Patent ID: 7840462

Claim:
In an arrangement comprising a plurality of agents connected to a computer network, said plurality of agents including at least one buyer agent and at least one seller agent, a method for evaluating commodities pricing, comprising: under control of instructions that are executed by one or more computing devices: maintaining a database of commodities transactions, said database including price data sets exchanged between said plurality of agents for pricing commodities; retrieving from said database one or more price data sets exchanged between a particular buyer agent and a particular seller agent in a specified time period, wherein said one or more price data sets includes a price data set from a seller agent responsive to a request for quote from a buyer agent, wherein the request for quote includes a product specification data set, and wherein the price data set indicates commodities corresponding to the product specification data set and contains at least one quoted price; summing the retrieved data sets to determine a summed price total; receiving metric data indicative of market prices for commodities indicated by the retrieved price data sets; summing the market prices for the commodities to determine a summed market price total; and comparing the summed price total to the summed market price total to generate at least one comparison value, wherein the at least one comparison value is generated by calculating a ratio of the summed price total and the summed market price total by dividing the summed price total by the summed market price total.