Sometimes its easier to trade the right to buy/sell something than to trade the thing itself. It’s less obvious with stocks because there’s a pretty streamline

Sometimes its easier to trade the right to buy/sell something than to trade the thing itself. It’s less obvious with stocks because there’s a pretty streamlined system for taking delivery of the stock ownership but with physical goods or real estate sometimes actually changing ownership triggers a lot of regulatory or tax or process things. For example, with real estate if you actually buy it you’ll need at minimum to get insurance to cover if any trespassers or workers get injured on the property. Lots of paperwork to transfer the title/deed, and you might be on the hook to help sort out future title / deed / survey errors. But if you never own it you save the headache of all these things. For buying commodities you need a safe, regulated warehouse/tank to store it, handle all the ohysical logistics, etc. By buying and selling the right to purchase the things you can delay the actual purchase until you find someone who can and wants to actually deal with the ownership of the thing.