Dodd-Frank Strikes the Commodity Markets

I will try to write more on this later as I am still working the session but news came out last evening that CME was requiring all member firms to comply with regulations arising from Dodd-Frank which basically is forcing margin requirements for all "Non-Hedges" to effectively double as of this coming Monday.

Talk about short notice!

The ramifications of this are obviously huge and no doubt are adding to an already volatile mix of madness. Those traders with losing positions are going to be impacted even more since the new requirements may well push them over the line as far as margin calls and force them to either liquidate or come up with more cash, immediately.

I think some of what we saw in the markets today is traders already anticipating this with the result that we had a significant amount of position squaring.

more later... hopefully....

Here is a chart showing the carnage in the commodity sector. Of course not all of this was caused by Dodd-Frank but it certainly did not help the case of those who are generally LONG COMMODITIES to have such lousy economic data coming out of the US in today's session which generated risk off trades. Combine that with the fact that their margins are going to be doubled soon and it does not take a rocket scientist to understand why we are seeing such strong selling across the commodity sector today.

Like I heard elsewhere - there are two main things wrong with Dodd-Frank; Dodd and Frank. One is out of the Senate (thank heaven) and the other is retiring from the House (a double thanks).