Commodities and Futures

[Anathelus]

Hi Team,
I would like to recommend a possible expansion or update regarding commodities and futures

As we have a stock market in the game and the bond market via Finance DLC, the next logical step would be to be able to deal the resources on a commodities market, and expand the scope for retaining resources or seeking them out
At the moment we can store it in a warehouse and take inventory in the resources firm extracting it but we can only sell it competitors via factories/warehouses, I haven't even seen the AI purchase resources to store in a warehouse, they usually just implement them 1:1 in their production processes, meaning if the supply stops they need to look for another, as opposed to tapping into their own supplies. It would open the scope for resources as an investment as opposed to just a means of production.
Additionally this can be expanded upon, when gold or silver is mined it needs to be refined and smelted/cast into bars before it is viable to be used in jewlery. Therefore the product received from resource extraction should be the ore (for metals), or crude (for oil), to which refinaries or smelters should be an option to be used to process the crude into the product that can then be used in goods or wherever else people have utilised it. Thereby unlocking an additional step or market that one can invest into. This is where futures comes in, where you effectively are betting on the future price of securities. It might be too complex to implement for other securities due to the complexity of calculating the value of these securities, but I think commodities are simple enough because the value is tied to the market price.

Please give it some thought, investment on this game is lacking, outside of stocks and bonds there isn't much else
I look forward to feedback on my suggestion, thanks

[JJzero]

you have to make a poll

[NickDD]

I also believe that investment possibilities are little lackluster once you push late in the game. Often mid to late in the playthrough I sit on amounts of free capital which is just piling up. No new bonds are issued by government or cities/companies or they are small amounts and the competitor share buyouts become tedious since we cannot buyout a company at once but have to do it peace by peace. Not to mention the share price/capitalization jumps to the moon through these slow buyouts so it becomes even more painful. Investing in the Global market companies does not seem much interesting since there is no control or clear overview of the share movement for these companies and their movement is 'just simulated', thus a return on investment cannot be easily predicted. Trading in commodities/futures surely would bring fresh air into the system.