On 22/04/2010 1:29 a.m., Joe wrote:
On Apr 21, 4:23 am, wrote:
On 21/04/2010 1:19 a.m., Joe wrote: On Apr 20, 1:38 am, wrote:
On 20/04/2010 3:28 p.m., Joe wrote:Coffee is the second
most traded item on earth after oil so I figured it's an area where
you can grow if you work hard and provide a good product.
Actually, it appears to be the seventh most traded agricultural product,
and I expect well down after other non-agricultural commodities are
included in a list.
http://www.globalexchange.org/campai...fee/faq.html#1
"Coffee is the US's largest food import and second most valuable
commodity only after oil."
Perhaps they got that off Wikipedia - no?
2005 stats for US imports
Coffee ~ US$3 billion.
Vegetables and fruit ~ $10 billion
Meat ~ $6 billion
Petroleum products incl gas ~ $231 billion
Alcoholic beverages ~ $11 billion
Gold ~ $4.4 billion
Copper ~ $7 billion
Aluminium ~ $12 billion
Footwear ~ $18 billion
Fish ~ 4.5 billion
etc
Lesson - don't trust industry organisations when they might be
pontificating...
Coffee is... well almost peanuts. It seems to be about (less than) 1/3
of 1% of US total imports, about where Toyota will be in a couple of
years at present rate of decline.
Reference:http://www.indexmundi.com/(original data fromhttp://www.intracen.org/)
http://www.investorguide.com/igu-art...mmodities.html
Traded in mercantile exchanges. Most trade isn't through mercantile
exchanges, it's negotiated between buyer and sellers directly.
A bag of coffee traded through exchanges might be bought and sold 20
times whilst on the water. The more volatile the market, the more it's
likely to be traded. The more volatile the market, the more chance
you'll lose your nuts while owning a cargo of beans, unless you've got
both end of the deal covered, and/or you've hedged risk by trading
currency and commodity futures to protect your profit margin.
So while you might be able to trade your way into a profit whilst
holding a cargo of beans in transit, if you want to profit from it the
way you're suggesting (presuming to know "the market") then you'd
probably do much better sitting at a desk and a computer screen.
If you can access a good product, then find a good customer (or vice versa).