Archive - Jul 7, 2009 - Blog entry

In an opinion piece submitted to The Wall Street Journal, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote that governments need to act to curb a "dangerously volatile" oil price that defies "the accepted rules of economics" and "could undermine confidence just as we are pushing for recovery."

Hours earlier in Washington, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the main futures-market regulator in the U.S., announced it would hold hearings on whether to introduce tougher regulation of oil-futures markets. The rules, which drew immediate criticism from traders, would seek to curb the influence of speculative investors such as hedge funds and investment banks by limiting how much money any single trader can bet on any one commodity at a given time.

UNG the equity ETF symbol that is the largest holder of NG contracts by size, had its symbol halted today, while they issued new units.