Bumbling bureaucrats push stock futures into the future.

Investment News, August, 2001

When it comes to trading single-stock futures, the tail has been wagging the dog for far too long. In this case, the tail is the federal bureaucracy, and the dog is Congress and the investing public. Single-stock futures are contracts to buy shares of an individual company's stock for delivery at a predetermined future date.

When that date arrives, the investor must take possession of the stock. That's different from an option, which conveys only the right, but not an obligation, to buy or sell the security. Institutions and sophisticated investors want to trade single-stock futures because they are good tools to hedge equity portfolios, and they help iron out some of the volatility in the stock market. These days, that's no small thing. Because...

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