The largest commodity and futures markets in stock trading
Crude oil market
While the global economy depends on many commodities, none of them can match the size of the crude oil market.
In addition to being the main source of energy for transportation, oil is a key raw material for many other industries such as plastics, fertilizers, cosmetics and medicine. As a result, the global market for physical oil is astronomical in size and exerts significant economic and geopolitical influence, with several countries dominating global oil production.
The above infographic gives an idea of the size of the crude oil market by comparing it to the top 10 metals markets combined. To calculate market sizes, we used the latest price multiplied by 2022 global production based on TradingEconomics and the US Geological Survey (USGS) data.
Oil market
In 2022, the world produced an average of 80.75 million barrels of oil per day (including condensates). Thus, the annual production of crude oil is about 29.5 billion barrels, and the market size exceeds $2 trillion at current prices.
This figure dwarfs the combined size of the top 10 metals markets:
| Product | Annual production 2022 | Market size |
|---|---|---|
| Raw oil | 29.5 billion barrels | $2.1 trillion |
| Iron ore | 2.6 billion tons | $283.4 billion |
| Gold | 3100 tons | $195.9 billion |
| Copper | 22 million tons | $183.3 billion |
| Aluminum | 69 million tons | $152.6 billion |
| Nickel | 3.3 million tons | $68.8 billion |
| Zinc | 13 million tons | $30.9 billion |
| Silver | 26,000 tons | $19.9 billion |
| Molybdenum | 250,000 tons | $12.9 billion |
| Palladium | 210 tons | $9.5 billion |
| News | 4.5 million tons | $9.2 billion |
Prices as of July 4, 2023
The combined market size of the top 10 metals markets is $967 billion, less than half of the oil market. In fact, even if we add in all the remaining smaller commodity markets, the oil market will still be much larger.
It also reflects the huge global consumption of oil every year, as this resource is ubiquitous in our daily lives.
Although the oil market towers over the metals markets, it is important to understand that this does not diminish the importance of these commodities.
Metals are a critical building block of the global economy, playing a key role in infrastructure, energy technology and more. Meanwhile, precious metals such as gold and silver serve as an important store of value.
As the world moves towards a more sustainable future and moves away from fossil fuels, it will be interesting to see how the markets for oil and other commodities develop.