can be classed as commodities? Please select all answers that apply:Correct
Incorrect
Oats, tin and sugar are all fungible commodities, but plastic is not. There are hundreds of different types of plastic all manufactured to different specifications.Types of commodity
Commodities are often placed into two groups:
Soft commodities
These are agricultural commodities, farmed rather than mined or extracted. Softs tend to be very volatile in the short term, as they're susceptible to seasonal growing cycles, weather and spoilage which can suddenly and dramatically affect prices.
Hard commodities
These are generally mined from the ground, or taken from other natural resources. Hard commodities are typically easier to handle and transport than softs, and are more easily integrated into the industrial process.
You may also see commodities classified according to their ecological sector:
- Energy (oil and gas)
- Metal (gold, silver, copper, lead, etc)
- Agriculture (wheat, coffee, livestock, etc)
Question
Is the following a hard or soft commodity?
Orange JuiceCorrect
Incorrect
Orange Juice is a soft commodity.Question
Is the following a hard or soft commodity?
Brent Crude OilCorrect
Incorrect
Brent Crude Oil is a hard commodity.Question
Is the following a hard or soft commodity?
PalladiumCorrect
Incorrect
Palladium is a hard commodity.Question
Is the following a hard or soft commodity?
SoybeansCorrect
Incorrect
Soybeans are soft commodities.How are they traded?
There are two main ways to trade commodities:
The spot market
The spot market is where financial assets are sold for cash and exchanged right there and then. So, if you need immediate delivery of a commodity, you'd head to the spot market.
For example, say you ran a business that built industrial pipes. You recently got an order for a large amount of copper piping, but there's none left in the warehouse. You need the copper immediately, so your best bet is to go to the spot market and buy some.
Similarly, if you owned a mining company and had some copper you wanted to get off your hands straight away, you'd try and sell it on the spot market.
Due to the large quantities of commodities traded - and global nature of these trades - set standards are used by the spot market so traders can buy and sell commodities quickly without the need for a visual inspection.
The futures market
The futures market is a place where buyers and sellers agree to exchange a specific quantity of an asset at a fixed date in the future, at a price agreed today.
The assets in question are not physically traded on the exchange, so the participants buy and sell futures contracts instead. This enables traders to speculate on the price of commodities without having to own them at any point, because the contracts can be sold or closed before the actual delivery date.
Which is particularly useful if, for example, you want to trade on the price of cattle, but don't want several herds of live cows delivered to your door in a few months' time...
While futures contracts are often used by individuals and companies looking to exchange physical commodities at a later date, they are predominantly used for speculation and hedging.
It's also worth noting that the price of futures contracts tends to be different from buying or selling an identical amount of that same commodity on the spot market. That's because the seller needs to take into account future risks and charges, such as the cost to hold the commodity and then transport it to the buyer. Hence futures contracts are valued using forward prices, rather than spot prices.
Who trades commodity futures?
There are four main types of commodity futures trader.
Producers
Speculators
Hedgers
Brokers
Lesson summary
- Commodities are physical assets that are mined, farmed or extracted from the earth
- They can be soft commodities (agricultural) or hard commodities (energy and metals)
- They are traded on either the spot or futures market
- The spot market is generally for buyers and sellers of the physical commodity, while the futures market tends to be dominated by speculators and hedgers