Commodity Future
Also known as: Oil futures, Grain futures
Standardised contracts on oil, gold, wheat and power — where the physical world sets its prices.
- Asset class
- Commodities
- Instrument type
- Exchange-traded future
- Traded
- Exchange (CME, ICE, LME)
- Typical users
- Producers, consumers, merchants, funds
BeginnerWhat is it, really?
Commodity futures are how the world prices its physical stuff: contracts to buy or sell a standardised quantity and quality of a raw material at a set date — 1,000 barrels of WTI crude, 5,000 bushels of wheat, 100 ounces of gold.
They were invented (Chicago, 1800s; rice versions in Osaka earlier) so farmers and millers could lock prices ahead of harvest. That's still the core: producers sell futures to fix revenue, consumers buy to fix costs, and speculators take the risk in between for expected profit.
Most contracts allow physical delivery at specified warehouses or pipelines — few positions go there, but the possibility disciplines the price: at expiry, the future must equal the real, wet-barrel/actual-bushel price, or arbitrageurs profit until it does. April 2020's negative oil price — longs paying to escape delivery into full storage — was this discipline at its most theatrical.
IntermediateHow it works in practice
The forward curve tells the story
- Contango: later months pricier — the market pays for storage; typical when supply is ample.
- Backwardation: later months cheaper — immediate scarcity; owning physical now has value (the "convenience yield").
- Curve shape, not spot level, is the professionals' read on physical tightness.
Roll yield
Futures investors must roll expiring contracts. In contango, each roll buys dear and sells cheap — a systematic drag (why oil ETFs long underperform spot oil); in backwardation, rolling earns. Long-run commodity index returns are dominated by this, not by spot moves.
Hedgers vs. speculators
Commitments-of-Traders data shows the ecology: producers net short, index money net long. The normal backwardation hypothesis (Keynes): hedgers pay speculators an insurance premium, visible as positive expected roll returns in producer-hedged markets.
AdvancedPricing & valuation
Pricing: storage arbitrage with a twist
with storage cost \(u\) and convenience yield \(y\) — the option-like value of holding physical inventory (keep the refinery running, meet a delivery). Unlike equities, \(y\) is unobservable and volatile: it's backed out of the curve and spikes with scarcity. Cash-and-carry arbitrage bounds only the contango side (storage is real and finite); backwardation has no arbitrage ceiling — scarcity can price anything.
Term-structure models
Two-factor models (Gibson–Schwartz: spot + mean-reverting convenience yield; Schwartz–Smith: short-term deviations + long-term equilibrium) capture the curve's dynamics for real-asset valuation and hedging. Seasonality (gas, power, agriculture) adds deterministic curve shape; power markets push further — non-storability breaks the arbitrage link entirely, making expectations + risk premia the whole price.
Spreads as the real market
- Calendar spreads: storage economics distilled (the "cash-and-carry" trade at full tanks = April 2020).
- Crack/crush/spark spreads: refinery, soybean and power-plant margins as tradable objects — processors hedge the spread, not the legs.
- Location/quality bases: WTI–Brent, hub differentials; pipeline shocks trade here.
Financialisation debates
Index-fund flows, position limits, and the empirical question of whether paper money moves physical prices — the literature says: levels rarely, curve shape and correlations measurably.