Commodity prices

The spot price is the price for delivery now, set continuously by global futures markets — ICE for softs (coffee, sugar, cocoa, cotton), CBOT for grains (wheat, corn, soybean), LME for industrial metals, CME for lumber and steel. The headline number quoted everywhere is the front-month futures contract on the dominant exchange for that commodity.

Each contract trades in the unit historical to its market. Softs and grains trade in US cents per pound or per bushel because that's how the CBOT and ICE wrote their original contracts. Industrial metals like copper trade in dollars per pound on COMEX, but tonne globally on LME. Coffee Robusta uses dollars per tonne because the LIFFE/London contract was tonne-denominated. We render units verbatim ("281.30¢/lb", "$3.95/lb", "$3,361/tonne") instead of normalising — converting hides the conventional quote you'll see at your broker.

Three drivers: supply (weather, harvests, mine output, OPEC-style cartels for some), demand (industrial cycle, currency strength of buyer countries, biofuel and battery mandates) and macro (US dollar strength, real yields, risk-on/risk-off flows). For agricultural commodities the USDA WASDE report monthly and weather in producer countries are the biggest swing factors. For industrial metals the China PMI and global manufacturing data dominate.

The global futures prices on this page are updated every 5 minutes from Yahoo Finance during exchange hours. Robusta coffee and rubber are scraped from primary sources every 30 minutes. The "Last updated" timestamp at the top of the page shows the exact moment.

Yahoo Finance for the major futures contracts (KC/SB/CC/CT for softs, ZW/ZC/ZS/ZR for grains, HG/LBR/HRC for industrial metals). Coffee Robusta is scraped from investing.com because Yahoo delisted the RM=F contract. Rubber from tradingeconomics.com.

NowPrice publishes indicative futures prices. Always check the live quote at your broker, exchange or merchant before trading — small moves between updates can matter on large positions. We are not a regulated broker and don't guarantee the figures. The contract-month rolls (e.g. Yahoo switching from KC=F May to KC=F July) can briefly skew "previous close" if the new contract trades at a different level.