The Biggest Markets
Every commodity market, ranked by the dollars that trade through it each day.
Liquidity is not spread evenly across commodities. Crude oil and gold dwarf everything else, and most soft commodities are tiny by comparison. The figures below blend exchange futures and options with estimated over-the-counter volume, and they are order-of-magnitude numbers meant to show relative scale, not precise daily prints. The point is the contrast: the crude complex turns over hundreds of billions of dollars a day, while orange juice is a rounding error against it.
| # | Market | Main venues | Approx daily traded value | Value produced, 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crude oil | NYMEX WTI, ICE Brent, OTC swaps | roughly $300 to $450 billion | about $2.1 trillion |
| 2 | Gold | LBMA OTC, COMEX, Shanghai | roughly $360 billion (2025 record) | about $410 billion (mine output) |
| 3 | Refined products | ICE gasoil, NYMEX gasoline and heating oil, OTC | roughly $40 to $70 billion | about $2.5 trillion, most of it the crude inside it |
| 4 | Natural gas | NYMEX Henry Hub, ICE TTF, OTC | roughly $30 to $60 billion | about $0.6 trillion at US prices, $1.9 trillion at European and Asian ones |
| 5 | Copper | LME, COMEX, SHFE | roughly $30 to $60 billion | about $230 billion (mined copper) |
| 6 | Iron ore | SGX, DCE | roughly $20 to $40 billion | about $260 billion |
| 7 | Silver | COMEX, LBMA OTC, SHFE | roughly $15 to $30 billion | about $35 billion (mine output) |
| 8 | Soybeans | CBOT, DCE | roughly $10 to $20 billion | about $160 billion |
| 9 | Corn | CBOT, DCE | roughly $8 to $15 billion | about $250 billion |
| 10 | Wheat | CBOT, Kansas City, Euronext | roughly $5 to $10 billion | about $140 billion |
| 11 | Aluminium | LME, SHFE | roughly $5 to $10 billion | about $190 billion |
| 12 | Sugar | ICE No. 11, ICE white sugar | roughly $2 to $5 billion | about $70 billion |
| 13 | Coffee | ICE Arabica, ICE Robusta | roughly $1 to $3 billion | about $70 billion at exchange prices |
| 14 | Cotton | ICE | roughly $1 to $2 billion | about $45 billion |
| 15 | Cocoa | ICE, London | roughly $1 to $2 billion | about $38 billion at exchange prices |
| 16 | Lean hogs | CME | roughly $300 to $600 million | about $240 billion of pork |
| 17 | Orange juice | ICE | roughly $50 to $150 million | about $8 billion |
| 18 | Lithium, cobalt, rare earths, fertilizers | PRA-priced, mostly physical; thin paper on CME and SGX | well under $1 billion combined as paper | lithium about $15 billion, cobalt about $10 billion, fertilizers about $200 billion |
Figures blend exchange futures, options, and estimated OTC turnover. They are approximate June 2026 order-of-magnitude estimates intended only to convey relative scale, sourced from exchange volume reports (CME, ICE, LME, SGX, SHFE), the World Gold Council (gold turnover, 2025 average), and BIS and industry estimates of OTC activity. Daily prints vary widely with volatility and contract expiries.
Value produced is world output in 2025 multiplied by the 2025 average price, rounded, so it is an order of magnitude rather than an accounting total. Prices are the IMF monthly series via FRED (Brent, LME copper and aluminium, iron ore 62% CFR China, US Gulf corn, wheat and soybeans, ISA sugar, ICO arabica and robusta, Cotlook A, ICCO cocoa, US hogs, Henry Hub, the Dutch TTF and the Japan LNG import price) and COMEX averages for gold, silver and orange juice. Output is from the Energy Institute (oil, gas), the USGS (copper, iron ore, aluminium), the World Gold Council, the Silver Institute, and USDA for the crops and pork. Exchange prices overstate what farmers receive for coffee and cocoa, where the farmgate price is far lower. Comparing the two columns is the point: gold produces a fifth of crude’s value and trades about as much every day, while pork, corn and iron ore each produce more than gold and trade a fraction of it.
Why liquidity is the hidden variable
Headline prices get the attention, but liquidity decides who can actually participate and how big. A fund can move serious size in crude or gold and barely disturb the screen, because tens of billions of dollars change hands every hour. Try to hedge a billion dollars of cocoa or lithium and there is no market deep enough to absorb it; you would move the price against yourself before the position was on. That is why the same dollar risk is routine in one market and impossible in another. Liquidity sets the maximum size of a trade, the slippage you pay to get in and out, and ultimately the kind of player a market can support, from global macro desks at the top to a handful of physical merchants at the bottom.
The two giants
Crude oil and gold are in a league of their own, and the surprise is how close they are. Crude is the deepest commodity market on earth, traded across WTI, Brent, refined products, and a vast OTC swap book, which is why it doubles as a barometer for global growth and inflation rather than just a barrel of oil. Gold is the shock: most people picture bars sitting in a vault, but the World Gold Council put gold's average turnover at a record 361 billion dollars a day in 2025 (roughly 180 billion in London OTC clearing, 114 billion on COMEX, and 51 billion on the Shanghai exchanges), which rivals the entire crude complex. Near 4,000 dollars an ounce in 2026, gold trades as a currency and a store of value as much as a metal. Both are liquid enough to function as macro and currency instruments, not merely commodities, and that depth is exactly what the smaller markets lack.
The biggest exchanges, two ways to count
Where does all this trade? On a surprisingly small number of exchanges, and which one is “biggest” depends entirely on how you count. By the number of contracts traded, the Chinese exchanges and India’s MCX dominate the commodity world: Zhengzhou, Shanghai, and Dalian each trade well over a billion contracts a year, and single Chinese contracts like iron ore, soybean meal, PTA, and rebar steel routinely out-trade WTI or Brent by sheer count. But by the dollar value traded, the picture flips: CME Group and ICE dominate, because each of their contracts is enormous. A CME crude contract is 1,000 barrels (around $65,000 of notional) and a COMEX gold contract is 100 ounces (well over $300,000), while a Chinese rebar or soda-ash lot is a few thousand dollars and is sized for heavy retail participation. So the same two exchanges can rank near the bottom on one measure and the top on the other.
| Exchange | Owner / country | Approx annual volume | Approx notional / yr | Flagship commodities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zhengzhou (ZCE) | China | roughly 2.6 billion contracts | roughly $12 trillion | PTA, soda ash, methanol, cotton, sugar |
| Shanghai (SHFE / INE) | China | roughly 2.0 billion lots | roughly $32 trillion | Rebar steel, copper, aluminium, nickel, gold; crude (INE) |
| Dalian (DCE) | China | over 1.3 billion contracts | roughly $14 trillion | Iron ore, soybean meal and oil, palm oil, coke, corn |
| ICE | USA / UK | roughly 1.2 billion commodity contracts | roughly $60 to $80 trillion (est.) | Brent, gasoil, TTF gas, sugar, coffee, cocoa, cotton |
| MCX | India | roughly 1.0 billion contracts | roughly $6 trillion | Crude oil, natural gas, gold, silver, copper |
| CME Group | USA | commodities a slice of about 6.7 billion total | roughly $77 trillion | WTI, Henry Hub (NYMEX); gold, silver, copper (COMEX); grains (CBOT) |
| LME | HKEX (Hong Kong) | roughly 178 million lots | roughly $21 trillion | Aluminium, copper, zinc, nickel, lead |
| GFEX (Guangzhou) | China | newest and smallest | under $1 trillion (est.) | Industrial silicon, lithium carbonate, polysilicon |
Contract counts are 2023-2024 FIA and exchange figures; notional values are annual commodity notional from the World Federation of Exchanges FY2024 tables (CME and ICE commodity-only; ICE and GFEX are order-of-magnitude estimates because WFE does not publish ICE Futures Europe energy separately). The two columns tell opposite stories: the Chinese exchanges win on contract count because their lots are tiny and heavily retail-traded, while CME and ICE win on dollar notional(each near $70 to $80 trillion a year) because a single WTI or COMEX gold contract is worth tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is exactly why contract counts mislead: an exchange full of mini and micro contracts can top the volume table yet trade a fraction of the dollars. Note too that the world’s largest derivatives exchanges overall, India’s NSE and Brazil’s B3, rank there on tiny equity-index options, not commodities, so they sit outside this table.