Commodity Futures Trading Platforms and Quote Vendors
Because commodity futures prices are constantly changing, this information is valuable.
For trading pit transactions, it's also somewhat difficult to capture. The open outcry pits
have market reporters who report price changes using a walkie-talkie or a handheld
computer console. They are then transmitted to quote boards in the exchange, and to
quotation systems supplying this data around the world.
Futures exchanges will transmit this real-time information directly to you, for a price of
course. Open outcry trading pit data may go for $30 to $50 per quote feed from each
exchange, for nonelectronically traded commodities. Therefore, if you try to track what's
happening on all the exchanges, this will add up.
Tracking open outcry options prices brings up another difficult. Some commodity
options are traded slowly. Therefore, the price of a prior transaction may be several
hours old. Yet in the meantime the underlying commodity has moved quite a bit.
Therefore, the most recent price for an option may not be the current price.
Electronically traded market prices are of course more easily available on a real time
basis. However, you still have to pay exchange fees, and the price the software vendor
and data access provider is charging.
Some trading platforms (software programs that allow you to trade) provide real time
quotes from a live data feed. Of course, you're still paying for the data, but it'll be
cheaper, and not a separate bill.
Three of the most well known sources of commodities quotes and charts are
Futuresource, Barchart and E-Signal. They generally come with various bells and
whistles.
News from Dow Jones and Reuters, the capacity to show a chart of the information,
including the Fibonacci Ruler, Gann Fans, candle sticks, trend lines, Relative Strength
Index (RSI), and other techniques and indicators.
Commodities brokerage firms offer complimentary trading platforms, and will include
their own bells and whistles for additional mone