commoditized universes

Oliver sets a new benchmark being at his peak in the last 2 weeks.
George breaks an earlier record to rise above that, yesterday.
Tania hits a new record.
Omanakutty crashes against tough competition and not being in good form.
Raghu's popularity rises with increased interest from the traders.
Sonya makes gains though the fans are dwindling.
Global trends help Edward stay high.
Chandra oscillates.

what could the stories above be? sports? business? P3? politics?

now read the same, replacing the names with the alternatives as below:
Oliver = [crude]Oil
George = Gold
Tania = Turmeric
Omanakutty = Onion
Raghu = Rice
Sonya = Soya
Edward = Edible oils
Chandra = Copper

these were slightly modified headlines from the commodities section of a business paper a few days ago.

with the overdose of politics and scams on almost every page of newspapers and every news channel on TV, i had switched to more of business news channels - that still carry some 'stories' - of companies, personalities etc.

i have always thought that the financial markets were the fictional side of business. most of the derivative concepts being primarily speculative and though cloaked in a lot of mathematics, it is not real economy!

nowadays i spend more time on the commodities [and weather] sections. one of the benefits of travel is that you get time to read the paper at leisure!

it struck me that every commodity seems to have a life of its own - going by the headlines - when the behavior on the [commodities] market, both real and the trading market. the movement of prices of commodities are many times attributed to behavior as if these commodities could act on their own.

such as Soya oil gains despite subdued demand.
what could Soya have done to achieve this?
Or Turmeric, when it hit a record Rs. 16,000 per quintal?

i recently read about the google / harvard university project on the study of the 'english language genome'. by analyzing words from published books over the last 200 years,
wonder if they also look at these 'sentiments' in the business news to complement the stock ticker data.
could provide many plots for novels and movies..
move over matrix!