The "and use" phrase is what differentiates commodities from cryptocurrency.
It doesn’t. Trading is zero sum. It supports the extraction, processing and delivery of useful things, however, which is positive sum.
Trading between financial participants is, cetiris paribus, always zero sum. Irrespective of the timeline.
Buyer's gains are the seller's opportunity cost; buyer's losses were avoided by the seller. (Paribus violation is when parties have different funding costs.)
Moving commodities around isn't trading per se; it's logistics. Again, value adding.
Only if you consider the trade in the quantity of the goods traded, and not in a prevailing unit of accounting.
Nope, this is microeconomics. If you and I have the same funding costs and we trade a commodity derivative, any gain you have is a gain I gave up. Any loss you have is one I avoided.
This is true irrespective of the unit of account of point in time at which one measures it; it's an identity. The only
Someone who buys wheat, holds it and sells it the next day is definitely not “trading”, he merely engages in a series of discrete trades? Daft.
How does that differ from other commodities trading? The only way to profit in the futures market is to buy low and sell high, too, for instance.