Brightly

The spotlight on commodity index funds and their impact on markets continues to burn brightly following a scathing report from Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), acting ranking minority member. The report claims that commodity index traders, in the aggregate, have made such large purchases on the Chicago wheat futures market that they “have pushed up futures prices, disrupted the normal relationship between futures prices and cash prices for wheat, and caused farmers, grain elevators, grain processors, consumers and others to experience significant unwarranted costs and price risks.”