ABSTRACT
Derivative markets were another portion of the financial markets that came under scrutiny during the subprime meltdown and became a target for added regulation. Those instruments trace their history to the development of futures trading on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). In 1873, CBOT adopted regular trading hours for futures transactions and declared that all transactions executed by its members after hours were unenforceable. Additional commodity exchanges sprang up in Chicago and elsewhere in the nineteenth century. The commodity exchanges were largely untouched by federal regulation for many decades. Commodity market-related legislation was enacted before America’s entry into World War I, while stock market regulation would not arrive until the 1930s. Like stock markets, grain exchanges were named as culprits in the Great Depression.
