by William Davies

Global commodity trading now takes place on a growing platform of modern, transparent commodity exchanges across all time zones. Using agreed frameworks of rules and regulations and standard contract designs we now see a wide range of commodities traded between end users and primary producers. The result is that it is now much easier to buy and sell across the range of basic commodities from orange juice to gold bullion, from crude oil to coffee beans.

While some of the major commodities like coffee and crude oil have been traded for a number of years, we are now seeing in modern commodity markets the strong innovation theme leading to new futures contracts being traded. One area where new product development has made a notable change is in the trading of carbon emission permits. Given the growing global concern about the serious long term impact to the environment …

Each year, the NCAA college basketball tournament winnows its starting field of 64 teams to the Final Four teams who play for a chance to become the national champion. Congratulations to the University of Kansas and the University of Tennessee, this year’s men’s and women’s basketball champions.

The structure of the NCAA tournament got me to thinking. …