LOL. I was just looking at all of the new products at some of the major exchanges. It seems like the only thing left to commoditize is time. It would be an interesting concept. Who thought you would be able to trade snow futures or rain futures.
Jeez... this reminds me of a guy back in college who argued that you can make a perpetually self-energizing watch. His argument (this is engineering school, believe it or not) is that if you make a solar watch and then put a small light above the solar panel that is powered by the watch, it will just run forever. Duh? Futures are based on time. That's why they are called futures. Unless they have a futures contract on the S&P futures in the future, then the future of time futures being available in the future looks pretty bleak. Say that 3 times fast. I'm saying this all with tongue in cheek.
I guess I am more interested in the theory than the practicality. It will be interesting to see what they think of next, though.
Well, they say the price of time is also a component in the steepness of the yield curve. The more impatient we are, the less we want to defer consumption and so the higher our personal discount rate on future consumption. If a society was collectively more impatient, one can make the case that the yield curve would be steeper as a result. Not kidding here guys. Anyway, that's the market for time - it's embedded in our liquidity preference which is embedded in the yield curve.