Commodities Act
About Commodities Act
The Commodity Exchange Act of 1936 regulated futures and options trading in the United States. It was passed in response to agricultural market manipulation. The act created the Commodity Exchange Authority, later replaced by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 1974. The act required futures trading to occur on regulated exchanges and imposed position limits to prevent market manipulation. The act has been amended multiple times to cover new financial instruments. Energy derivatives, credit default swaps, and other modern instruments created regulatory gaps that contributed to later crises. The act established the principle that derivatives need oversight.
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