One of the quotes used in this Word was: ...the difference between spot prices and forward prices.... Are these common terms (she said in her ignorance)? From context I'm guessing that spot comes from "on the spot" (now, in other words) and forward means forward in time; but I've never heard either one.
Oh, and does contango only apply to gold, or perhaps currency?
Jackie, far as I know, they're just trade jargon.
I worked in futures markets for many years. I won't post an entire tutorial here, but just to clear it up a little (and I love the word contango -- I used to run around the newsroom singing "It takes two to contango!" till they finally led me away with the promise of kindness of strangers). But I digress.
You're right, the spot market is for immediate delivery, and it exists for every commodity (though I doubt many pork-bellies investors would like to see a load of such dumped on their office floors). Futures/forward-price markets were originally created to protect farmers, but now mostly attract speculators, who bet on the rise/fall of gold/wheat/currency/crude oil over a given period.
Thanks, Anna. Do you by any chance know what has been done to prevent recurrence of bankrupting of Barings,one of
Britain's oldest banks by mistakes of Nick Leeson?
http://www.riskglossary.com/articles/barings_debacle.htmOoh, by the way--our Messiah singalong is tonight!
Wow, Jackie, I haven't heard anything about that in years. I too would like to know what eventually happened. I'll see if I can find something on the net.
Have fun, sing good. We haven't dug up any sing-alongs around here this year, but we've got the scores at the ready. I guess if someone was going to host one we'd of [sic] heard about it by now....
Mmm, it was lovely. At one point in the afternoon I had made up my mind not to go, because I still get to coughing if I use my voice too much. But then I decided that if I made too much noise, I could just exit the room; or sanctuary, rather. It has a real pipe organ, and acoustics that make us bunch of strangers who had come together sound fantastic. There was a point in His Yoke Is Easy where the sop.'s, altos and tenors all got a bit shaky, but the basses held on, and the director managed to pull us back in. That is the second time for me, performing that piece, that I lost count because one of the other voices did--you would think I'd have learned my lesson the first time; though tonight it was also due to the director just happening not to cue us sopranos in, the one crucial (for me) time. But overall it was uplifting, exhilarating, and at times, exalting. And once again, I didn't make it through the Hallelujah chorus without crying.