Where to find commodity prices?

3 Answers

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   Azrael 38 on Sep 01, 2011

   What you are talking about is the SPOT price of a commodity, the price that the commodity sells for immediately. In many commodities, the spot price is meaningless unless you are a farmer or a company that needs to use the commodity immediately (anything bought on the spot market would need to be delivered soon). I highly doubt you would be able to take delivery for 1000 barrels of oil, so why would the spot price matter to you? Gold is one of the few commodities in which investors actually care about the spot price. In most other commodities, the spot price is both illiquid (few buyers and sellers, few purchases/sales made in a day, large price jumps intraday) and not transparent (hard or impossible to find the last traded price, or the bid/ask if such thing exists for that commodity). Not sure why you want to know the spot price of these various commodities, but that’s my warning to you.

   Back on track, gold and silver spot prices and charts: http://goldprice.org/spot-gold.html
   Crude oil, heating oil, and natural gas: http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/ (no charts, but at least you get the price)
   Other things: It’s almost impossible to answer your question seriously, as without a futures contract, there’s no standard for what you’re trying to find the spot price for. Even crude oil I’ve already assumed you’re looking for WTI crude oil for delivery in Cushing. However, for sugar, wheat, corn, and coffee, you can go to your local grocery store to see what the spot price for those are. I believe corn is in the fresh produce section and coffee and sugar are probably in aisles marked with their respective titles. I’m not kidding you, those are the spot prices.

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   Germaine Elder on Sep 01, 2011

   You can find in commodity market but all price is future if you want to present price you must go to physical commodity market.

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   JoeyV on Sep 01, 2011

   To add to Azrael’s really excellent post…

   I think you have a misperception here: "are trading at right now". Spot commodities aren’t traded (with the exception of metals), they are bought and sold for consumption. If you take delivery of a load of grain, the expectation is that you have a need for 5000 bushels of corn. You don’t sit on it for a few days and then try to sell it to someone else to make money. The storage costs would kill you and the commodity would be less liquid than the futures contract.