Bloomberg Index Services (BIS) has announced the introduction of new commodity market indices that will track the performance of lithium and cobalt futures contracts.
The single-commodity indices will be designated BCOMLM and BCOMLMT for lithium and BCOMCB and BCOMCBT for cobalt. BCOM stands for Bloomberg Commodity Index, a type of broadly-diversified commodities price index published by BIS. The indices will be listed on COMEX, a division of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
A commodity price index is a fixed-weight index or weighted average of selected commodity prices. The index can be based on either spot or futures prices and is intended to be representative of either a broad commodity class or a specific subset of commodities, such as metals or energy.
The new indices will use pricing from Fastmarkets. a commodity price reporting agency and information provider that serves the agriculture, forest products, metals and mining, and energy markets.
Cobalt futures prices varied from $27,000 to $82,000 per metric ton between August 2019 and May 2024, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights data, and more recently have fallen because of oversupply and lower cobalt content in new battery designs. Meanwhile, lithium prices plunged below $13,000 per metric ton in June 2024, the lowest in the last 35 months, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights data.
