Crush Spread
A crush spread is a commodity trading strategy in which the trader takes a long position in soybean futures against short positions in soybean meal futures and soybean oil futures to establish a processing margin. Soybeans are processed into two products—meal and oil—through a process called “crushing”, which is where the term stems from. The crush spread is the difference between the combined value of meal and oil and the value of the original soybeans. The crush spread is a gauge of the soybean processor's profit margin, or the gross processing margin from crushing soybeans. Purposes The soybean processor will be interested in the crush spread as part of its hedging strategy, traders as part of its risk management strategy, speculators will look at the crush spread for trading opportunities. Soybeans processors can use the crush spread in order to lock in a gross profit margin, and cover the risk of adverse price fluctuation: inflation of soybeans inputs and deflati ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Commodity
In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a commodity good is typically determined as a function of its market as a whole: well-established physical commodities have actively traded spot and derivative markets. The wide availability of commodities typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (such as brand name) other than price. Most commodities are raw materials, basic resources, agricultural, or mining products, such as iron ore, sugar, or grains like rice and wheat. Commodities can also be mass-produced unspecialized products such as chemical substance, chemicals and computer memory. Popular commodities include Petroleum, crude oil, Maize, corn, and gold. Other definitions of commodity include something useful or valued and an alternative ter ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spark Spread
The spark spread is the theoretical gross margin of a gas-fired power plant from selling a unit of electricity, having bought the fuel required to produce this unit of electricity. All other costs (operation and maintenance, capital and other financial costs) must be covered from the spark spread. The term was first coined by Tony West's trading team on the trading floor of National Power Ltd in Swindon, UK during the late 1990s and quickly came into common usage as other traders realised the trading and hedging opportunities. The term dark spread, quark spread and bark spread refers to the similarly defined difference between cash streams (spread) for coal-fired power plants, nuclear power plants and bio-mass power plants respectively. These indicators of power plant economics are useful for trading energy markets. For operating or investment decisions published "spread" data are not applicable. Local market conditions, actual plant efficiencies and other plant costs have to be cons ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Crack Spread
Crack spread is a term used on the oil industry and futures trading for the differential between the price of crude oil and petroleum products extracted from it. The spread approximates the profit margin that an oil refinery can expect to make by " cracking" the long-chain hydrocarbons of crude oil into useful shorter-chain petroleum products. In the futures markets, the "crack spread" is a specific spread trade involving simultaneously buying and selling contracts in crude oil and one or more derivative products, typically gasoline and heating oil. Oil refineries may trade a crack spread to hedge the price risk of their operations, while speculators attempt to profit from changes in the oil/gasoline price differential. Factors affecting the crack spread One of the most important factors affecting the crack spread is the relative proportion of various petroleum products produced by a refinery. Refineries produce many products from crude oil, including gasoline, kerosene, diesel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spread Trade
In finance, a spread trade (also known as relative value trade) is the simultaneous purchase of one security and sale of a related security, called legs, as a unit. Spread trades are usually executed with options or futures contracts as the legs, but other securities are sometimes used. They are executed to yield an overall net position whose value, called the spread, depends on the difference between the prices of the legs. Common spreads are priced and traded as a unit on futures exchanges rather than as individual legs, thus ensuring simultaneous execution and eliminating the execution risk of one leg executing but the other failing. Spread trades are executed to attempt to profit from the widening or narrowing of the spread, rather than from movement in the prices of the legs directly. Spreads are either "bought" or "sold" depending on whether the trade will profit from the widening or narrowing of the spread. Margin The volatility of the spread is typically much lower than t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chicago Board Of Trade
The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), established on April 3, 1848, is one of the world's oldest futures and options exchanges. On July 12, 2007, the CBOT merged with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to form CME Group. CBOT and three other exchanges (CME, NYMEX, and COMEX) now operate as designated contract markets (DCM) of the CME Group. History The concerns of U.S. merchants to ensure that there were buyers and sellers for commodities have resulted in forward contracts to sell and buy commodities. Still, credit risk remained a serious problem. The CBOT took shape to provide a centralized location, where buyers and sellers can meet to negotiate and formalize forward contracts. An early 1848 discussion between Thomas Richmond and W. L. Whiting regarding the propriety of creating a board of trade led to the March 13 meeting merchants and businessmen in favor of establishing it and a resulting resolution for such an establishment and a Constitution. A committee then developed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bushel
A bushel (abbreviation: bsh. or bu.) is an imperial and US customary unit of volume based upon an earlier measure of dry capacity. The old bushel is equal to 2 kennings (obsolete), 4 pecks, or 8 dry gallons, and was used mostly for agricultural products, such as wheat. In modern usage, the volume is nominal, with bushels denoting a mass defined differently for each commodity. The name "bushel" is also used to translate similar units in other measurement systems. Name The name comes from the Old French ' and ', meaning "little box".. It may further derive from Old French ', thus meaning "little butt". History The bushel is an intermediate value between the pound and ton or tun that was introduced to England following the Norman Conquest. Norman statutes made the London bushel part of the legal measure of English wine, ale, and grains. The Assize of Bread and Ale credited to Henry III, , defined this bushel in terms of the wine gallon,. & while th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dalian Commodity Exchange
The Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) () is a Chinese futures exchange based in Dalian, Liaoning province, China. It is a non-profit, self-regulating and membership legal entity established on February 28, 1993. Dalian Commodity Exchange trades in futures contracts underlined by a variety of agricultural and industrial produce on a national scale. As of 2015, DCE has listed a total of 16 futures products, including corn, corn starch, soybean ( gmo and non-gmo), soybean meal, soybean oil, RBD palm olein, egg, fiberboard, blockboard, linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP), coke, coking coal and iron ore. Normal trading hours are Monday-Friday from 9am to 11:30am and 1:30pm to 3pm Beijing Time. Structure and function The exchange has the deepest liquidity pool among all Chinese Commodity Futures Exchanges. According to the Futures Industry Association, the bourse has been the largest mainland futures exchange by volume for eight years, ha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Metric Ton
The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton (United States customary units), and the long ton ( British imperial units). It is equivalent to approximately 2204.6 pounds, 1.102 short tons, and 0.984 long tons. The official SI unit is the megagram (symbol: Mg), a less common way to express the same mass. Symbol and abbreviations The BIPM symbol for the tonne is t, adopted at the same time as the unit in 1879.Table 6 . BIPM. Retrieved on 2011-07-10. Its use is also official for the metric ton in the United States, having been adopted by the United States [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chinese Yuan
The renminbi (; symbol: ¥; ISO code: CNY; abbreviation: RMB) is the official currency of the People's Republic of China and one of the world's most traded currencies, ranking as the fifth most traded currency in the world as of April 2022. The yuan ( or ) is the basic unit of the renminbi, but the word is also used to refer to the Chinese currency generally, especially in international contexts. One yuan is divided into 10 jiao (), and the jiao is further subdivided into 10 fen (). The renminbi is issued by the People's Bank of China, the monetary authority of China. Valuation Until 2005, the value of the renminbi was pegged to the US dollar. As China pursued its transition from central planning to a market economy and increased its participation in foreign trade, the renminbi was devalued to increase the competitiveness of Chinese industry. It has previously been claimed that the renminbi's official exchange rate was undervalued by as much as 37.5% against its pur ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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CME Group
CME Group Inc. (Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Board of Trade, New York Mercantile Exchange, The Commodity Exchange) is an American global markets company. It is the world's largest financial derivatives exchange, and trades in asset classes that include agricultural products, currencies, energy, interest rates, metals, stock indexes and cryptocurrencies futures. The company offers futures contracts and options on futures using its CME Globex trading platforms, fixed income trading via BrokerTec and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform. In addition, it operates a central counterparty clearing provider, CME Clearing. With a range of pre- and post-trade products and services underpinning the entire lifecycle of a trade, CME Group also offers optimization and reconciliation services through TriOptima, and trade processing services through Traiana. The company has been described by ''The Economist'' as, "The biggest financial exchange you have never heard of". In 20 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Speculation
In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, good (economics), goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.) Many speculators pay little attention to the fundamental value of a security and instead focus purely on price movements. In principle, speculation can involve any tradable good or financial instrument. Speculators are particularly common in the markets for stocks, bond (finance), bonds, commodity futures, currency, currencies, fine art, collectibles, real estate, and derivative (finance), derivatives. Speculators play one of four primary roles in financial markets, along with hedge (finance), hedgers, who engage in transactions to offset some other pre-existing risk, arbitrageus who seek to profit from situations where Fungibility, fungible instruments trade at different prices in different market segments, and investors who s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |