It isn't as much the fact that the asset will move, as the direction and the timeline that matters, as well as the availability of investment vehicles. If I'd wanted to profit on the knowledge that coal will go down, I'd have to short the stock which isn't free, so it is important for me to know on what time frame it will go down (if I knew it would go up, but not on what time frame, it would work just fine). Another example, I know lithium (the commodity) is going to go up, but 90% of the lithium market is dominated by 3 companies, each of which get less than 20% of their revenue from lithium mining, meaning I have no way of profiting from my knowledge.