Q. What does taking part involve?
A. Nothing onerous. On a weekly basis, simply logging into our secure website and reporting average transaction prices and tons sold each week. No trades that week? No need to report!

Q. Won't competitor companies will learn the price, will they?
A. No - although companies can enter trades durint the week, data is not published till the following week. Besides - all competitors will likely know market price as you do.

Q. How many companies take part into?
A. Over 500; mills and miners, service centers, traders and end users: only physical market participants.

Q. Do people know MY prices?
A. No - all prices are recevied and kept anonymously without reference to company or individual entered data. The data set is then ‘cleansed’ of outlying data points and lumped together to produce a single, volume weighted average price. Your name is not associated with the prices, nor is your company. As there are several price inputs required post-cleansing to perform the volume weighted calculation – the price will be unrecognisable as the one you entered – though you will know you have been represented.

Q. What is the point if it is not my figure?
A. This price will be unrecognisable as your own, but it will represent the figure of where the average of the market transacted over the course of that week. As such, it is useful for benchmarking, indexing and price risk management. Also, it is useful to know that your prices are included in the prices we produce – so that it is reflective of your market experience.

Q. Is there involvement on developing price series?
A. TSI works closely with Data Providers and aims to provide information which is relevent to them. An example is iron ore, where we now publish data on port congestion and coal bulk commodities, which affects the shipping price to China.

Q. Can the price be manipulated?
A. It would be difficult. No Data Provider knows the identity of any others, so collusion is impossible. Also, to try to ‘move’ the index where you would like is extremely difficult, knowing the way we deal with outliers to construct a tight data set. Finally, we have a large number of data providers once a price series becomes “live”.

Contact TSI representative

If you have any questions or want to know more about us or our methodology simply email us and a TSI representative will get in contact with you shortly.

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