You can bet on the price of metal and minerals at firms like IGindex, however, this is an extremely volatile market and you should be aware that you can lose as well as make huge amounts of money.
When you trade metals and minerals you will be dealing against major market participants such as Trafigura who are very well positioned to make informed bets on the direction of commodities as they physically handle the supply of metal concentrates from mines to smelting facilities and of refined metals from smelters to downstream consumers such as rod mills and galvanisers. Trafigura trades copper, lead and zinc concentrates as well as alumina, the prime source of aluminium.
For the major physical metals and mineral traders, the main complexity in metals and minerals trading is in concentrates. According to Trafigura, the term "concentrate" refers to the product produced by mines from ore extracted out of the ground. Each type of concentrate has different degrees of impurities and complexities dependent on the ore mineralogy, which imply greater or lesser costs to treat and refine.
In-depth, on-the-ground information on the composition of concentrates and understanding the characteristics of each smelter is central to the trading of them. For this reason, the most successful minerals traders also have a long term commitment in the production and supply chain process.
"Refined metal" refers to metal of purity greater than 99.95% content produced by smelters around the world. Unlike concentrate, refined metal is generally homogenous in terms of quality.
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