Looking ahead, the recovery in iron ore spot prices brings some comfort for Vale investors.
ON, one of its most important customers, to link its gas to spot prices.
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Investors favor long-term agreements for polysilicon, because it shields the purchaser from expensive spot prices.
But as talks continued, spot prices, a determinant of contract prices, began to rise.
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Spot prices for NAND flash memory rebounded in the third quarter due to decreased channel supply.
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Lower spot prices make projects less attractive while decreased equity market interest makes financing harder to come by.
Oil futures one year out trade at a big premium to spot prices.
Normally, oil trades at a premium to spot prices in the outer years.
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On Tuesday Global X launched a new equity exchange-traded fund that attempts to achieve high correlation to crude oil spot prices.
In the year to April, spot prices for iron ore and coal (among Australia's biggest exports) rose by 190% and 70% respectively.
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One is to set up an intranet for purchasing plastic resin globally, allowing factories to arbitrage between spot prices in the U.S. and Eastern Europe.
The constant onslaught of cash into these markets causes a frenzy in the price of the futures contracts and drags the spot prices ever upward.
Commodities like oil, copper and iron ore just relapsed and both metallurgical and steam coal spot prices stick in the dumps despite serious cutbacks in production, worldwide.
Pound futures are trading at a discount to spot prices, a reflection of the fact that short-term interest rates are higher in London than they are here.
Vale executives said the recent correction in China spot prices was driven by higher supply from Australia and India and credit restrictions that cut into Chinese demand.
Spot prices, which guide the annual benchmark, have risen steadily.
It is rare for investors to take physical delivery of commodities, so no raw materials are removed from the supply chain (another reason why investors are unlikely to affect spot prices).
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The shortage might then have pushed spot prices higher.
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This year, the China Iron and Steel Association was outspoken in its desire to see prices fall sharply, which throughout the spring seemed likely as demand wavered and spot prices sank.
Contango involves a scenario where future prices for a given commodity are higher than spot prices whereas backwardation involves a scenario where future prices for a given commodity are lower than spot prices.
The current contango in oil markets (meaning: future prices are above spot prices) has allowed Plains to make a low-risk profit buying oil for its own account, selling futures and letting the purchased oil sit around.
Load shifting is a type of arbitrage based on the fact that it takes about 24 hours for changes on spot prices at the NYMEX to feed into gasoline prices at the wholesale level, according to Mossman.
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As I write this post on April 15, spot gold prices, according to Bloomberg, settled down approximately 9% for the day (which marks the biggest one day decline since February of 1983), while spot silver prices were down approximately 12% for the day.
For these reasons, spot uranium prices are up something like 70% since June of last year.
Spot gold prices made solid gains Monday and Comex gold futures are playing catch-up Tuesday morning.
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Spot oil prices have fallen sharply since mid-September (down 6%), taking the edge off the market somewhat.
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Silver Wheaton sells silver at spot market prices and does not hedge it.
In response to this, industrial customers for iron ore are asking for shorter iron ore shipment contracts that are priced closer to the spot market prices.
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That makes them a dicey proposition in a fast-moving energy market like Britain's, where changes in spot power prices can transform a profitable plant into a loss-making one overnight.
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