This week’s newsletter covers the coffee market. Coffee is one of the most popular commodities traded on future exchanges. It’s also one of the most consumed beverages worldwide (excluding water).
Overview
Coffee has been traded for hundreds of years, starting in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century. However, they only started trading on the Intercontinental Exchange in 1973 when such technology for digitizing futures contracts became available. Here’s a chart showing the Intercontinental Exchange’s Coffee Futures price.
The price of coffee since 1973 has stayed range-bound from a low of $0.50 per 37,500 pounds of coffee to almost $3.50. You might think that the general price of commodities would rise over time, but coffee (adjusted for inflation) has actually become cheaper over time.