Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy prepared me for porkbellies, but not this.

November 16, 2008 3:07 PM

I'm doing an experiment about socks and want to find data about the commodity price of merino wool. My problem is that I know nothing about trading/stock/commodities vernacular and am having difficulties finding a good place to start.

Ideally, there is a source similar to http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=AAPL for this information so that I can download it and visualize it over time.

But anything, even words to search Google with, would be helpful at this point.

Thanks!

posted by 10ch to Work & Money (4 answers total)

The USDA has some price data for various wool types (although I have no idea about which, if any, are merino). It's in Excel, and the data set appears to go back to '78.
posted by blue mustard at 3:24 PM on November 16, 2008

Here is a Bloomberg article with a link to the Australian Wool Exchange.
posted by Fins at 4:53 PM on November 16, 2008

I had a friend who works with sheep told me that there is a 4 year surplus of wool for the whole world in New Zealand, and that the price of raw wool is basically worthless. But spun wool I understand is quite expensive.
posted by sully75 at 6:30 AM on November 17, 2008

Best answer: @ibexwool also responded to this question on Twitter and it's the best answer, so I wanted to post it here, too.

"Here is the market info for wool. Elders is the largest market for the trade."

Summarized from the following two tweets:
http://twitter.com/ibexwool/status/1016835076
http://twitter.com/ibexwool/status/1016836975
posted by 10ch at 10:10 AM on November 21, 2008