We reported last week on a few of the ways the government shutdown would affect commodity traders included the inability of the CME to calculate certain commodity indexes. We learned late Friday that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) would not be putting out its Commitment of Traders report. This report breaks down the movement on open interest of large commercials and fund participants in commodity markets.
A few years ago the CFTC decided to do a study ( CFTC COT Study) on how it distributes this data. Many analysts argued the data was skewed because swap dealers providing long only exposure for commodity indexes were appearing in the report as commercial interests even though their activity mostly represented speculative interest as they were hedging the exposure they provided for long-only commodity indexes.
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