Commodity funds, which pool money to invest in futures markets, saw more than $1.2 billion in new offerings in 1988, said Lee Rose, publisher of Managed Account Reports in Columbia, Md. "That far exceeded any year," Rose said.

It's the amateurs that Fred White, an attorney with the Chicago law firm of Much, Shelist & Freed, worries about. "Those people might have trouble with their orders," said White. And they may be the very troubles that FBI agents have been investigating the last two years at the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

"There has always been a suspicion that floor traders might be able to take advantage of a pool's trades," said White, who represents a number of commodity pools and who once worked for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "Pools do trade at the open at the market price."