Commodity Insights: 45
Platts® Price Assessments by S&P Global Commodity Insights

Growing market importance: From price reference to “benchmark” status

S&P Global Commodity Insights publishes thousands of daily Platts price assessments and is a key source of pricing intelligence.

S&P Global Commodity Insights’ innovation in Platts price assessments and information delivery has provided solutions to pricing challenges and helped build our reputation as a leading provider of energy and commodities price information.

For a given commodity, market participants generally utilize one or two benchmarks, with futures settled against one. It is market participants who choose which price assessments to adopt as benchmarks. S&P Global Commodity Insights is independent and does not participate in trading the markets it assesses.

How Market Participants Use Price Assessments

Platts price assessments are the basis for billions of dollars of transactions annually in the physical and futures markets
Buyers, sellers, and traders use price assessments as a basis for pricing spot transactions and term contract
Risk managers use them to settle contracts and to place a market value on the product(s) they hold
Analysts use them to identify trends and patterns in supply and demand
Governments reference them to formulate royalty payments and retail prices
Exchanges and investors use them to price derivatives contracts

Platts price assessments by S&P Global Commodity Insights are the basis for more than 1,300 exchange-traded, cash-settled futures contracts 

Data as of 4/30/2024