Prior to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange going public more than a decade ago there was a shake-up in its leadership. Terry Duffy was elected chairman of the exchange in 2002, replacing Scott Gordon.

One can almost hear the sound of the EUR/USD sliding. The May 8, 2014 peak of 1.3993 looks like an ancient landmark, from before the great flood of quantitative easing (see “Lookout below, right”).

The Federal Reserve has been pointing toward a mid-2015 hike in short-term interest rates for several years, and there is every reason to believe its policymaking Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will at last start raising the federal funds rate in th

February’s strong U.S. employment report gave the proverbial “all clear” to the U.S. economy and stoked speculation that interest rates are destined to increase as early as this summer. This added extra fuel to the ongoing rally in the U.S. dollar, whose continuing strength has been a macro force weighing on prices of many commodities.  

Malinda Goldsmith has been involved in commodity trading and managed futures for more than 30 years. She did not start as a trader, but as a lawyer, compliance officer and marketing person.