Congress is up in arms. And the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is on the warpath. Their target: Speculators in the natural resources market. The CFTC said this week that it's investigating a dramatic rise in cotton prices from earlier this year. It also plans to tighten some rules that apply to investors in the broader agricultural futures markets. Those steps come just a few days after the regulatory body said it would investigate oil trading activity to see if prices are being manipulated. Meanwhile, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee just held a hearing on commodities speculation. At the gathering, legendary hedge fund manager George Soros said: "There is a strong prima facie case against institutional investors pursuing a commodity index-buying strategy ... It is intellectually dishonest, potentially destabilizing and ...

On June 3, George Soros said oil prices will not “crash” any time soon. What reason(s) did the billionaire cite?

Hungarian-born Soros said commodity index trading “is still inflating the bubble,” but oil prices have “a strong foundation in reality.”

While I’m not exactly counting on a crash, I’m hoping I can restock my oil position (USO) at lower prices.

Today markets fretted about Lehman Bros. and pondered the messages from Bernanke and impending congressional hearings regarding commodity market “speculation”. The dollar rallied from Bernanke’s comments and commodity markets were pressured by it and potential congressional action.

Volume picked up substantially from the malaise of the past few weeks and breadth was negative particularly on NASDAQ volume. [Yahoo/Finance has an obvious glitch in adding columns.]

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