trade

Adjective

trade (not comparable)

1. relating to or used in or intended for trade or commerce;

   a trade fair; trade journals; trade goods.

Trade is the voluntary, often asymmetric, exchange of goods, services, or money. Trade is also called commerce or transaction. A mechanism that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and services. Later one side of the barter were the metals, precious metals (poles, coins), bill, paper money. Modern traders instead generally negotiate through a medium of exchange, such as money. As a result, buying can be separated from selling, or earning. The invention of money (and later credit, paper money and non-physical money) greatly simplified and promoted trade. Trade between two traders is called bilateral trade, while trade between more than two traders is called multilateral trade.

Trade exists for man due to specialization and division of labor, most people concentrate on a small aspect of production, trading for other products. Trade exists between regions because different regions have a comparative advantage in the production of some tradable commodity, or because different regions' size allows for the benefits of mass production. As such, trade at market prices between locations benefits both locations.

Retail trade consists of the sale of goods or merchandise from a very fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Wholesale trade is defined as the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services.

Trading can also refer to the action performed by traders and other market agents in the financial markets.

Trade is the voluntary exchange of goods, services, or both, also called commerce. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and services. Modern traders instead generally negotiate through a medium of exchange, such as money.

Sourced

• Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature.
  • Anders Chydenius, The National Gain, §2, 1765.

• Trade is the mother of money.
  • Thomas Draxe (1633), reported in George Latimer Apperson, English proverbs and proverbial phrases: a historical dictionary (1929), p. 643.

• Where wealth and freedom reign contentment fails, And honour sinks where commerce long prevails.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller, Line 91.

• The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Larkin Smith (1809).

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Sat Aug 21 20:07:51 2010