JPMorgan Just Cornered The Commodity Derivative Market, And This Time There Is Proof

For years there had been speculation, rumor and hearsay that JPM had cornered the US commodities market. Now, finally, we have documented proof.

Traditionally, we look at the OCC's Quarterly Bank Report on derivatives activities to see which was the largest bank in the US in terms of total notional derivative holdings. The reason being that like on frequent occasions in the past, we find some stunning  results, such as most recently in January when we wrote that, for the first time, Citigroup had eclipsed JPM as the largest US bank in total derivatives, with just over $70 trillion compared to perennial megabank JPM's $65.3 trillion as of the third quarter of 2014, explaining also why Citigroup had drafted the Swaps push out language in the Omnibus Bill. 

And while this time there was little exciting to report at the consolidated level (JPM overtook Citi in Q4 only for Citi to once again become the world's largest bank in total derivatives with $56.6 trillion compared to $56.2 trillion for JPM and $52 trillion for Goldman as Bloomberg reported earlier), and in fact total notional derivatives tumbled from $220.4 trillion in Q4 to $203.1 trillion in Q1 the lowest level since 2008... 

... an absolutely shocking blockbuster emerges when looking at the underlying component data.
Presenting Exhibit 12: Notional Amounts of Commodity Contracts by Maturity: even a CFTC regulator would be able to spot the outlier charted below.

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