Everybody get on the commodity speculation train. A federal judge today threw out the Dodd-Frank provision that empowered the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to set position limits on commodity trading. Judge Robert Wilkins said in his ruling that the CFTC did not prove the necessity of position limits to curb runaway speculation, and that the [...]

We’ve been hearing for several weeks now that gas prices are headed up, and that has borne out. Oil is trading at a high for the month, and gas prices have ticked up, with the expectation of an average of over $4 a gallon by Memorial Day. Needless to say, this will put a crimp [...]

Negotiators for the House and Senate reached agreement on a temporary spending bill that will fund the government through December 16 and also finish off a series of appropriations bills. So now, we’ll begin to see the true impact of budget freezes and austerity measures. One of the first victims is the Commodity Futures Trading [...]

The New York Times really doesn’t want to mention speculation in this story about oil prices plunging today, but the first analyst they cite gives the game away: After four months of surging higher, oil prices plummeted by almost 9 percent on Thursday as traders worried that American drivers were beginning to balk at paying [...]

I sort of blew right by the story of the CFTC judge corruption scandal the other day when it came out, but it’s a pretty big deal. Barry Ritholtz takes a whack at it today. Basically, an Administrative Law Judge at the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), George Painter, revealed in his retirement letter that [...]