What we know as Commodity Futures of Trading Commission is a United States government sponsored non dependant organization that is created to oversee and to record futures contracts concerning trading activities that take place on the futures exchanges in the US. It was initiated by the United States Congress in the year1974, and it has full rights to suspend, to fine and to impose legal restrictions on a citizen or an organization that is fraudulent, behaves with misconduct or similar cases of rule breaking.
This agency also takes care of printing weekly updates regarding the holdings of the twenty plus market segments that exist at present.
The reports which are named the 'commitments of traders report' or COTR as popularly known, are handed out towards the end of every week, usually on Friday. The report contains info on open interest splits initiated by non-reportable as well as reportable open interest and commercial as well as non commercial interests.
Safeguard the public and market members from abusive or manipulative routines in relation to the sales of financial futures, commodities or options, and also to make certain that all the transactions are made in a transparent and financially viable and competitive method.
When it was just initiated, the CFTC was only present to check out regulatory options and commodity future markets in the States. However, with the inception of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in the year 2000, it saw quite an expansion in role as far as its duties go.
Through effective oversight, this agency sees to it that the futures markets are able to give market participants some means to offsetting pricing risk and prices discoveries.
The CFTC employs five commissioners, every one of which is given the post of the president and each serves a five-year interval. One of these five is named the chairman, with the due approval of the existing senate, with respect to rules stating that not any more than 3 commissioners can be selected from the very same political party, and this makes it a fair selection process to all concerned.
The CFTC is based out of Washington but it does have offices in most metros.
The CFTC has 6 main operating units namely:
a. Divisions of the Clearing and Intermediary Oversight
b. Divisions of Market Oversight
c. Divisions of Enforcement
d. Offices of the Chief Economist
e. Offices of General Counsel
f. Offices of Executive Director
Every unit holds a specific function; each sharing the goal to make sure that every transaction conducted under this body satisfies regulations and is in the interest of existing market members.
There is a whole lot of info on how to properly make futures trades on the CFTC web pages, which you can check out at www.cftc.gov.