Date

03 Aug 2021

Attendees

Agenda

1) Use Case reminder

2) Where we are on our road map.

3) Open Action Items

4) JIRA Issues Review - https://jira.edmcouncil.org/projects/DER/issues/DER-10?filter=allopenissues

5) Todays content discussion.

6) For next week.

Proceedings:

Discussed possible approaches to units of measure for commodities - JPL recommends a QUDV style approach, which is a SysML approach, which maps to what we have. The idea would be to allow people to use a units ontology of their choice and map it to what we have, with minimal commitments in FIBO.

Definitions related to commodities:

A cash settlement is a settlement method used in certain futures and options contracts where, upon expiration or exercise, the seller of the financial instrument does not deliver the actual (physical) underlying asset but instead transfers the associated cash position.

A commodity futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell a predetermined amount of a commodity at a specific price on a specific date in the future.

"Forward Contract: A cash transaction common in many industries, including commodity merchandising, in which a commercial buyer and seller agree upon delivery of a specified quality and quantity of goods at a specified future date. Terms may be more “personalized” than is the case with standardized futures contracts (i.e., delivery time and amount are as determined between seller and buyer). A price may be agreed upon in advance, or there may be agreement that the price will be determined at the time of delivery."

Futures Contract: An agreement to purchase or sell a commodity for delivery in the future: (1) at a price that is determined at initiation of the contract; (2) that obligates each party to the contract to fulfill the contract at the specified price; (3) that is used to assume or shift price risk; and (4) that may be satisfied by delivery or offset.

A forward contract is a private and customizable agreement that settles at the end of the agreement and is traded over-the-counter. A futures contract has standardized terms and is traded on an exchange, where prices are settled on a daily basis until the end of the contract.

During the call today we made changes to incorporate the above, and eliminated the redundant and somewhat confusing notion of a non-physical underlier, which included commodities (it could have included commodity contracts, but ... it was not widely used and it made more sense to eliminate it altogether). Elisa will post the resulting work to a pull request using WIP in the title, since we have more to do on this ontology to make it releaseable.

A couple of additional notes:

(1) an example ontology that includes units of measure that are relevant for commodities, such as agricultural and geological units, is https://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/OM. It includes troy ounces, US barrels, bushels, and other relevant units. Perhaps we can come up with an example contract that uses this as the basis for the units referenced.

(2) a list of relevant commodities referenced in foreign trade is provided by the Census Bureau at https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/schedules/b/2014/index.html, including abbreviations for various quantities and conversion tables for measures and weights. My favorite abbreviation: "n.e.s.o.i", which stands for "Not elsewhere specified or included".

Decisions:

Action items

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