How to read a commodity futures price tables in investor’s business daily:
Investor’s business daily is an excellent newspaper for watching the futures market. Price is the major statistic generated by the futures markets. Trading volume and number of outstanding contracts or open interest are also important as well.
Table investors business daily
Season Open
High Low Interest Open High Low Close Chg
CORN (CBOT) - 5,000 bu minimum- cents per bushel
299.50 196.00 Dec 98 4,273 216.50 216.75 212.75 213.00 - 2.75
305.00 209.50 Mar 99 172,538 223.25 225.00 220.25 220.75 - 2.50
299.00 217.00 May 99 46,167 230.50 232.00 227.75 228.00 - 2.50
312.00 223.50 Jul 99 52,360 237.00 238.00 234.00 234.25 - 2.00
280.00 232.00 Sep 99 10,489 241.75 243.25 240.75 240.75 - 1.25
291.50 238.00 Dec 99 26,434 247.25 248.00 246.00 246.25 - 0.75
Est. Vol. 54,000 Vol. 33,210 open int 316,483 - 21
The first and second lines at the top of the table read as follows:
Season high and the low referred to the highest and lowest prices recorded for each contract from the first day was recorded until the present.
Open interest — – is the number of outstanding contracts for each maturity month. Many sources do not include this information.
Opening price or the open — – is the price for a range of prices for the day’s first trades.
High — – if the highest price at which the commodity was sold during the day.
Low – is the lowest price of the commodity was sold during the day
Close – is the last price I was traded before the exchange ended trading for that day. Sometimes this is referred to as the settlement price or settle. This is the price the clearinghouses used to determine margin requirements for its members.
Chg (change) – this is the change between the previous day’s close in the current day’s close.
Estimated volume — – is the estimated volume of trading for that day this is measured in number of contracts traded.
Volume — – is the actual trading volume that was measured by the exchange that day.
Open interest — – is the total open interest for all contracts months combined at the end of the day’s trading session is the total number of contracts that are available.
An Example:
Corn (CBOT) 5,000 bu; cents per bu. This line means that the table applies to the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) Corn contract; the contract size is 5,000 bushels; and the prices shown in the table are in units of cents per bushel. Thus, 263.00 (two hundred sixty three cents) means $2.63 per bushel.
Tags: commodities data, how to read commodities, how to read commodities chart