Skip to main content

SILVER part 1














SILVER


Orientation

As you know, there are two commodity exchanges in India – Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) and National Commodity and Derivative Exchange (NCDEX). MCX is particularly popular for the Metals and Energy commodities while NCDEX for all the agri commodities. However, there is a lot of activity picking up on MCX for agri commodities as well. My job over the next few chapters is to discuss these commodities which are traded on the exchanges, and get you familiar with the commodity contracts.
We will look into each and every commodity that is actively traded on the commodity exchanges. The idea is to know how the commodity contract works (contract specification), figure out which contract to trade, and identify the factor which influences the commodity. I will skip the usual background to commodities market part, the one which talks about the history, forwards markets, the farmers in US, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange etc. You will find this in almost any material on Commodity market. I would like get straight to the heart of the topic by slicing and dicing the contract specifications of commodities and other details around them.
Here is the list of commodities available on MCX to trade; of course I got this list from the MCX website –



The idea is to cover all the major commodities that one can trade. Needless to say, one has to know how ‘Derivative Futures’ function before attempting to understand Commodities. So if you are not familiar with Futures, I’d encourage you to read the module on futures trading.
Anyway, assuming you are familiar with Futures, we will now start with Gold.


The Gold Contract

Gold is a very actively traded contract in MCX. It has ample liquidity, with daily trades of roughly 15,000 contracts translating to a Rupee value of over 4500 Crore. Note, these numbers belong to just one type of Gold contract, often nicknamed “Big Gold”.
Gold comes in quite a few variants that one can choose to trade in. Newbie and sometimes even the experienced commodity traders often get confused with these contracts, not knowing which one to trade and the difference between them. To begin with, let me list down all the different types of Gold contracts –
  1. Gold (The Big Gold)
  2. Gold Mini
  3. Gold Guinea
  4. Gold Petal
All these variants belong to the same underlying i.e Gold. I guess the best way to understand the difference is by understanding the contract specification of each of these variants. We will start with the big boy first, i.e ‘The Gold’.
Here is the contract specification as per MCX, let me list the important things first and then we will understand them one by one –
ParticularValue
Price QuotationRupee per 10 grams inclusive of all taxes and levies relating to import duty
Lot Size1 kilogram
Tick Size1 rupee
P&L per tickRs. 100
Expiry Date5th day of contract month
Delivery LogicCompulsory
Delivery Unit1 kilogram














Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

OPTION TRADING

A Special Agreement There are two types of options – The Call option and the Put option. You can be a buyer or seller of these options. Based on what you choose to do, the P&L profile changes. Of course we will get into the P&L profile at a much later stage. For now, let us understand what “The Call Option” means. In fact the best way to understand the call option is to first deal with a tangible real world example, once we understand this example we will extrapolate the same to stock markets. So let’s get started. Consider this situation; there are two good friends, Ajay and Venu. Ajay is actively evaluating an opportunity to buy 1 acre of land that Venu owns. The land is valued at Rs.500,000/-. Ajay has been informed that in the next 6 months, a new highway project is likely to be sanctioned near the land that Venu owns. If the highway indeed comes up, the valuation of the land is bound to increase and therefore Ajay would benefit from the investment he would mak...
Post a Comment
Read more
CALL OPTIONS BASICS Breaking the Ice The options market makes up for a significant part of the derivative market, particularly in India. I would not be exaggerating if I were to say that nearly 80% of the derivatives traded are options and the rest is attributable to the futures market. Internationally, the option market has been around for a while now, here is a quick background on the same – Custom options were available as Over the Counter (OTC) since the 1920’s. These options were mainly on commodities Options on equities began trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) in 1972 Options on currencies and bonds began in late 1970s. These were again OTC trades Exchange-traded options on currencies began on Philadelphia Stock Exchange in 1982 Interest rate options began trading on the CME in 1985 Clearly the international markets have evolved a great deal since the OTC days. However in India from the time of inception, the options market was facilita...
Post a Comment
Read more

2 Must Read Books For Stock Market Investors.

2 Must Read Books For Stock Market Investors. It’r really important to know the basics about the stocks before entering the market as lack of knowledge in this field almost always leads to a huge financial loss. Further, loss of capital also leads to a decline in the morale of the investor. Therefore, today I am going to give you the names of 10 must read books for the stock market investors. So, be with me for the next few minutes while i give you a brief introduction and review about the 10 must read books for stock market investors. Here it goes: 2 Must Read Books For Stock Market Investors: This book is ranked 1 in my list of 10 must read books for stock market investors.  Peter Lynch,  the Author of the book, is one of the most successful fund manager with  an average annual return of 30%  on his portfolio for a period of 13 years. A great record for a mutual fund manager. This classic book explains all the important basics that a beginn...
Post a Comment
Read more