What Makes a Market

Each fact sheet argues in its own words about why its market did or did not form a contract. Scored the same way across every market, the arguments become comparable, and a few things fall out that prose cannot show. 34 markets pass all eight. 43 pass six or seven, and that group is the interesting one: these are the near-misses, the markets that look tradeable and are not.

The count is shorthand, not a ranking. Rhodium passes six of eight and has no contract anywhere, because too few independent parties is disqualifying on its own. Power also scores seven and trades deeply. Read the pattern, not the total.

The last column is the check on all of it: whether a forward market actually exists. Eight tests are only worth reading if they predict something, so the outcome sits beside them rather than being asserted by them. 87 of the 130 markets here have one, and the tests do discriminate: a market that trades averages 6.8 passes, one that does not averages 4.3, and every market that passes all eight has a contract. Nothing scores perfectly and fails to trade.

The exceptions are where the reading is. Four markets pass six of eight and still have no forward market: Rhodium, Sorghum, Eggs and Potash (MOP). Going the other way, 14 markets trade on five or fewer. The weakest scores in that set belong to freight, where all four markets clear a forward contract while failing several tests, for the good reason that a voyage is a service rather than a thing. The rest are thin contracts on awkward underlyings, from uranium to Indian spices. What they share is that somebody needed the hedge badly enough to build one anyway. The tests describe what usually has to be true, not a permission slip.