Kansas City Board of Trade hard red winter wheat futures established a new single day trading volume record Monday, February 11. This follows the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's decision to expand daily trading limits for wheat futures from $.30 to $.60. The KCBT, Chicago Board of Trade and Minneapolis Grain Exchange initially requested that limits be raised to $.40.

Total volume on Monday was 47,962 contracts, up 20.8% from the old record of 22,407 contracts set August 2, 2006. That includes a new all time top for electronic volume as well; that totaled 22,407 contracts, an increase of 37.9% from the previous top of 16,248 contracts set August 13, 2007.

Volume and interest at the three U.S. wheat exchanges has been up sharply for more than a year due to generally tight supplies and strong demand.

MCX to support Microsoft's rural technology training programme

MUMBAI: Multi Commodity Exchange of India on Thursday announced its support to an ongoing computer literacy programme of Microsoft and Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals in rural Maharashtra.

This marks the launch of MCX's Corporate Social Responsibility initiative aimed at empowering the youth and women of rural areas of the state with technology skills.

Till now over 15,500 people have been trained and more than 24,000 people are using this service across 16 districts by the means of understanding the futures markets prices of the area specific commodities.

MCX's support will help in increasing deployment of laptop and desktop computers and thereby strengthen the ongoing technology training and adoption efforts through the project.

NSE sees futures in NCDEX, may take up anchor investor's role

MUMBAI: A strategic play is underway in the world of commodity futures. The country's largest bourse, National Stock Exchange (NSE), has signalled its interest in raising its shareholding and assume a bigger role in the commex National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX).

Besides the strong synergies between the two institutions, the rapid growth in futures trade and an urgency among corporates to cover commodity price risks may have shaped NSE's plans to play the anchor investor for the new exchange — a concept that has gained currency in recent times.

NSE has held informal meetings to broach the possibility with other NCDEX stakeholders and has sounded out the Forward Markets Commission (FMC), the regulator for commodity markets. Sources familiar with the development said NSE, which owns 15% in NCDEX, is willing to step up its holding by either infusing fresh money or buying out one of the shareholders.

The Ex Ante Factor: Bizarro World

The week of January 21-25, 2008 will go down in the history books of financial markets and potentially society at large. We witnessed the largest financial debacle in history where SocGen lost $7b in index futures pushing stock markets to the brink of collapse (are we trying to one-up each other's debacles?), we received an historic 75bps inter-meeting ease from the Federal Reserve (to fix a bad trade in Europe?), the US government agreed to pass a stimulus package to head off a recession (borrowing $150 billion to save a multi-trillion $ credit bubble?) and to top it off 10YR treasury yields traded down to 3.30% just 30bps from the 2003 lows while the inflation sensitive gold contract traded at an all time high above $920/oz (is this bizarro world?).

With all the debate regarding whether or not the US will enter a recession we took a look at the conflicting messages coming from the commodity and bond markets to see if we could come up with a conclusion and trading strategy.

BP America Announces Resolution of Texas City, Alaska, Propane Trading ...

HOUSTON, Oct. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- BP America today announced two plea agreements and a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and a consent order with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which end governmental investigation of company wrongdoing on matters related to the March 2005 explosion and fire at the Texas City refinery, the March and August 2006 oil transit line spills in Alaska and improper propane trading in April 2003 and February 2004.

"These agreements are an admission that, in these instances, our operations failed to meet our own standards and the requirements of the law. For that, we apologize," said BP America Chairman and President Bob Malone.