How to read the market?
 

Commodities
US@ZCL.1 - Soybean Oil Composite CBOT
14 May 2008Last/Bid 53
Ask 52.870
Net Change +1.360
Last Close 0.000
Prev. Settlement 51.480
$ USD
Date 01 Apr 2008 13:07
High 52.840
Low 48.600
Last Close Date 01 Apr 2008
Settle Date 30 Mar 2008
Exchange USBF

All quotes delayed at least 20 minutesMarket Update

Here is the current market for soy oil. This might be quite stupid but how do you read this? When it says ask52.870 is that for pounds or gallons? This something new to me , to watch the market and especially soy since it will reflect our price of biodiesel.

tazo,

It's neither. It means DOLLARS.

Thanks. I understand that it means dollars but for what quantity?

tazo,
I might be wrong, but it could be 52.870 cents per pound.. I looked at CBOT and soybeans are trading at 1211.10 which would be cents per bushel and Soybean Oil lists for 52.870 which I would think might be cents per pound.

walrus,
Thanks. That makes sense to me. I got a e-mail from my supplier telling me that bio price is going up because of the market price of soy oil. He is now using 20% recycled oil to off set the price of soy oil. The one thing I have never learned how to do was understand what all the # mean when reading the stock.

Here you go tazo,
I went straight to the 'horses mouth'. I actually do business with a commodity trading company, although they don't do much sbo, and I asked a merchandiser.

"Oil trades in cents per lb…… and the contracts are in 100 lb lots….. so .5287lb or 52.87 per 100lb cont

The bid number is normally lower than the ask…but because it’s composite it might skew the numbers a little...basically what somebody will buy and/or sell it at right now."

I only asked about the first few lines. The high and low values are just that, and the Previous Settlement is what it closed at yesterday.

walrus, Your the man! Thanks.

would 50 cents a gallon be a fair price to buy large quantities of "high quality WVO"?

Considering you dont have to negotiate for it, go collect it, provide storage tanks to suppliers, and if it is truly high quality you shouldn't have to spend much time filtering out gunk and crispies $.50 is a price I would pay.

thanks as always. rep points given!

Bringing this thread back up to ask another question. How many pounds of oil in 1 gallon?
Just trying to figure the cost of biodiesel using virgin oil.

i have always thought 1 gal of oil weighed a little more than 7lbs