Resources
Commodities and resources
Oil, gas, copper, lithium, uranium, grain. A prediction market about any of them is really a question about supply, demand and a handful of chokepoints — this is where those fundamentals live.
Commodity questions look intimidating because the answer never sits in the headline. Whether a price ends the year above a level depends on how much of the stuff exists, who controls it, how fast it can move, and what buyers can substitute when it gets expensive. None of that is guesswork — it is published, by geological surveys, energy agencies and customs authorities.
Each entry in this domain is built around the same five questions: what the resource is used for, where it is found, what actually moves its price, where it is traded and against which contract, and who exports and imports it. Read those five and a commodity market stops being a coin flip about a number.
Crude oil
Oil is the most watched price in the world and the most misread. Almost every question about it comes down to two numbers: spare capacity and inventories.
Open entryNatural gas
Gas is the most regional of the big commodities and the most weather-driven. Until a cargo can physically move, three continents can hold three completely different prices.
Open entryCopper
Copper is what the grid is made of, which is why its price behaves like a bet on construction, electrification and Chinese industry all at once.
Open entryLithium
Lithium went from industrial curiosity to strategic metal in a decade, and its price has behaved accordingly: two brutal boom-bust cycles in five years.
Open entryUranium
Uranium barely has a spot market. Most of it is sold years ahead under contract, which makes the visible price a thin edge on a much larger hidden one.
Open entryRare earths
Rare earths are not rare. What is rare is the willingness to separate them, and that single fact is the whole market.
Open entryGold
Gold is the one commodity where annual production barely matters. Almost every ounce ever mined still exists, so the price is set by who wants to hold the stock, not by who dug it up this year.
Open entrySilver
Silver is two markets wearing one ticker: a monetary metal that trades like gold, and an industrial input that trades like copper. Which one is driving changes without warning.
Open entryWheat
Wheat is the most political commodity in the world. It feeds more people directly than any other crop, which is why governments intervene in it faster than in anything else.
Open entryCorn
Corn is the world's largest crop by volume and mostly not a food. It is animal feed and motor fuel, which is why its price answers to livestock margins and energy policy.
Open entryCoffee
Coffee is grown by millions of smallholders and priced by two futures contracts. Between those two facts sits every supply shock this market has ever had.
Open entryCocoa
Cocoa is the clearest example in this library of what happens when a market cannot respond to its own price - two countries, fixed farmgate rates, and ageing trees.
Open entry
How these markets resolve
- A settlement price of a named futures contract on a named date — the contract, not the spot headline, is the thing being priced.
- An official production or inventory report (EIA, OPEC monthly report, USDA WASDE) at its scheduled release.
- A policy event with a date: an OPEC+ meeting, an export ban, a sanctions deadline.