Interest in commodities as an investable asset class has been gradually climbing over the last several years. New means of accessing these securities have turned investors on to the potential return enhancement and diversification benefits they offer. While the potential rewards of investing in commodities are tremendous–as evidenced by the huge price run-ups over the last year–the risks are substantial as well.
While commodities are increasingly ubiquitous and relatively simple to identify or understand, there are numerous nuances that do tend to complicate the process of establishing portfolio exposure to natural resources [see also Three Things Wall Street Journal Didn’t Tell You About Commodities].
Much of the confusion is due to the challenges in gaining exposure to spot prices and misunderstanding the alternatives. Fortunately, there is no shortage of free resources dedicated to making this asset class easier to understand, analyze, and ultimately buy. Below, we profile 50 commodity blogs, web sites, and tools that are helpful for all walks of commodity investors, from beginners to seasoned pros.
Broad Commodity Blogs
These blogs take a look at commodity investments across all different families including agricultural commodities, precious metals, and energy resources.
- Seeking Alpha provides a list of ‘opinion leaders’ in the commodity space who provide valuable insight.
- MineWeb has news and information about a wide range of commodities, from gold and silver to uranium and copper.
- Inside Futures includes articles and posts about commodities and futures trading.
- Commodity & Derivative Advisors Blog is a good resource with consistent industry analysis.
- Trading Charts has a plethora of information regarding virtually every commodity including many of the lesser-known ones such as milk or flaxseed.
- Commodity Online has charts, news, and data on a number of the world’s most important commodities.
- Andrew Hecht’s Commodities Blog on About.com provides helpful information on a variety of commodities and markets — even Florida’s orange juice trade.
- Safe Haven discusses a variety of commodities with a special focus on precious metals.
- Commodity Blog takes a look at a number of different commodities, offering investors technical insights and price info from the exchanges.
- FuturesKnowledge is a good resource for staying up to date with the world of futures.
- Trader Kingdom is a site that features a great blog on futures trading and market trends.
Focused Sites
These sites focus on a particular commodity niche for investment.
Agricultural and Softs
- Agrimoney takes an in-depth look at agricultural commodities such as grains, softs, and livestock.
- The Beef Site focuses on, you guessed it, the cattle markets of the world.
- Commodity News focuses on soybeans and palm oil, pulling in data from a variety of sites to obtain its information.
- Agricultural Futures Trading, as suggested in the title, focuses on agriculture futures trading.
- Khor Reports-Palm Oil is a website specifically focused on crude palm oil futures.
- Jim Rogers’ Blog tracks the musings of legendary commodity investor Jim Rogers, the famous author and co-founder of the Quantum Fund.
- Corn & Soybean Digest takes an in-depth look at two of the most important softs in the world.
- Gold And Silver Blog takes an in-depth look at two of the world’s most famous precious metals.
- Investor Place is a great website that discusses the financial world as a whole but has a soft spot for precious metals futures.
- BaseMetals.com focuses on metals such as copper, tin, zinc, and aluminum, giving investors valuable insight into these important commodity markets.
- Copper Investing News provides up-to-date information on copper investing and which factors influence the base metal’s market.
- Gold Basics focuses on the precious metals market, taking a look at both mining firms and the futures market.
- Platinum Investing News provides real-time information regarding the world’s priciest precious metal, platinum.
- Metal Miner looks at companies that mine precious and industrial metals as well as steel producers.
- Alternative Energy is a quality site for investors looking for news on renewable technologies such as solar, wind, and biofuels.
- OilPrice.com focuses on energy commodities such as crude oil, natural gas, and alternative sources.
- RigZone is a site that provides the latest information on the oil and gas markets.
- Energy Outlook sets its sights on the entire energy industry while still offering a nice economic outlook for interested investors.
- 321 Energy compiles news stories from around the world that target the key energy markets: oil, coal, and alternatives.
- The Energy Report focuses on oil, uranium, lithium, and MLPs, giving investors news on a wide variety of topics in the energy space.
- Fuel Fix is a great website that focuses on the energy world.
Exchanges
The following list contains links to some of the world’s most important commodity exchanges.
- CME Group is arguably the most important commodity exchange in the world, trading everything from corn and soybeans, to gold and copper.
- ICE is the home of numerous important energy contracts including Brent and WTI crude.
- Dubai Mercantile Exchange is the home of Oman crude oil futures, the most popular benchmark in the Middle East.
- Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited is an exchange powerhouse that took over the London Metal Exchange (the world’s premier non-ferrous metals market, specializing in copper, tin, and nickel).
- Euronext is one of the largest exchanges in all of continental Europe focused on commodity market data.
Tools
The following sites all have great tools that every commodity investor should bookmark ASAP.
- AssetCorrelation is a go-to place for investors looking to see how in-step their investments are likely to move.
- Grasp The Wealth Financial Tools offers great downloads to help you keep better track of asset performance.
- ETF Database has an excellent screener that investors can use to pinpoint their commodity exposure in exchange-traded product form.
- Finviz has some very interesting ‘heatmap’ data on a wide range of commodities.
- Energy and Capital has a very interesting ‘peak oil clock’ and has reports and videos about a variety of energy commodities.
For Traders
- Traders Log focuses on widely traded commodities, giving investors a variety of charting options for a number of products.
- SidewaysMarkets is a site heavily geared towards active traders and includes trading courses and FAQs.
- Crude Oil Trader takes a technical look at the markets with a special focus on gold and oil futures.
- Morningstar has a great list of data on a wide range of commodities including futures contract volume and open interest figures.
- Bloomberg has all the important commodities and their spot prices on one page and also has information regarding major commodity indexes
- Commodity Trader provides helpful information on the futures market, adding analysis that can help technical traders sift through the news.
- Futures Mag is a site that is built for traders, giving them charts, analysis and technical metrics that can be extremely useful.
- The DoE offers investors a number of useful links to reports on some of the most widely traded energy contracts in the world.
Found a good resource that we missed? Let us know in the comments below!
