Commodity ETPs: Know What Sits Between Your Shares and the Spot Price
Commodity exchange-traded products can hold physical assets, futures, or producer shares. Learn why structure matters before comparing returns with spot prices.
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How the Clearinghouse Taught Strangers to Trade
Imagine buying a promise from someone you have never met.
You do not know where that person lives, whether the person is wealthy, or whether the person has a distressing habit of disappearing whenever a bill arrives. You may not even know the person's name.
Now imagine that
# How Candlesticks Learned to Tell Market Stories
A market price can travel a remarkable distance while appearing to go nowhere.
Suppose crude oil opens the day at one price, climbs sharply during the morning, falls below its opening level in the afternoon, and finally closes almost exactly where it began. A simple closing-price chart may show
# From Telegraph Wires to Real-Time Ticks: How Market Information Learned to Travel
Long before market prices flashed across phones, they traveled at the speed of a horse.
A merchant who wanted to know the price of grain in another city might depend on a letter, a newspaper, a ship's arrival, or a messenger carrying news from an exchange. By the
# What a Futures Contract Really Is: The Promise Behind the Price
Imagine a wheat farmer standing at the edge of a field in early spring.
The crop is not ready. In fact, much of it has not yet made a convincing appearance above the soil. But the farmer already has expenses. Seed, equipment, fuel, insurance, and labor do not politely wait
From Box Scores to Big Data: How Sports Analytics Changed the Way We Watch the Game
There was a time when the most sophisticated sports database in town was an old man with a remarkable memory.
He knew who had the hot bat, which pitcher disliked working from the stretch, and which football team always seemed to find trouble on a rainy afternoon. His evidence may
From Grain Sacks to Global Markets: How the Chicago Board of Trade Changed Commodity Trading
Long before commodity prices flashed across computer screens, they arrived in Chicago by wagon, canal boat, and railroad car.
The grain itself was very real. It was heavy, dusty, perishable, and occasionally home to creatures that had not been invited to participate in commerce. Farmers wanted a fair price. Merchants
CME and CBOT to Merge, Creating $25 Billion Premier Global Derivatives Exchange By CME Group17
CHICAGO, Oct. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ – Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CME)(NASDAQ: CME) and CBOT Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: BOT) today announced they have signed a definitive agreement to merge the two organizations to create the most extensive and diverse global derivatives exchange. The combined company, to be named CME
When Technical Indicators Disagree: Why Conflicting Signals Can Be Useful
Markets do not always deliver a clean answer.
A moving average may show a clear upward trend. MACD may still appear positive. Then RSI moves into overbought territory, volume begins to fade, and price approaches an old resistance level.
Is the market bullish or bearish?
The honest answer may be:
MACD: Reading the Relationship Between Trend and Momentum
A market can be trending higher while simultaneously beginning to lose momentum.
That sounds contradictory, but it isn’t.
Imagine a car climbing a hill. It is still moving upward, but its speed drops from 60 miles per hour to 50, then 40, then 30.
The direction hasn’t changed.