Tokyo Commodity Exchange Tokyo Commodity Exchange Tokyo Commodity Exchange, also known as TOCOM, is Japan’s largest and one of Asia’s most prominent commodity futures exchanges. TOCOM operates electronic markets for precious metals, oil, rubber and soft commodities. It offers futures and options contracts for precious metals (gold, silver, platinum and palladium); energy (crude oil, gasoline, kerosene and gas oil); natural rubber and agricultural products (soybeans, corn and azuki). TOCOM was established in 1984 with the merger of the Tokyo Textile Exchange, founded in 1951, the Tokyo Rubber Exchange and the Tokyo Gold Exchange. The exchange became a for-profit shareholder-owned company in 2008. It
Commodity price index can be traded on an exchange in much the same way as stock index futures. Investors can choose to obtain a passive exposure to these commodity price indices through a total return swap or a commodity index fund. The advantages of a passive commodity index exposure include negative correlation with other asset classes such as equities and bonds, as well as protection against inflation. The disadvantages include a negative roll yield due to contango in certain commodities, although this can be reduced by active management techniques, such as reducing the weights of certain constituents (e.g. precious and base metals) in