Commodities

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Commodities
kəˈmɒdətiz (n.)
Stuff you can eat, stick in your gas tank, get out of a power supply, or make things out of. Real world perishable goods.

Under the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, defined, amusingly, as follows:

The term “commodity” means wheat, cotton, rice, corn, oats, barley, rye, flaxseed, grain sorghums, mill feeds, butter, eggs, Solanum tuberosum (Irish potatoes), wool, wool tops, fats and oils (including lard, tallow, cottonseed oil, peanut oil, soybean oil, and all other fats and oils), cottonseed meal, cottonseed, peanuts, soybeans, soybean meal, livestock, livestock products, and frozen concentrated orange juice, and all other goods and articles, except onions (as provided by section 13–1 of this title ) and motion picture box office receipts (or any index, measure, value, or data related to such receipts), and all services, rights, and interests (except motion picture box office receipts, or any index, measure, value or data related to such receipts) in which contracts for future delivery are presently or in the future dealt in.

Let us parse that. (Disclaimer: this is a matter of the application of the English language and may or may not reflect U.S. law and practice):

We think:

“wheat, cotton, rice, corn, oats, barley, rye, flaxseed, grain sorghums, mill feeds, butter, eggs, Solanum tuberosum (Irish potatoes), wool, wool tops”

and

“fats and oils (including lard, tallow, cottonseed oil, peanut oil, soybean oil, and all other fats and oils)”

and

“cottonseed meal, cottonseed, peanuts, soybeans, soybean meal, livestock, livestock products, and frozen concentrated orange juice”

fit comfortably within the general catch-all “all other goods and articles” though it is fun that only frozen concentrated orange juice gets a mention, and not other kinds of orange juice, and the fats and oils mentioned do not seem to be of the commercial energy generating type (thought tallow candles and I guess you could covert soyabean oil into diesel — which shortens our clause to:

The term “commodity” means all goods and articles, except onions and motion picture box office receipts and their derivatives (Movie Ticket Receipt Instruments), and all services, rights, and interests (except Movie Ticket Receipt Instruments) in which contracts for future delivery are presently or in the future dealt in.

Commodity Table

Commodity	Physical	Futures
Onions	No	Yes
Movie Ticket Receipt Instruments	No	No
Anything else	Yes	Yes

See also

• Emission allowances
• Commodity derivatives
• De minimis threshold test