Commodity (was RE: [Fwd: Kremen ...])

Wed Sep 13 09:06:53 UTC 2006

> Erm, Uranium *is* a commodity. Last week's spot price was
> $52 a pound for U3O8. It's a small market in terms of numbers
> of players but it's still an open market in the economic sense.
> 102 million pounds were traded in 2004. Hedge funds are players
> in the uranium market (source: www.uxc.com, home page)

I don't know where you got that figure but the website
you reference states that in 2005 only 35 million pounds
were traded in 107 transaction. I think most people will
agree that any item for which only 107 transactions are
concluded in a year is not terribly liquid. 

According to this 
http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/cont_detail/0,3206,1248+21215,00.html
in Chicago alone, counting only trades for 100 oz. unit
size, there were 15,544 contracts. Add to that the fact
that you can buy and sell gold in any major bank in any
major city as well as in most large jewellry stores and
you have a very liquid commodity indeed.

--Michael Dillon