Commodity market oil is traded through NYMEX under trading symbol HO. Purified terephthalic acid (PTA) is traded through ZCE in units of 5 tons with the trading symbol of TA. Ethanol is traded at CBOT in units of 29,000 U.S. gal under trading symbols AC (Open Auction) and ZE (Electronic). Precious metals currently traded on the commodity market include gold, platinum, palladium and silver which are sold by the troy ounce. One of the main exchanges for these precious metals is COMEX. According to the World Gold Council, investments in gold are the primary driver of industry growth. Gold prices are highly
Commodity pathway diversion to identify in which phase of its life an object is considered a commodity. Appadurai defines a commodity situation as "the situation in which [an object's] exchangeability for some other thing is a socially relevant feature." In his introduction to "The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective", Appadurai references the work of Nancy Munn and Igor Kopytoff as influential to the discussion of commodity pathways and diversions. Both scholars advocate analyzing the entire trajectory or "social life" of a commodity to understand its full value. In her article "The Spatiotemporal Transformations of Gawa Canoes", anthropologist Nancy Munn, argues