Stock Market Today

Derivatives can be a tough nut to crack. While used in day to day transactions  between investment banks they are used far less often by individual investors. Understanding how they work, however, will give you a better grasp on the complexities of the stock market. Equity derivatives, for instance, are a particular type of financial [...]

A commodity is a product, which is of uniform quality  and traded across various markets. There are generally two types of commodities, ‘hard commodities’ and ‘soft commodities’. Hard commodities include crude oil, iron ore, gold, and silver and have a long shelf life. Agricultural products such as soybean, rice or wheat, are considered ‘soft commodities’ [...]

Exchanges are markets  with standardized rules, which enable buyers and sellers to meet at a common junction to deal in their commodities. Futures contracts are those deals where the price is decided for deliveries to be made at a specified time and place in the future. Many of these exchanges contain ‘Pits’ or ‘Rings’, where [...]

When somebody tries to manipulate the market by illegally hoarding a particular commodity, it means that he is trying to ‘corner the market’. In this process, the buyer tries to stockpile the maximum amount of that commodity available, to create an artificial shortage and drive up the price before selling the commodity back into the [...]

Before the advent of the industrial revolution, trading  mainly took place with agricultural commodities such as corn, maize, oats, wheat, livestock, hogs and pigs. In 1848, the world’s oldest futures exchange was formed and it was named the Chicago Board Of Trade [CBOT]. Thereafter, many such exchanges were formed all around the world. The trading [...]