Customer Reviews

Commodities For Dummies

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's a good book describing briefly all commodities and some of the critical information needed to trade them. I am an Agricultural Producer and the areas that involve those commodities are very short in comparison to the other commodities and don't provide any real specific or detailed information.

I would recommend the book to any one interested in trading any commodity but ag commodities, because it is too brief on this subject.

Appreciate the author for writing such a great book for dummies like me on commodities.

Few pros:
1. Simple real life examples on call and put options (future contracts) helped me understand the concept in couple of hours. I was trying to understanding this concept for a week atleast.

2. Flow of the books is really good, you feel like not to leave the book in between.

3. Best to read from start to finish on multiple days with appropriate gaps in between. (If you are too busy !). A great book for week end study.

Cons:
None

I'm new to the commodities world and was looking for a guide to help me decide which products would suit me as an investor. I have read many books on the subject but Commodities For Dummies does a great job of showing you the ropes and exploring all the different aspects you need to know. It has a great section on ETFs, and I'm now shopping for some of the ETFs that are covered there. All around a great resource if you want to learn more about commodities!

I'm an active trader and found this book packed with helpful information. For one, the author doesn't simply rehash old cliches about commodities but does an outstanding job of bringing to light new concepts and ideas that are helping improve my trading strategy every day. This book taught me how to analyze the fundamental drivers of the oil and gold markets, which has allowed me to develop my trading style for the long term. I really enjoyed the breakdown of the gold markets, and went long when the author recommended people start buying gold when it was at $650/oz; it's now at over $1200 and I'm very happy with my trade! Just an awesome book if you want to dig deeper into the markets without getting stuck in all the jargon. Highly recommended!

I actually think this book has some great points and information inside it, but too often you have to sift through completely useless and trivial information to get to it (which is unusual for a "for dummies" book. I believe that if the author perhaps condensed a lot of the information then I think I would have no hesitation in giving this book a 4 star review. Regardless I would recommend this book for anyone who wants a solid foundation to understanding the commodity markets.

"Commodities for Dummies" is a sub-par text, even for the "Dummies" series. Its emphasis on tangential, space-filling, non-commodity-related topics make for a frustrating read at best, whil its coverage of individual commodities is disappointing. For example, wheat (featured on the cover) receives a scant one-page explanation. Surely, every potential reader is already well aware that humans have been farming and eating wheat for centuries, yet the author wastes about 1/3 of his precious wheat page explanation explaining wheat's importance to ancient Mesopotamia! There is absolutely no insight to 21st Century wheat prices. What causes the wheat price to crash or surge? Who knows?

After reading this book, I am still a dummy about commodities. Sure, there are a graphs a-plenty, but no explanation of trends or interesting anecdotes, features that make other "Dummies" books fun and helpful. The reader should at least begin to understand why groups of commodities rise and fall, but the author simply ignores this question completely. Instead, the author presents chart after chart of rising and falling commodity prices. Ice storm here? Flooding over there? The lack of notation make them useless. Perhaps graph's editorial mistakes are more convincing. Just flip to the section on silver. The text directs the reader to examine a chart to illustrate a price crash in the early 1980s, yet the graph doesn't even go back that far.

Among the book's most annoying features is its incessant proclamation that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) merged with the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) in 2008. Indeed, the CME merger seems to be the author's most important thesis as he mentions it no less than twelve times--usually with a quarter page, indented, double-outlined box. It is so frustrating the amount of pages wasted on stray topics such as this. This book would be about ten pages thinner mentioning CME's corporate history only once. As written, "Commodities for Dummies" looks half like a phone book, and reads like one. This book on average appropriates less than two pages for each commodity--less insight than a cursory glance at Wikipedia.

At the heart of the matter, after reading this book you will NOT UNDERSTAND why specific commodities rise and fall, how certain commodities affect each other. None of this is too dangerous because you will not even know how to open a trading account either. The book can better be summed up with a one-page list titled, "Here are Some Commodities You Can Invest In." By the way, did you know that the CME merged with NYMEX in 2008? Arg!!! It makes me want to rip this [phone] book in half. Hey, recycled paper--is that a commodity?

A superficial treatment of the subject. One needs much more information to invest prudently, in my opinion. The lack of depth, in combination with the motivational style of writing (encouraging the reader to invest and make money) is not responsible.