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 fetishism Commodity fetishism In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism is the perception of the social relationships involved in production not as relationships among people, but as economic relationships among the money and commodities exchanged in market trade. As such, commodity fetishism transforms the "subjective", abstract aspects of economic value into "objective", real things that people believe have intrinsic value. The theory of commodity fetishism is presented in the first chapter of "Das Kapital" (English: "Capital. Critique of Political Economy)" (1867), at the conclusion of the analysis of the value-form of commodities, to explain that the social organization of