STATISTICS The Knight-Ridder Crb Index The Knight-Ridder-Commodity Research Bureau Index - the CRB to you and me - has been updated to reflect today's commodity markets. Here's an explanation of the changes to this industry barometer. by Raymond T. Murphy The Knight-Ridder-Commodity Research Bureau (CRB) Index has been the premier barometer of commodity prices since 1956, tracking tradables such as wheat and corn, crude and heating oil. Over the years, the index has evolved into a comprehensive commodity benchmark covering a wide range of actively traded commodity futures contracts. As futures markets have matured and new markets have come into being, the KR-CRB Index has changed along with them. By adding crude oil to the index in 1982 and deleting some agricultural commodities in 1987, the index has kept pace with many of the advances in the commodity investment area. The KR-CRB Index futures contract began trading on the New York Futures Exchange (NYFE) in 1986. Since then, the index has been scrutinized to make available a market where both large investors and small are able to replicate the movement of a basket of commodity futures contracts at a fraction of the cost of owning the individual contracts. Over the years, several component commodities of the index came to be viewed as nonessential, while other important commodities were added. As time passed, these changes were all undertaken with the sole purpose of maintaining an accurate and meaningful measurement of commodity prices. The final and most significant changes were implemented on December 6, 1995. |
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