Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index

The Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index (TR/J CRB) is a commodity price index. It was first calculated by Commodity Research Bureau, Inc. in 1957 and made its inaugural appearance in the 1958 CRB Commodity Year Book.

The Index was originally composed of 28 commodities, 26 of which were traded on exchanges in the U.S. and Canada, and two cash markets. It included barley and flaxseed from the Winnipeg exchange; cocoa, coffee "B", copper, cotton, cottonseed oil, grease wool, hides, lead, potatoes, rubber, sugar #4, sugar #6, wool tops and zinc from New York exchanges; and corn, eggs, lard, oats, onions, rye, soybeans, soybean meal, soybean oil and wheat from Chicago exchanges. In addition to those 26 markets, the Index also included the spot New Orleans cotton and Minneapolis wheat markets which were added to balance some commodities repeated in the Index as by-products of other commodities.

The original base period was 1947-49, the same as the Bureau of Labor Statistics Spot Market Index. This was purposely done to facilitate easy comparison of both spot and futures indexes.

The Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index (TR/J CRB) was originally designed to provide dynamic representation of broad trends in overall commodity prices. In order to ensure that it continued to fulfill that role, its components and formula have been periodically adjusted to reflect changes in market structure and activity. Since 1957, there have been ten revisions to Index components. The first was...
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