
The Great Onion Corner And The Futures Market (2015) - yoloswagins
https://www.npr.org/2015/10/22/450769853/the-great-onion-corner-and-the-futures-market
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jere
The solution to ban onion futures trading seems shortsighted. Couldn't this
happen again with another type of future contract? Was there really nothing
else that Kosuga did that was illegal or could be made illegal?

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vmception
Yes it could happen again, it was an act of congress.

There are now two futures contracts explicitly banned in the US Code.

Onion Futures, and Box Office Futures.

The 2010 financial reform act banned box office futures are a rider. The CFTC,
the regulator, had just approved them after a few years of review. It would
have given studios the ability to hedge their movies flopping, and let
speculators trade how much a movie might make.

The MPAA hated it, primarily because the overexcited CFTC was trying to burden
movie studios with financial compliance regulations in order to launch the
market.

The CFTC is the wildest regulator, other Federal financial regulators are
extremely timid. But the MPAA flexed its muscle and got a ban on the second
futures contract in history.

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greendave
I suppose today it would be impossible for something like this to unfold the
same way that it did in 1955. Still, given how much larger the financial
services industry is and how clever they have been at packaging and
repackaging things, could a few well-financed traders accomplish the same
outcome today?

~~~
betterunix2
I would not suppose that. Some commodity futures have very low trading volumes
and periodically there are prosecutions for price manipulation. Even for high-
volume contracts like crude oil, market manipulation happens (see OPEC) and
quirks in the mechanics of the contract can trigger enormous price swings (see
WTI last week).

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onychomys
The years in HN titles traditionally indicate when the article was written,
not when it occurred. This one should probably read 2015 instead of 1955.

~~~
fennecfoxen
The Great Onion Corner of 1955 (2015)

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jka
[off-topic] Something may be unreliable with regard to HN submission
timestamps at the moment.

When viewing the poster's submissions, the timestamp for this article displays
as '1 day ago'.

Currently when viewing it as a thread, it appears to be posted '3 hours ago'.

Is there a HN database migration / update in progress?

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merricksb
Dang has explained this here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19774614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19774614)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)

~~~
jka
Neat, thanks!

