CFTC approves Cantor movie contract
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission yesterday (June 28) approved Cantor Futures Exchange’s Domestic Box Office Receipts Futures contract on the forthcoming film The Expendables.
However, the CFTC said it had requested “specific modifications” from Cantor “to guard against manipulation or any other abusive conduct in the trading of any contract by knowledgeable and informed sources within the studio or distribution company”.
CFTC Commissioners Chilton and Sommers again dissented from approval. Chilton said his concerns from the previous approval of a contract for Media Derivatives Exchange remained, principally that he did not believe the contracts constituted commodities under the Commodity Exchange Act. “If movie futures can be traded, we could also have terrorism contracts or death pool contracts,” he said. “None are good ideas.”
He added that the contracts were open to manipulative trading, and...