Commodity market may include interest rates, environmental instruments, swaps, or freight contracts. Source: International Trade Centre Energy commodities include crude oil particularly West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil and Brent crude oil, natural gas, heating oil, ethanol and purified terephthalic acid. Hedging is a common practice for these commodities. For many years, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil, a light, sweet crude oil, was the world’s most-traded commodity. WTI is a grade used as a benchmark in oil pricing. It is the underlying commodity of Chicago Mercantile Exchange's oil futures contracts. WTI is often referenced in news reports on oil prices, alongside
Commodity goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labour-power, works of art and natural resources ("earth itself is an instrument of labour"), even though they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods. Marx's analysis of the commodity is intended to help solve the problem of what establishes the economic value of goods, using the labor theory of value. This problem was extensively debated by Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow among others. All three of the above-mentioned economists rejected the theory that labour composed 100% of the exchange value of any commodity. In varying