As early as 1933, a young American journalist named MiltonJiler found that although the Wall Street Journal (blog, Weibo) reported the stock information in great detail, it rarely reported the information of commodity futures prices. MiltonJiler believes that it is necessary to establish a media to disseminate commodity information in time. With this in mind, he mobilized his brother Harry Keeler to establish CRB with him through a loan. Later, at 1950, their younger brother BillJiler also joined the team. The first issue of CRB is called Future Market Service, which is a weekly magazine. In addition to the suspension of publication in World War II, this publication has continued to this day and has long been called the "Industrial Bible". This publication is very successful, which is related to the fact that CRB has established an information network with a wide range of sources and provided a lot of valuable information for traders.
In order to maintain the effectiveness of CRB index, CRB Company revised the CRB index six times from 196 1 to 1983, and each revision will replace the old variety with some new varieties according to the market situation. From 1987 to 1995, the CRB index was revised three times. The revision of 1995 is the ninth revision of CRB index. After modification, the quantity of goods is reduced to 17.
Since the ninth revision of 1995, CRB index has not been revised for ten years. In 2005, Reuters cooperated with Jefferies Financial Products Company, a subsidiary of Jefferies Group, and revised the CRB index for the tenth time. The modified name is also changed to RJ/CRB index. It is worth noting that the tenth revision is unprecedented.
First, the varieties covered by the index increased from 17 to 19.
Secondly, in the original calculation method, all varieties were treated equally, that is, the weight of each variety was equal, but now different varieties are given different weights.
The first group: crude oil (23%), heating oil (5%) and unleaded gasoline (5%), totaling 33%.
The second group: gold (7%), copper (7%), aluminum (7%), natural gas (7%), soybean (7%), corn (7%) and live cattle (7%), totaling 42%.
The third group: cotton (5%), sugar (5%), cocoa (5%) and coffee (5%), totaling 20%.
Group VI: silver (1%), nickel (1%), wheat (1%), frozen concentrated orange juice (1%) and lean pig (1%), with a total of 5%.
Finally, the calculation method has also undergone major changes. For example, the original method of calculating the price of each commodity is to average the contract price of the commodity within half a year, but now it is changed to the rolling method. This method stipulates that only the price of the latest contract month is taken, and the replacement time is within 4 trading days at the beginning of the month. Another important change in the calculation method is to change the original geometric average method into arithmetic average method.
1986, New York Futures Exchange (NYFE, 1998 was merged by NYBOT) cooperated with CRB to launch futures trading with CRB index as the target, and it was successful. After becoming a trading object, CRB index has greater influence in the market. After the tenth revision of CRB in 2005, NYBOT launched futures trading based on RJ/CRB index on July 12 of that year. The contract scale was reduced from the original $500 to $200, and the investment threshold was lowered. The contract is as follows: