The World's Most Extreme Speculative Mania Unravels in China

  • Turnover on Chinese commodity exchanges surged by $183 billion
  • Traders start to withdraw as government deters speculation

Is China's Commodity Frenzy Cooling?

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From the Dutch tulip craze of 1637 to America’s dot-com bubble at the turn of the century, history is littered with speculative frenzies that ended badly for investors.

But rarely has a mania escalated so rapidly, and spurred such fevered trading, as the great China commodities boom of 2016. Over the span of just two wild months, daily turnover on the nation’s futures markets has jumped by the equivalent of $183 billion, outpacing the headiest days of last year’s Chinese stock bubble and making volumes on the Nasdaq exchange in 2000 look tame.