How To Really Ruin Your Financial Life and Portfolio

Chapter 12Commodities Are Calling . . . Will You Answer the Phone?Everything That Happens in Your Life Involves Commodities

Every kind of food is a commodity except for maybe water and that day is coming, too. There are food commodities for every single thing you eat, including vegetables and tacos. You can invest or speculate in any and all of them.

That car you drive is made of steel and glass and has rubber tires. There are commodities that go into every part of your car and also into the machines that make the parts for the cars. You can buy any or all of them.

You are probably sitting in a chair or flying on an airplane sitting in a seat as you read this. The fabric of the chair is made of chemicals that can be bought. The airplane is powered by petroleum products you can speculate on.

When you go to sleep tonight you might lie on a bed with steel springs (commodity), a cotton top (commodity), and lie under an electric blanket powered by coal (commodity). Your home may be cooled or heated by natural gas—that’s a commodity, too.

The whole world is made up of things, and each thing is made of chemicals and each of these chemicals is a commodity or part of a commodity (there may be a few exceptions) that you can buy and speculate upon.

In the last several years (I am writing this in Summer of 2012) many commodities have risen spectacularly in price.

If you owned commodities and the price went up, you would make money. That is, for sure, the way that the power players do it. ...