Gunvor Expands Precious Metals Business

Energy firm Gunvor Group, known especially for crude oil, refined products, natural gas and LNG trading, is diversifying its precious metal trading activities (derivatives) to physical trading, off the back of the rally in gold prices. 

Other active areas for the company include biofuels (specifically trading the feedstocks, such as corn or sugarcane, whose juice can be fermented to produce ethanol), power and emissions trading.

Soft Red Winter Wheat's Outperformance Boosts Interest in the Grain Trade

CBOT wheat has surged in price in 2012 mainly owing to drought concerns impacting yield.  The price is driven somewhat by US Department of Agriculture reports and the US Drought Monitor readings. The default wheat type is something called "Soft Red Winter". A variant called "Hard Red Winter" trades mainly on the Kansas City Board of Trade.

The main contracts are Z (December), U (September), N (July), K (May), H (March). The contract size if for 5,000 bushels (roughly 136 metric tons). The bushel is used for volumes of dry commodities.

The CME group provides literally masses of historical technical analysis indicators for wheat, ranging from Bollinger bands to EWMA techniques.

The origin of futures trading is the commodities markets - and includes the trading of grain by elevators and processors. To understand the wheat food chain requires some understanding of the underlying technologies of grain.