These Are the Strangest Things Sold on the Commodities Market

Most people understand the basics of the stock market. You put some money on a company, and depending on its success, your own money rises or falls. Then, there’s the much riskier, but possibly much more lucrative world of futures trading.

But in terms of a combination of simple and strange, there might not be a better market to get into than commodities. Though it seems like the way a toddler might invest in say, milk or juice boxes, it’s a very real side of the stock market, with all the possible payoff and risk that comes with it. Some commodities lend themselves to speculative trading, like oil or cotton. But some feel a little more niche, the kind of thing that you’d need insider information or a crystal ball to even have an interest in.

Sure, one could explain that a lot of these are used by farmers as a form of hedging against low-yield harvests by making money even if supply craters, but where’s the fun in that?

Here then are five strange commodities you can invest in right now, if that’s your thing…

5 Skimmed Milk Powder

The grossest delivery method of the worst kind of milk. Perfect. Look, I understand that a lot of these entries are just for people with the sort of high-level economic or math degrees I’ve never even earned one credit toward. In the case of investing in the future of international skimmed milk powder, though, they also seem to have zero interest and possible general confusion toward its availability. Given that it's an incredibly unpopular investment even among strange commodities, I’d recommend finding another path to a life of plenty.

4 Sunflower Seeds

Another odd foodstuff that you can invest in if you’re so inclined is sunflower seeds. The fact that it’s only available on South African stock exchanges, a country that isn’t even the seeds’ largest producer, just contributes to the oddness. It’s a weird commodity all around, given that sunflowers aren’t exactly a cash crop, and your biggest markets probably exist inside MLB dugouts. Nevertheless, if you’d like to stake your children’s college funds on the price fluctuations of one of the least popular snacks at a 7-Eleven, you can do so.

3 Electricity

I 100 percent can see this being extremely lucrative. The reason it’s in here is not because I think investing in electricity usage is a path to nowhere, but because even the base idea of trying to game the world’s power grids makes a specific synapse of my brain feel like it’s about to pop. This is the sort of thing I’d expect to find in a supervillain’s stock portfolio before they destroy a nuclear power plant.

I generally consider myself a fairly intelligent individual, but the idea of playing the “electricity market” makes me feel like I’m drawing on the wall with a crayon at take-your-kid-to-work day. Something the stock market apparently agrees with, since you have to demonstrate technical knowledge of the market to even be allowed to participate.

2 Frost

This takes the confusion of the last entry and adds a name that, in itself, I don’t fully understand. Who is this for, the Snow Miser from The Year Without a Santa Claus? I guarantee you that I’m not misinterpreting some sort of corporate jargon, or a weirdly named company, and this is genuinely investing in the probability of cold, wet frost appearing. It’s tied to temperature at certain times, which is some serious five-dimensional business chess bullshit. If you’re betting on the weather, the CIA should have you in a plastic cell, testing you for superpowers.

1 Frozen Orange Juice

I’m including this not because it’s that much more outlandish than any other entry, but because investing in frozen orange juice recently made people a fuckton of money. There’s an actual quote in The Guardian from an investment director named Russ Mould that is as follows: “A lot of professional traders look at OJ for a living, so the chances of a private individual having an information edge on them is pretty slim.”

What the fuck is the world we live in, man? I’ll never own a house because I’m not tapped into orange juice price fluctuations?

It’s about time to pack it up and head off-the-grid.