Commodity Prices: A Visual Approach
1. Project Concept
Trading commodities - oil, coffee, gold, corn, wheat - is complex. Such products are exchanged by buying and selling futures contracts. These contracts promise that the seller of the contract will deliver to the buyer an agreed upon amount of the commodity at a particular location on a particular date in the future.
At any one time, several futures contracts with different delivery dates are trading for each commodity. Therefore, there is no single price that can be quoted. Traders must track this stream of prices. This is both a data manipulation challenge and an information processing challenge.
2. How to Use
Click on the 'CHARTS' tab above and select product from the sidebar.
[Main Chart]
- This chart will show you prices (close, open, high, low) of contracts during the chosen period, for a single product type.
- Settings: Move or adjust period bar to set period, and choose from drop-down to select price type (close, open, high, low).
- Interactions: Hover to find contract, and single click to lock on a contract. Once locked, hover to read daily specific data. Click again to unlock. Double click on a contract to change to Contract Chart view.
[Contract Chart]
- This chart will show you prices (close, open, high, low), volume, and open interest of a single contract with the chosen delivery month.
- Settings: Choose from drop-down box to select contract with corresponding delivery month. If moved from the Main Chart by double clicking, delivery month will be automatically set.
- Interactions: Hover to read off specific price, volume and open interest data. Double click on a contract to change to One-Day Chart view.
[One-Day Chart]
- This chart will compare close price, volume and open interest among contracts that are being traded at the chosen date.
- Settings: Clicking trade date text box will open calendar. Choose trade date from the calendar. If moved from the Contract Chart by double clicking, trade date will be automatically set.
- No interactions in this chart.
3. Data Sources