RESEARCH PAPER SERIES, 2017–18              8 December 2017

Commodity Prices: a quick guide to key internet links

Gregory O'Brien

Statistics and Mapping Section

This Quick Guide provides a summary of key online resources which provide commodity price data. The first section provides a reference table for five key publications by commodity. The second section provides a longer list of important sources for commodity price data from both international and Australian organisations.

Commodity price data included in key sources

Table 1 provides a quick summary of the major commodity prices reported in five key publications which provide broad coverage of agricultural and resource commodities. The five sources included in the table are:

·         The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Primary Commodity Prices page, which includes monthly and weekly data for a wide range of internationally traded commodities;

·         The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) agricultural commodities publications – the annual Agricultural Commodity Statistics and the quarterly Agricultural Commodities

·         The London Metal Exchange’s (LME) market data page for spot prices for major metals

·         The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science’s Resources and Energy Quarterly publication and

·         The Wall Street Journal’s Market Data page for commodities, which provides daily prices for a wide range of commodity spot prices and futures contract prices.

While these five sources are not comprehensive, they include the majority of the key commodities of interest to the Australian economy, are updated regularly and provide either the latest data available or long time-series data for these commodities.

Table One: Guide to commodity price data by source

Commodity

IMF

ABARES

LME

REQ

WSJ

Period covered:

M: From 1980

Varies - from 1970

Last trading day, futures to 3 years

A: Last 7 years

Most recent price

W: Last 8 weeks

Q: Last 8 quarters

Alumina

A, M

Aluminium

M, W

D, F

A, Q, M

D

Bananas

M, W

Barley

M, W

A, M

D

Beef

M, W

A, Q, M

D

Butter

A

D

Canola

A

Cheese

A

D

Coal, Thermal

M, W

A, Q

Coal, Metallurgical

A, Q

Cocoa Beans

M, W

D

Coffee

M, W

D

Copper

M, W

D, F

A, Q, M

D

Corn (Maize)

M, W

A, M

D

Cotton

M, W

A

D

Crude Oil

M, W

A, Q

Fertilisers

Gold

A, Q

D

Iron Ore

M, W

A, Q

D

Lamb

M, W

A, Q, M

Lead

M, W

D, F

A, M, Q

Manganese

A, Q

Milk

A

D

Natural Gas

M, W

D

Nickel

M, W

D, F

A, Q, M

Oats

A, M

D

Olive Oil

M, W

Palm Oil

M, W

A

Phosphate

A, Q

D

Pork

M, W

A, Q, M

Poultry (chicken)

M, W

A, Q

Rapeseed Oil

M, W

Rice

M, W

A

D

Rubber

M, W

Silver

A, Q, M

D

Sorghum

A, M

D

Soybean oil

M, W

D

Soybeans

M, W

A

D

Sugar

M, W

A

Sunflower oil

M, W

Timber

M, W

A

Tin

M, W

D, F

A, Q, M

Uranium

M, W

Wheat

M, W

A, M

D

Woodchips

A

Wool

M, W

A

D

Zinc

M, W

D, F

A, Q, M

D

Daily

M

Monthly

A

Annual

W

Weekly

Q

Quarterly

F

Futures

Publications providing commodity price data

International Organisations

The International Monetary Fund (IMF)

The International Monetary Fund provides research on primary commodity prices, including agricultural commodities, metals and energy resources. They publish the following price series:

·         Indices of commodity prices in USD terms, including annual and monthly percentage changes

·         Indices of commodity price groupings (all primary commodities, edibles, food, metals, etc.)

·         Market prices in USD for primary commodities on an annual, quarterly, and monthly basis through to the latest complete month. This data is also available for download in excel format under the heading ‘monthly data’ on the primary commodity price homepage

·         Projections for commodity prices on a quarterly basis in the short term (1-2 years) and on an annual basis for the medium term (5 years), downloadable in excel format from the primary commodity price homepage and

·         The primary commodity price homepage also provides access to the commodity quarterly review, commodity market review, and commodity market monthly, reports which provide analysis, forecasts, and risk assessments for commodity prices.

The World Bank

The World Bank’s commodity markets portal includes long-term time series of monthly or annual prices for major global commodities, as well as long-term (10-years plus) price forecasts for these commodities. This page also provides access to the World Bank’s publications on commodity prices, the Commodity Markets Outlook, chart data from this publication, blog posts, and short articles on commodity prices.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)

The Wall Street Journal’s market data center provides the latest daily spot prices for a wide range of energy, precious and industrial metals, agricultural and food commodities. Futures data is also available for many of these commodities.

London Metal Exchange (LME)

The London Metal Exchange provides daily closing prices from the previous trading day for the major industrial metals traded on the exchange. Also available are monthly average settlement price reports, which include futures contract pricing. The LME also produces a number of additional reports which can be accessed with a free online registration.

Australian Organisations

Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, Office of the Chief Economist

The Office of the Chief Economist within the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science publishes the Resources and Energy Quarterly publication. This includes a table of commodity prices (currently table 22 of the ‘historical data’ spreadsheet), with annual and monthly data (through to three months before the publication date) for selected commodities (alumina, aluminium, gold, iron ore, thermal coal, metallurgical coal, West Texas Intermediate crude oil, Brent crude oil, and metals). These tables can be downloaded under the ‘data’ heading.

Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)

ABARES produces many publications which include price data for agricultural commodities. The flagship commodity statistical publications are Agricultural commodity statistics, published annually, and Agricultural commodities, published quarterly. These publications include long time series for major agricultural commodities (the annual publication has longer time-series than the quarterly publication). Specialist publications for agricultural sectors often include more detailed price data for specific agricultural industries.

The bi-annual Australian forest and wood products statistics publication provides price indexes and trade unit values for forest and wood products.

Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)

The RBA produces several aggregate indexes of commodity prices in both AUD and USD series. Indexes provided on a monthly basis include aggregate commodity prices, rural commodity prices, non-rural commodity prices, base metals prices, and bulk commodities prices. These monthly indexes provide price movement data back to 1982. Charts of these series are produced by the RBA for inclusion in the chart pack.

Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA)

Meat and Livestock Australia publishes daily indicators on their webpage for key cattle and sheep prices, and provides detailed data through their statistics database on livestock prices (cattle, goat, lamb and sheep) and meat prices (export, import, retail and wholesale).

Dairy Australia

The annual Australian Dairy in Focus publication includes data on milk prices and selected other dairy product pricing.

© Commonwealth of Australia

Creative Commons

With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, and to the extent that copyright subsists in a third party, this publication, its logo and front page design are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia licence.