The World for Sale – Commodity Trading in Uncertain Times
Myth of the 20th Century
Is the Futures Market Really Speculative?
The futures market itself was actually an invention to defeat speculation at first. It was a way of solidifying the market, providing stability in a single price point. The top commodities by volume per day are crude oil, live cattle, hogs, natural gas, corn, copper, silver and cotton. If there was something weird like a dogecoin at the top, I think we'd have a huge problem.
The exchange of goods and services has existed since the earliest forms of civilization, from simple barter arrangements at the local town square to Phoenician traders navigating the Mediterranean with goods from Europe and North Africa. Today, however, the scope of exchange is truly massive, with online commerce coming to dominate nearly all segments of retail, and the scale encompassing transoceanic trade routes totaling 11 billion tons in maritime cargoes in 2021. Underpinning all this lies an extremely complex web of producers, shippers, pipelines, warehouses, and commodities traders that include the massive concerns such as Koch Industries in energy and Glencore in metals, with over 100,000 employees each. Billions of dollars have been made and lost in commodities futures, and as volatility continues to disrupt prices of everyday items from gasoline to grain, the trend of ever tighter global trade integration seen since the end of the Cold War may start to unravel as regional blocks choose to have closer and more reliable supply chains.
Myth of the 20th Century – Episode 247 -The World for Sale – Commodity Trading in Uncertain Times
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– Trading Places, Landis (1983)
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– The most underrated Bond movie on Netflix reveals a real-world crisis, Yarlagadda (2021) – https://www.inverse.com/science/james-bond-water-war
– The World for Sale, Blas and Farchy (2021)
– Soviet Cybernetics – Red Plenty, Myth of the 20th Century (2021) – https://myth20c.wordpress.com/2021/12/09/soviet-cybernetics-red-plenty/
– Cadillac Desert – The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Myth of the 20th Century (2022) – https://myth20c.wordpress.com/2022/08/30/cadillac-desert-the-american-west-and-its-disappearing-water/
– Zeihan – After Dark – the Collapse of Globalization, Myth of the 20th Century (2022) – https://myth20c.wordpress.com/2022/10/31/zeihan-after-dark-the-collapse-of-globalization/
– Price War$, Russell (2022)
– April 2022 Commodity Market Outlook: The Impact of the War in Ukraine on Commodity Markets, World Bank (2022) – https://reliefweb.int/report/world/april-2022-commodity-market-outlook-impact-war-ukraine-commodity-markets
– Interactive Map: Crude Oil Pipelines and Refineries of the U.S. and Canada, Kostandi (2022) – https://www.visualcapitalist.com/interactive-map-crude-oil-pipelines-and-refineries-of-the-u-s-and-canada/
– World Top Commodities Trading Companies List by Market Cap as on Jan 7th, 2022 – https://www.value.today/world-top-companies/commodities-trading
– Trends and geography of world seaborne trade in 2021 – https://hbs.unctad.org/world-seaborne-trade/
– Understanding the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index, CME Group – https://www.cmegroup.com/education/courses/introduction-to-the-nasdaq-veles-water-index-futures/understanding-the-nasdaq-veles-california-water-index.html
– Visualizing Copper’s Global Supply Chain – https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/coppers-supply-chain/
– Futures and Options on Futures – https://thismatter.com/money/futures/futures.htm
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