ICAC seminar confers changes in cotton trading activities (United States Of America)

The International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) Secretariat conducted a seminar in its office on June 6, 2012 featuring a presentation by Mr. Joe O’Neill. Mr. O’Neill is currently the Chairman of the Cotton Committee, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), and he was formerly the President of the New York Cotton Exchange, and Senior Vice President of the New York Board of Trade.

During his presentation, Mr. O’Neill traced the recent history of changes in characteristics of traders using commodity futures in the United States, the impacts of the shift from floor trading to electronic trading, and the reasons for differences in cotton contract performance during the most recent five years compared with decades earlier.

He noted that, commercial traders still are very active participants in the market, but that the individual speculators have been replaced by hedge funds, SWAP traders and high frequency traders.

He also noted that prior to March 2008, floor traders were sources of market intelligence that can no longer be recovered through electronic trading.

Mr. O’Neill mentioned some of the factors that could affect trading in a world cotton futures contract if such a contract were created.