One of the things that we are changing significantly on the new site is the way you can interact with our commodities data.
We are bringing in new data feeds that will allow you to chart commodities alongside stocks, funds and ETFs, or against one another. Want to keep an eye on the spread between oil and natual gas prices? Our new data and charting engine will allow you to do that easily.
At the top of the new page, we'll provide you with an at-a-glance summary of the key commodities and give you the latest news on each. The main chart for each of the commodities will show you the appropriate rolling front-month or open-interest futures contract. The smaller chart, meanwhile, will show you the pricing trend for the futures contracts a little further out.
We are also tying our stock and fund information more tightly to our commodities data. We'll slice and dice the market for you so that you can find the movers that should be on your radar screen. Initially, we will do this in a few key areas: energy, precious metals and base metals. What will this look like? Well, aside from the dummy data, it will look a lot like this:
One thing to note about the table in the middle position above is that it includes a link to "View full results" - we'll add these links to many of the tables on the site. On the commodities page, that means you'll have one-click access to all the companies with exposure to energy, for example, and eventually you will have the ability to use that group of companies as a starting point for further screening the stocks by even more criteria. We are aiming for a fully integrated set of tools that you can use in a way that just makes sense.
We'll also crunch our mutual fund data so that you can see how funds with significant resource exposure stack up against one another.
There are still one or two things more that we are trying to do that we will tell you about along the way, but if there's anything you want to see, let us know in the comments section, or by sending an email to globeinvestor@globeandmail.com.