Questions tagged [commodities]

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How could a market be designed to prevent hoarding?

Imagine that someone has been put in charge of creating a new market for some kind of commodity. They have ultimate regulatory power. What kind of market mechanisms could they put in place to ...
Crashworks's user avatar
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1 answer
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How does artificial scarcity benefit the seller?

It is said that a diamond selling company (you know the one ;) ) deliberately buys up stocks of diamonds and refuses to sell them in order to generate an "artificial scarcity", so as to ...
komodosp's user avatar
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Why did Hungary joining the E.U. cause oil prices fall to be only marginally higher than they were in Ukraine?

Related cross-site: Were schoolteachers really paid substantially less than $45 per month in 1990s Ukraine? This particular question is arguably on-topic on Lit.SE and History.SE as well, but I'd like ...
EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine's user avatar
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Virtual trading on real commodity price

Today my friend told his idea. He said he would create "game" platform where people can buy & sell "virtual coin" that follows real world commodity price, but have no intrinsic ...
gardin's user avatar
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Find building material cost (USD)

Cannot find the best way to estimate the cost of concrete(USD/cy), rebar(USD/ton), Structural Steel(USD/ton) for Monterrey Mexico. I have tried to check (INEGI)which is run by the Mexican government ...
FalloutATS21's user avatar
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How to calculate real commodity prices from nominal time series

I am trying to adjust a time series of nominal prices of a commodity to inflation, using a given year as base year, i.e. calculating 'real' prices. What is the most common/correct approach for doing ...
Nicola Gambaro's user avatar
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Term for perishable goods that are non-divisible with a set redemption date (concert tickets vs. Milk)

What is the terminology to distinguish goods like milk and concert tickets. Both are perishable. If we were to say milk expired on the last day of the month, and a concert will occur on the last day ...
EconNew4369's user avatar
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Fuel prices spot vs forward

The commodities market is , for the most part, a forward one. How come then prices of gasoline in gaz stations jump almost overnight whenever a geopolitical tension arises?
Averroes's user avatar
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Understanding a paragraph in Debreu's Theory of Value

I wish to understand the following paragraph (from section $2.7$ of Debreu's Theory of Value): Imagine that a certain good circulates as money at location $s$, at date $t$, and let $k$ be the index ...
Sam's user avatar
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Why does the transportation of commodities yield a profit but that of gold and silver doesn't?

In Chapter I of Book IV of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith makes the following assertion: The transportation of commodities, when properly suited to the market, is always attended with a ...
Paul Razvan Berg's user avatar
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Why do lumber prices soar but cost of gypsum does not drop?

The cost of lumber has increased 3 fold over the last year, whereas the cost of other building materials such as gypsum has hardly budged. In North America, lumber is a dominant material used in the ...
P2000's user avatar
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How was sulphuric acid used to back money?

I remember reading in a economics and history book that sulphuric acid production was used as an alternative to gold standard as the basis of the value of currency due to it’s importance in making ...
Evamentality's user avatar
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1 answer
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How would privately minted coins enter circulation?

I read a great article about private minting in early America that talks about some of the private minters whose copper, silver, and gold coins were widely circulated throughout the country without ...
BladePoint's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
112 views

How did the Hunt brothers' cornering the silver market drop gold prices in 1981?

Muro's answer at Money SE discusses the attempt by brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt, William Herbert Hunt and Lamar Hunt to corner the silver mark. But Muro didn't explain the causation. I can't infer why ...
user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
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Measurement for the downstream use of a commodity

I am looking to find a measurement that would tell me the size of the market of the downstream use of some particular commodity. For example, salt or wheat would be used by many companies downstream. ...
MGInt's user avatar
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2 answers
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Why do farmers need short hedge?

I can't appreciate the red phrase. Pls see the question in the title. Why can't farmers simply sell their wheat ahead of time to buyers who are capable of storing this wheat, rather than inducing ...
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Why didn't other oil pricing benchmarks such as Brent go negative?

This question is asking why the oil (in this case, WTI) price is negative. While I think I have broadly understood why WTI collapsed, I don't really understand why other oil pricing benchmarks didn'...
Kepotx's user avatar
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1 answer
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What value do virtual traders of commodity add to the market?

Many if not most companies trading in commodities are only trading them on paper. They will not use the commodity they are buying and can not take deliver of the physically commodity. What value do ...
paulj's user avatar
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Why is the oil future price negative?

I don't understand why the price of oil futures went negative today. News say it is because sellers cannot sell it. But, why don't they just hoard it until the coronavirus crisis is off? Why don't ...
chatGPT's user avatar
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Are final goods commodities?

I've been reading about final goods and commodities and some links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_good https://marketbusinessnews.com/financial-glossary/final-good/ mention that final goods ...
Enzo Nakamura's user avatar
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Economic Achilles' heels of global financial economy

The latest attacks on oil production in Saudi-Arabia highlights the need for risk managers to follow up on possible terrorist targets that can have a global impact on the global financial economy, ...
blah_crusader's user avatar
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Why has gold dropped during the same week as Deutches Bank faces great difficulties

I chose the phrasing "great difficulties" to be polite. The "capital release unit" seems to be a bit of a desperate action from the bank, coupled with further complications involving bad press made ...
Arash Howaida's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
70 views

What impact would introducing 15 times more soy worldwide do to the price of soy?

Soy is a commodity and the main export of Argentina. It is said Argentina has 40 million of hectares of arable land and it produces food for 400 million persons and that potentially could make food ...
Pablo's user avatar
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Average Return for Commodity

Suppose I have a function of a varying values represented by randomness. A stock or price of a commodity would be a good example. What is the average return for that stock on any given interval of ...
Jeremy's user avatar
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Is it possible to commodify the State?

Karl Marx said that capitalism commodifies everything. So I'm wondering if that rule applies to the very State itself.
EternalPropagation's user avatar
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What are the issues with currencies backed by commodities?

I have seen it suggested that currencies that are backed by a commodity are generally considered to be a bad idea in most cases. However, I have done a bit of my own research into representative money ...
Arkenstein XII's user avatar
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Will there be any significant impact if oil was priced/traded in another currency other than USD?

There is an abundance of conspiracy theories online that the USD is propped up in part by the fact that oil is traded in USD, and that countries which think about allowing trades in a different ...
Evil Washing Machine's user avatar
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1 answer
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How to understand the USDA Demand/Supply report ?

Need you help .. Have couple questions about the Wheat Report M Acres stands for ? Million acres ? Yield Bu/Acre , can anybody explain this calculation ? Stocks use ratio % , how the calculation ...
Maks.Burkov's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
116 views

Labor time and the exchange value (Marx). What about the quality of the raw materials?

Karl Marx writes in his book "capital", that the exchange value of a commodity is determined by the necessary average labor required to produce the commodity. The labor is measured in time. Here's my ...
thyme's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
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Pro and cons to finding coal

I found some Anthracite coal. I know a coal bed of this quality is worth money? I also know that there is a "no pun intended" carbon foot print if I decide to share my findings to others. Economics ...
Muze's user avatar
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1 answer
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Gold charts on different currencies

I have this two charts of gold prices for the last 60 days. One is in Dollars and the other in Euros. Why they are not an exact match?
Alferes's user avatar
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In what contexts are stable markets sub-optimal?

My understanding is that market stability is a good thing, because it allows more reliable estimates of profits (revenues minus expenses) and expected return-on-investment related to new investments. ...
DukeZhou's user avatar
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What are the most common methods of determining valuation used by economists that claim Bit-Coin is on the verge of being a bubble

I have seen many economists saying that bit-coin is highly overvalued and on the verge of a massive corrections. What are the most popular models being used to determine the proper price for bit coin?...
Chad's user avatar
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1 vote
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Model for the psychology of trading?

In some cases I see otherwise stable stocks or commodities having wild swings in price on exchanges. Even though the underlying company or commodity is going along normally and there is no news that ...
Lassie Fair's user avatar
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0 votes
2 answers
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If there was world war 3, which stocks should I short? [closed]

With the Trump administration, Turkish dictatorship, North Korean nuclear weapons, and general tension around the world, we might think that there is a likelihood of something like a world war ...
personjerry's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
370 views

Labor as a commodity

Can anyone enlighten me if there are economic theories where labor is considered as a commodity like cloth and wine in the Ricardo theory, so that it can be exported and imported similarly to other ...
Sergei Akbarov's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
49 views

Which elements to forecast/estimate Oil/Pretroleum derivatives, would you consider?

I mean, if you had to forecast the price or production volumes of polyethylene or polyurethane, for example, which elements would you include to the model, in addition to oil crude prices/volumes? ...
Petter_M's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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Why is oil price increasing in May 2016

Why is the oil price and correspondingly the down and midstream company stock prices are increasing in May 2016, when The economic data across the world in weak China's economy is sluggish. They had ...
rambalachandran's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
548 views

Are there any major commodity markets with a public order book?

Most major exchanges seem to have secret order books. For example, on the NYSE only the specialists know the order books. On the NASDAQ only the market maker can see the order book. On Globex, the ...
Lassie Fair's user avatar
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7 votes
4 answers
408 views

Why is Uber worth almost as much as Boeing?

At $68 billion, Uber has a higher valuation than GM, Ford, and Honda. According to Microaxis, Boeing is currently valued at around $87 billion. Why is Uber worth so much? I would think that ...
spacetyper's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
535 views

Is trading in the commodity futures much more riskier than trading in stock market futures?

My understanding is that the price of a stock at the stock exchange is determined by supply demand mechanics during trading hours, and the price of futures is determined by the price of the underlying ...
Martin's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
86 views

Source of commodity production statistics?

What would be a recommended source of historical data for commodity production amounts which is current up to the previous year or better? For example, if I wanted to know the annual global ...
Lassie Fair's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
82 views

What's the relation between economic growth and buying power?

If a country had economic growth last year (2015) does that mean that the average citizen had a better buying power in that year (2015) than in the previous year (2014)? For example with their ...
Joe Jobs's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
104 views

OPEC's market share strategy: What is the benefit of market share in a fungible market?

Coverage of the recent fall in oil prices frequently mentions OPEC's decision to defend their market share, sacrificing price in the process. I understand how market share is important from a ...
john_stech's user avatar
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1 answer
31 views

If petrol/gas prices were locked down, how would normal consumers and the producers be affected?

Hey economics stack exchange! Congrats on getting to beta! I wanted to ask a question that was running through my head on a road trip earlier today. Let's say a magic fairy grants a person his wish, ...
Kyle Hotchkiss's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
2k views

Heating oil more expensive than gasoline?

I see that "heating oil", which I presume to mean No. 2 fuel oil, is more expensive than gasoline: My understanding was that fuel oil is much easier to refine than gasoline and more of it is produced ...
Lassie Fair's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
71 views

What is the impact of a technology to produce gold at low cost?

Let's say in a few decades we can find a new technology to produce gold at low cost which will cause the price of gold to be as low as other metals. My question is that how would this have an impact ...
Saber's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
70 views

Dollar Value And Commodity Prices

How does stronger dollar drive down prices of commodities and/or materials like oil?
user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
116 views

How do oil prices rise when crude oil inventories fall?

I am new to economics, I am reading a post on CNBC which states Weekly crude oil inventories unexpectedly fell, supporting further gains in oil prices. 1) Why does crude oil inventories unexpetedly ...
BrokeBoy's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
63 views

Annual price of precious metals

I need a list (or separate lists) with average prices of precious metals (gold, silver, platinum, palladium, etc.), by year. I prefer the annual average price or at least the price at the end/...
Joe Jobs's user avatar
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