According to Leah McGrath Goodman’s well-researched book “The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World’s Oil Market”, the start of Nymex oil trading was in major part due to traders who stumbled upon oil futures after screwing up Maine potato futures. Their trading “industry” or gambling party had been built on predicting the Maine potato harvest, and—much more importantly—trying to manipulate potato prices, to the point that regulators were finally forced to act. They shut down the potato futures market in 1976, after repeated defaults on physical deliveries of more than 25 000 tons of potatoes. As Goodman explains, the traders were forced to cast around for something else to trade. Then-Chairman of the Nymex, Michael Marks tried to boost futures trading in boneless beef and plywood, but that didn’t work. In 1978 however, Marks hit on the right thing and introduced heating oil […]