[00:00:06] Welcome to the John Lothian News daily Update podcast for June 3, 2024. I am your host, John Lothian. This podcast is brought to you by John Lothianus, the home of markets wiki and markets wiki Education. Thank you for joining us. Here are the hits and takes comments from today's JLN the Chicago History Society is honoring Leo Mohammed on Wednesday, June 5 at a dinner at the Making History Awards 30th anniversary event presented at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago. Leo will be presented with the Daniel H. Burnham making History Award for distinction in visionary leadership. Leo is among six distinguished honorees who have left their mark on Chicago, including Guadalupe Arce, president of tropical optical company Rick Bayless, american chef and award winning restaurateur frontier Grill and Topolobambo Mary Dillon, president and CEO of Foot Locker and Liz and Don Thompson, president and CEO founder of Cleveland Avenue LLC. Of course, Leo Mohammed is the chairman Emeritus of CME Group, Inc. If you are interested in attending the event, you can contact Steve
[email protected], or the Chicago History Museum at 312-642-4600 for details.
[00:01:48] On Sunday, I received the sad news that Scott Eisner had passed away on Friday after never recovering from heart surgery in March. Eisner was a veteran Chicago financial service executive who was the CFO of Gerald, Inc.
[00:02:08] At the CME when I met him, when we both worked there. He would also work for Iowa Grain, Peters and company, and HTG, among a long list of notable Chicago futures firms. Scott was good friends with Bill Kaiser, the one time owner of Zap Futures, for whom Scott served as CEO for a year. Kaiser and Eisner met in the first grade and later in high school. The two were in a rock band together with Eisner on lead guitar.
[00:02:42] I remember a particularly poignant story Scott told me about marshmallow peeps that are sold during Easter season after his first wife died. When he would go into a store and see them selling peeps, which his wife loved, he would just break down and cry. He also told me how lucky he was to have found love for a second time in life with his wife and now widow Tracy. The thing I loved about Scott Eisner was that he was real.
[00:03:19] Also, after publication on Friday, I found this notice in my email box about a LinkedIn post from ASX about the passing of Maurice Farhart. ASX posted to LinkedIn it is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved colleague and friend Maurice Farhart. Maurice worked at ASX in a variety of roles for 21 years, both in Sydney and Chicago. He was a highly respected expert in financial markets whose insights and expertise were valued by colleagues and peers around the world. Both his professional accomplishments. Maurice was a man of many talents. He was a restaurateur who owned many culinary establishments and he had a deep appreciation for fine red wine line and was also an accomplished golfer, pursuits that brought him joy and fulfillment. His love for family, his wife, three children and four grandchildren was evident to all who knew him. Maurice's legacy at ASX is profound. He was not only a mentor and a leader, but also a friend to many. His presence, wisdom and kindness will be deeply missed by all of us. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this very sad time.
[00:04:45] The NIBA is holding its second annual Compliance Officers Group meeting scheduled for July 10, 2024 at 01:30 p.m. central Time in downtown Chicago. This event will take place at 100 South Wacker Drive, Suite 250, Chicago, Illinois 60606. Compliance officers and industry professionals are encouraged to attend this event for networking, knowledge sharing, and a discussion of the latest developments in compliance and regulatory practices.
[00:05:19] AWS Marketplace is holding a webinar on June 12, 2024 about how AI and cloud solutions can enhance financial resilience by streamlining complex processes, improving agility, optimizing revenue streams, and achieving growth in volatile markets. The event will feature speakers including Juha Harkonen, VP commercial partner at Sage Yuri Polyakov, SVP of applications for finance and workforce planning at Anaplan Amy Canary, SVP of Marketing at Zurara and Chris Hennessy, enterprise finance strategist at AWS. Topics will cover efficient scaling of operations, optimizing revenue with flexible subscription platforms, enhancing planning and forecasting, and streaming financial management. AWS Marketplace is a digital software catalog offering a wide selection of data and analytics solutions, simplifying the process of finding, buying and managing software on AWS. Register with a link in today's newsletter the Financial Times has a special report in today's edition on upskilling that explores how technology, demographic shifts and changing demands are transforming the workplace, necessitating new skills training for employees of all ages. The report highlights the role of AI in education, emphasizing the need for teachers to guide students in using technology effectively. It underscores the urgency for businesses and workers to stay informed about technological advancements to avoid obsolescence. Articles within the report cover diverse topics such as retraining workers for the AI era, the importance of both technical and soft skills, and initiatives by companies to ensure their staff possess relevant skills. The report also discusses the trend of employers valuing talent without traditional skills and the unique challenges faced by marginalized workers accessing high quality training.
[00:07:55] The former Nymex trader turned tv personality Eric Bolling has left Newsmax, with the two sides mutually agreeing to part. However, Bolling did not indicate on his last show that he was leaving the network. Before Newsmax, Bolling was at Sinclair Broadcast Group and Fox News.
[00:08:18] If you still have a wedding gift you bought when Rupert Murdoch announced his engagement to ex police chaplain and Leslie Smith, but then abruptly called it off in April 2023, you are in luck. Murdoch just married for a fifth time to Elena Zhukova, 67, a retired russian biologist he met through one of his ex wives, Wendy Deng. The BBC reported.
[00:08:48] Our most read stories from our previous edition of JLN options were how rage, boredom and Wall street bets created a new generation of young american traders. From Bloomberg CME Group Fine suspends trader for violating wash trades, prohibition from FX Newsgroup and why bitcoin BTC price is falling suddenly from coingate.
[00:09:14] Subscribe to the free JLN Options newsletter with the link in today's JLN. Here are more stories from the first read section of today's JLN. Here's the third video in our series with Joe Schroeder. The headline former CQG president reflects on Algo trading, crypto and AI's impact Joe Schroeder, the former president of CQG, a provider of trading software and market data, shared his insights on the evolution of electronic trading, the rise of crypto, and the potential impact of AI in part three of his interview with John Lothian news for the path to electronic trading video series. You can watch this video on johnlothianews.com dot.
[00:10:02] Heres a commentary from me.
[00:10:07] The headline controversial past shadows CME brokers present Bobby Albert's clash with open outcry trading and social media.
[00:10:19] Not everyone who participated in the open outcry markets looks back on those days with fondness or likes to be reminded of them by seeing the videos from the Open Outcry Traders history project. Case in point is Bobby Alpert, the former CME broker and local half brother of Barry Lynn and one of the administrators of a CME themed Facebook group. I have been suspended from the Facebook group Chicago Mercantile Exchange friends until June 14, 2024 by one of the administrators. I can only guess it is Alpert with whom I have previously clashed on other CME themed Facebook groups. Alpert has expressed his disdain and boredom multiple times upon seeing me post videos from the open Outcry Traders history project on Facebook. You can read the entire commentary on johnlothiannews.com.
[00:11:21] heres a story from securities Finance Times. The headline Nasdaq partners with FIA tech Nasdaq has partnered with FIA Tech to help reduce the complexity of post trade data processing across the exchange traded derivatives market. Nasdaq will integrate its clearing platform, Nasdaq real time clearing, into FIA techs trade data network. The trade data network combines trade data from buy side brokers, clearing houses and clearing members into a common framework, creating a shared source of clearing activity for participating firms. The companies say that the partnership will help to reduce systemic inefficiency across the global post trade network. My comment when you put two heavyweights like this together, look out.
[00:12:14] Heres a story from Bloomberg. The headline Chicago wants to enlist remote workers in rescue of downtown city is town and coworking spaces in iconic tourist locations. Campaigns goal is to generate economic impact of $10 million Chicago is still reeling from a lack of workers four years after the pandemic hollowed out us cities. The downtown vacancy rate has been setting records quarter after quarter and recently rose to 22.5%, according to Jones Lang La Salle Inc. Perceptions of crime aren't going away with China's Cofocu International's latest firm to say it plans to leave the city. The population has declined three years in a row. My comment this is a brilliant idea to provide coworking space in such iconic locations as Navy pier, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Chicago Cultural center.
[00:13:16] Here are the top three stories from Fridays JLN our top story Friday was the LinkedIn Post from ASX senior product manager Huta Harb mourning the passing of Maurice Farhard. Second was how rage, boredom and Wall street batch created a new generation of young american traders. An excerpt from Nathaniel Popper's forthcoming the trolls of Wall street from Bloomberg. Third was a tie between agreed order issued by judge in the Langer versus CME group lawsuit and how Trump's team blew it. A guest essay in the New York Times by Renato Mariotti, a partner at Brian Cave Leighton Paysner in Chicago. Here are the top five stories from the lead section of today's JLN. The first story is from the Financial Times. The headline boom in us penny stock trading prompts warnings of frothy markets. Volumes for some sub $1 shares are above those of Tesla and Apple, as retail investors target cheap but volatile names.
[00:14:33] Scrap metal merchant and an electric vehicle maker that has sold just four cars top the list of so called penny stocks that are out trading the likes of Tesla and Apple, prompting some analysts to warn that markets are becoming overheated. Seven of the top ten most traded us equities in May, as measured by the number of shares bought and sold, are penny stocks worth less than $1, according to CBO Global Markets. None of the companies are profitable. The huge volumes in so many little known stocks suggest a renewed appetite among retail investors for cheap names in which they believe they can quickly make a lot of money.
[00:15:18] Here's another story, this one from Bloomberg. The headline bursts of free power raise red flags for green tech investors something strange is going on in Europe's power markets. Prices keep dropping below zero. Solar parks on spanish planes and wind turbines above norwegian fjords were so productive in May that a record share of clean electricity flooded the grid. At times, supply vastly exceeded demand, and producers needed to do something with all that energy. For more than a million consumers, that meant getting free electricity to heat their homes or charge their vehicles. While good for them, the phenomenon is happening so frequently it's raising concerns among investors about how much more renewable power they can build into an $800 billion market before returns start to suffer.
[00:16:19] Here's another story from the Financial Times. The headline Nvidia market cap jumps to 350 billion amid gamma squeeze options trading frenzy fuels wild swings in share price Nvidia has gained $350 billion in market value in wildly volatile trading since it reported first quarter earnings just over a week ago, driven in part by a feedback loop of trading in the chipmakers huge options market. The company was valued at $2.69 trillion by Fridays, close more than JP Morgan, Berkshire Hathaway and Meta combined. Despite a pullback at the end of the week, it has added roughly $350 billion since May 23, when it announced surging revenue growth over the first three months of the year. At the peak earlier in the week, its value had risen by nearly half a trillion dollars, growing by a sum close to the market capitalization of Tesla in just a few days.
[00:17:29] Here's another story from the Financial Times. The headline AI is promoted from back office duties to investment decisions asset managers are increasingly using generative artificial intelligence to guide financial choices. Asset managers are increasingly using artificial intelligence to guide investment decisions, track the habits of portfolio managers, and identifying money making opportunities. JPMorgan later this year plans to expand the use of a generative AI tool that flags questionable decisions by portfolio managers, such as potentially selling top performing stocks too soon, company officials told the Financial Times. The tool, dubbed Moneyball, is meant to show portfolio managers how they and the market have behaved in similar circumstances, helps them correct for bias and improve their processes, said Christian west, head of investment platform for JP Morgan Asset Management.
[00:18:37] Here's another story from Bloomberg. The headline Saudi Arabia puts Wall street on notice to set up shop in Riyadh Saudi Arabia's wealth fund is starting to add some new fine print to the document it sends to bankers hoping to do business with the $925 billion investor. It wants to know whether their firms have obtained a regional headquarters license in the kingdom. The move shows the government is doubling down on efforts to get international financial firms to boost their local presence.
[00:19:14] Those that dont display sufficient commitment to the country could soon find it harder to win big business. While banks had initially hoped to sidestep those rules, the pressure is getting harder to resist, especially after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Became the first Wall street giant to get such a license. We're grateful for your attentive listening to the John Lothian news Daily update. Please spread the word about our podcast among your friends. We would greatly appreciate it if you could spare a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform upon which you access this podcast. Your reviews play a crucial role when introducing our content to new listeners. Also, if you havent subscribed to the Daily Johnlothea newsletter Email yet you can enjoy a complimentary 90 day trial by visiting johnlotheanews.com trial. Thank you for your valued support. Have a great day and stay safe and treat people the same way you want to be treated, with respect, equality and justice. This has been. John Lothian Goodbye.
[00:20:21] This podcast has been produced by Andrew Lothian.
