Everyone, meet Duran (Artist at SA Hardcore Tattoos). Probably the coolest guy we’ve met in a while! I know this is completely irrelevant to the topic of commodities, but this guy has a crucifix face-tattoo - FundBabies approves! When I asked him what he thought commodities were, he got it spot on! He even mentioned some high-level stuff, like Brent crude oil and its price.
There are two kinds of commodities, soft and hard commodities. Soft commodities are your basic agricultural raw materials (mielies, wheat, pineapples, etc) or livestock (cattle, sheep, etc). Hard commodities are natural resources like oil, platinum, gold, etc).
A commodities market is then a marketplace where raw materials are bought and sold.
Forex is short for Foreign Exchange. The Foreign Exchange Market is where currencies are traded. Currencies are generally accepted forms of money in different countries, like the South African Rand (ZAR) and the US Dollar (US$). This market is important because there is a lot of business conducted between countries on a daily basis. An example of this would be importing and exporting. If you’re a cheese enthusiast and you want to buy the finest cheese from the Netherlands but it isn’t available in South African shops, you would have to buy it directly from the Netherlands. However you can’t pay in ZAR, you would need to pay in Euros. Therefore you would have to buy Euros to purchase your cheese.
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