Mastering the Commodities Markets

THE MAJOR COMMODITIES EXCHANGES

Worldwide, there are around 54 major commodity exchanges that trade in more than 90 commodities. ‘Soft commodities’ – generally regarded as things you can eat – are traded around the world and largely dominate exchange trading in Asia and Latin America, whereas the ‘hard commodities’ – e.g. metals and energy – are predominantly traded in London, New York, Chicago and Shanghai. Energy contracts are mainly traded in New York, London, Tokyo and the Middle East. More recently a number of energy exchanges have emerged in several European countries. In terms of the number of commodity futures contracts traded, in 2010 China and the UK had three exchanges amongst the largest ten, the US two and Japan and India one each ...