For many academics, students, and professionals, the field of commodities is a black box. This book explores commodities in a holistic manner, presenting concepts from a multidisciplinary business and financial perspective, and offering a panoramic view of the global commodity business and markets. In this book, the author presents core issues related to global commodities with recent data including COVID-19. The book introduces the key physical commodities traded globally and some related issues such as the global supply chain, global trading, transportation, storage, and how to finance global commodity trades. Then, it discusses how global commodity businesses and traders manage global risks related to commodity production (generation or extraction), transportation, storage, the final delivery, and currency exchange. Additionally, the book discusses financial commodities, the origins of global commodity derivatives and exchanges, the rationale behind the birth of commodity futures and trading, hedging, speculation, financialization, and manipulation of commodity markets, and how financial trading is executed in real life. In the last section, the author also discusses sustainability issues related to global commodities and the financial valuation aspects of the global commodity businesses supported by examples from real cases with recent data.

Kate Kelly, acclaimed journalist and author of Street Fighters, investigates the world of commodities traders When most of us think of the drama of global finance, we think of stocks and bonds. But commodities? Crude oil and soya beans? Copper and wheat? What could be more boring? That's exactly what the elite commodity traders want us to think. They don't seek the spotlight. They don't want to be as famous as Warren Buffett. Their astonishing wealth was created in obscurity, because they dwell in private companies or deep within large banks and corporations. But if the individuals in the commodities boom have gone unnoticed, their impact has not. Prices of raw materials have exploded. Are the big traders jacking up the cost of petrol, food, and essentials bought by people around the world? How did such immense power end up in the hands of a few? In this riveting book, Kate Kelly takes us inside the inner circle that affects so many things we all depend on. Following a trail from New York to London to Dubai, from hedgefunds and banks to brokers and regulators, she reveals the fullest ever picture of the men who gamble with our future every day. Kate Kelly, author of the New York Times bestseller Street Fighters, covers Wall Street for CNBC. She spent ten years at the Wall Street Journal, where she won a Livingston Award and two Gerald Loeb awards. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

The papers presented in this collection offer a wide range of cases, from Asia, Africa and the Americas, and broadly cover the last two centuries, in which commodities have led to the consolidation of a globalised economy and society – forging this out of distinctive local experiences of cultivation and production, and regional circuits of trade.

You can make large profits by trading commodities--but you’ll need significant practical knowledge of the associated risks and market characteristics before you start.A Trader’s First Book on Commoditiesis a simple, practical and useful guide for new commodities traders. Author Carley Garner provides specific guidance on accessing commodity markets cost-effectively, avoiding common beginners’ mistakes, and improving the odds of successful, profitable trades. Drawing on her extensive experience teaching traders, Garner shows how to calculate profit, loss, and risk in commodities, and choose the best brokerage firm, service level, data sources, and market access for your needs. She’ll help you: · Master the basics of trading commodities painlessly, avoiding beginners mistakes · Get what you need, and prevent paying for what you don’t need · Know what you’re buying, what it costs, the returns you’re earning and the risk you’re taking · Predict price, manage risk, and make trades that reflect your analysis Garner demystifies the industry’s colorful language, helps you clearly understand what you’re buying and selling, and walks you through the entire trading process. She concludes with a refreshingly new look at topics such as trading plans, handling margin calls, and even maintaining emotional stability as a trader. “This book provides the type of information every trader needs to know and the type of information too many traders had to learn the hard and expensive way. Carley offers practical need-to-know, real-world trading tips that are lacking in many books on futures. It will help not only the novice trader, but seasoned veterans as well. This book will serve as a must-have reference in every trader’s library.” --Phil Flynn, Vice President and Senior Market analyst at PFGBest Research, and a Fox Business Network contributor “Refreshing–It’s nice to see a broker who has actually been exposed to the professional side of trading and who bridges that chasm between exchange floor trading and customer service. Carley takes the time to explain verbiage, not just throw buzz words around. A good educational read in my opinion.” --Don Bright, Director, Bright Trading, LLC “This book has the perfect name, the perfect message, and the necessary information for any beginning trader. Take this book home!” --Glen Larson, President, Genesis Financial Technologies, Inc. “As a 35-year veteran of the CME/CBOT trading floor, I can tell you…those who think they can begin trading commodities without knowing the less talked about topics that Carley discusses inA Trader’s First Book on Commoditiesare sadly mistaken. Anyone who trades their own account, or would like to, should read this book.” --Danny Riley, DT Trading

The 21st century marks a watershed in the history of the human economic condition. Income and wealth inequalities are now greater than ever before – and their role in the global financial crisis is one of the burning issues of today. Commodity looks at the great financial crisis from an entirely original perspective – that of the global commodity system as a newly operational totality. In the 19th century, the commodity system as defined by Karl Marx was limited to a few regions and embraced only the labour and capital capacities and their outputs. By the end of the 20th century, it encompassed the entire planet and embraced government capacity as well as private capacities, financial securities and material goods and services. This book shows how the financial crisis and its causes can only properly be understood as a result of this vast, unprecedented extension of the commodity system – a system which benefits the rich. The author makes the watertight case that it is only through the creation of a global tax authority – to coordinate national tax regimes and to implement a tax on global wealth – that we can avoid another crisis and create a fairer and more equitable world. Addressing a broad range of themes, Commodity offers a new perspective which will be of interest to political economists as well as researchers specialising in other related fields of social enquiry. Written in a clear and engaging way, the book’s concise nature also makes it accessible for the non-specialist reader, and it will especially appeal to all those who want a more just society.

Commodity Trading, Globalization and the Colonial World: Spinning the Web of the Global Market provides a new perspective on economic globalization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Instead of understanding the emergence of global markets as a mere result of supply and demand or as the effect of imperial politics, this book focuses on a global trading firm as an exemplary case of the actors responsible for conducting economic transactions in a multicultural business world. The study focuses on the Swiss merchant house Volkart Bros., which was one of the most important trading houses in British India after the late nineteenth century and became one of the biggest cotton and coffee traders in the world after decolonization. The book examines the following questions: How could European merchants establish business contacts with members of the mercantile elite from India, China or Latin America? What role did a shared mercantile culture play for establishing relations of trust? How did global business change with the construction of telegraph lines and railways and the development of economic institutions such as merchant banks and commodity exchanges? And what was the connection between the business interests of transnationally operating capitalists and the territorial aspirations of national and imperial governments? Based on a five-year-long research endeavor and the examination of 24 public and private archives in seven countries and on three continents, Commodity Trading, Globalization and the Colonial World: Spinning the Web of the Global Market goes well beyond a mere company history as it highlights the relationship between multinationally operating firms and colonial governments, and the role of business culture in establishing notions of trust, both within the firm and between economic actors in different parts of the world. It thus provides a cutting-edge history of globalization from a micro-perspective. Following an actor-theoretical perspective, the book maintains that the global market that came into being in the nineteenth century can be perceived as the consequence of the interaction of various actors. Merchants, peasants, colonial bureaucrats and industrialists were all involved in spinning the individual threads of this commercial web. By connecting established approaches from business history with recent scholarship in the fields of global and colonial history, Commodity Trading, Globalization and the Colonial World: Spinning the Web of the Global Market offers a new perspective on the emergence of global enterprise and provides an important addition to the history of imperialism and economic globalization.

The early 21st century has seen a prolonged price boom in non-fuel commodities, coupled with a volatile performance in fuel prices. This new collection presents the latest research on commodity prices and economic development in the context of this changing globalized economy. Global Commodity Markets and Development Economics brings together analyses from a number of perspectives in order to explore commodity price developments. Chapters explore long term commodity trends, the evolution of relative price developments, the relationship of the domestic commodity sector with global supply chains, agri-food prices, and the role of oil markets in the global economy. Through considering a diverse range of countries including China, Russia and the United States, the authors examine key fuel and non-fuel commodity markets and offer a window into important trends and developments. This book will be relevant to those with an interest in development economics, international economics and energy markets.