Contributor: Claudio Capozzi

The global energy and commodity markets saw unprecedented price increases and volatility in the period starting early 2007 and increasing unabated until the third week of July 2008, at which time a financial crisis spawned by the collapse of key financial institutions initiated a free fall in that spread from the US to Europe. The impacts of these events have been far reaching and significant, bringing about increased public and regulatory scrutiny into markets and market participants around the globe, including new political pressures on governments to rein-in the actions of traders that were perceived to be taking unfair advantage of, and potentially manipulating, the financial and commodities markets.... read more