Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Welcome to the John Lothian News daily Update podcast for March 12, 2024. I'm your host, John Lothian.
[00:00:14] This podcast is brought to you by John Lothian News, 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 Walt Lucan officially opened FIA Boca 2024 with his opening comments titled competing with conviction respecting the contest I captured a picture of Walt in front of a video wall where we have Big Walt and little Walt, and it left me a little scared. Big Walt was awfully big. There's a picture of it in today's newsletter at its annual meeting in Boca Raton, Florida, the FIA introduced three newly elected directors, Susan Gaughn from Society General, Nelson Neal from CHS Hedging LLC, and Harris LK from Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. Additionally, the organization re elected several directors for two year terms, including primary associate member directors from firms such as Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, among others. The board confirmed the continued roles of its officers, with Alicia Crichton of Goldman Sachs serving as chair. Mark Bortnik of Morgan Stanley International was also appointed to represent the Europe advisory board on an ex officio basis.
[00:01:50] JLN's video operations were busy yesterday, though. We had two no shows, one interviewee who did not make the conference due to a family issue, and another who had a last minute conflict. We interviewed 20 people in 16 separate interviews on Monday. Today we have 15 interviews and 16 interviewees. Wednesday we have another nine interviews scheduled, and then the weary shall rest.
[00:02:19] This afternoon at 05:00 p.m. Is the FIA hall of Fame ceremony, where the twelve inductees of this year's class, of which I am one, will be honored at the conference. From the sounds of it, I will have many supporters and longtime JLN readers at the ceremony. SGX announced yesterday during its FIA Boca media lunch that it was launching short term interest rate futures. Among the media outlets covering the story is the Wall Street Journal with a story titled Singapore Exchange to launch short term interest rate derivatives and a sub headline, SGX said the futures would allow investors to hedge and trade fluctuations in interest rates in a cost effective manner.
[00:03:07] How is your Swedish? Vermiculus's Nils Robert Pearson was interviewed by Breakit and the interview is in Swedish. According to my friend Chat GBT, the title of the story is the veteran's new success, and now he will give away almost the entire billion dollar company knows, Robert told me. It's not a billion dollars, Maggie Sclar announced on LinkedIn the founding of Sclar Strategies, LLC, a derivative securities and or crypto regulatory policy. Cris management and strategy firm. Sklar formerly has been with the CFTC, the Chicago Federal Reserve and in private law practice.
[00:03:54] The March newsletter from the sustainable Stock Exchanges initiatives features updates from prominent exchanges including the Aman Stock Exchange, Bursa, Malaysia, BME, IDX and others. The highlights, curated by the SSE, offer a comprehensive overview of sustainability developments in capital markets, along with insights into SSE Academy workshops, exchange updates, regulatory and standard setting developments, new ESG indices and products and initiatives promoting gender equality. The SSC initiative, a UN partnership program, is organized by UNCTAD, the UN Global Compact, UNePFI and the PRI.
[00:04:53] Read the SSC newsletter with a link in today's newsletter our most read stories from our previous edition of GLN Options were one of the most infamous trades on Wall street is roaring back from Bloomberg Blackrock to buy Spider Rock as firm expands wealth management from Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance and 80% of the world stock options aren't traded where you think they are. From the Wall Street Journal subscribe to the free JlN Options newsletter with a link in today's JlN. Here are more stories from the first read section of today's JLN. Here's a commentary from Catton the lesson of Prometheus, a special purpose broker dealer, may cause havoc in tradfib by unilaterally declaring ETH to be a security as referenced in the opening scene of the 2023 Oscar winning film Oppenheimer, Prometheus, the greek God of forethought, is best known for stealing fire from the gods to give to humanity as punishment. Zeus had Prometheus bound to a rock and created Pandora's box, which eventually released suffering and despair upon humankind. Prometheus serves as a reminder of the risk of unintended consequences from well meaning actions. In December 2020, the securities and Exchange Commission SEC created a new type of broker dealer known as special purpose broker dealer, or SPBD. Under the SEC's statement on the custody of digital asset securities by special purpose broker dealers statement, if an SBPD is approved by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority FiNRA, it can transact and custody digital asset securities. The SEC clarified that an SPBD, following the requirements in the statement, would not be subject to an enforcement action for a period of five years. Since 2020, it appears that only one SPBD has been approved by FINRA to maintain custody of and transact in digital asset securities. My comment cat and slapping Prometheum across the face with a trout here's another story. This is a story from the Financial Times, the headline Telegram social media giant or the new dark web? As the messaging platform gears up for a potential stock market flotation, it's under pressure to curtail use by criminals.
[00:07:50] Every day, the Telegram channel, gun Shop America posts a steady stream of photographs of illicit wears for sale to its near 26,000 subscribers recently. Those included a nine millimeter Glock with ammunition for $500, bolivian cocaine for $1,000 an ounce, and fraudulently cloned bank cards for 5000. Keep your orders coming, the anonymous channel owner writes on his public feed, inviting his followers to message him directly to make a purchase in bitcoin or US dollars. He intersperses his adverts with photos of piles of cash and screenshots of messages of appreciation from happy customers. Don't sleep guys, it's Christmas around the corner. Let's get on it. He exclaims. My comment I'm sure the criminals will stop using it so Telegram can float its stock. They are normally so nice that way. Here are the top three stories from Monday's GLN our top click item on Monday was the CQG press release CQG unveils new first of its kind AI machine learning trading toolkit for predicting futures market moves. Second was Bloomberg's BlackRock to buy Spider Rock as firm expands wealth Management and third was a picture of, you guessed it, John Lothy and me with Leo Mohammed at this year's FIA Boca conference. Here are the top three stories from the lead section of today's JLN. The first story is a press release from fia fia releases report on derivatives industry Trends report authored by Coalition Greenwich based on more than 200 responses to joint research study need for capital and operational efficiency is top priority for respondents economic uncertainty and market volatility key variable for trading volume over next five years. Regulatory reporting, allocation and give ups ranked as top pain points in trading operations, standardization and tokenization seen as potential game changers for clearing workflow FIA today announces the release of a report authored by Coalition Greenwich on how participants in the global listed and cleared derivatives markets view current issues facing the industry as well as the key trends shaping the industry's future. The 14 page report, Derivatives Market Structure 2024, focusing on capital and workflow efficiency, provides a unique perspective into the key drivers for the global clearing business. The report is based on findings from research of market participants conducted jointly by FIA and Coalition Greenwich, a provider of strategic benchmarking analytics and insights to the financial services industry. The study was conducted in November and December 2023 and received responses from more than 200 people working at a wide range of firms, including brokers, clearing firms, asset managers, hedge funds, exchanges and technology vendors. The next story is from the Wall Street Journal. The headline Singapore Exchange to launch short term interest rate derivatives. SGX said the futures would allow investors to hedge and trade fluctuations in interest rates in a cost effective manner. Singapore Exchange plans to launch short term interest rate derivatives to cater to a market increasingly seeking to hedge in uncertain interest rate environment. The exchange will introduce short term rate futures linked to the Singapore overnight rate average and the Tokyo overnight rate average, which would allow investors to hedge and trade fluctuations in interest rates in a cost effective manner, SGX said Tuesday. And then finally, here's another story, this one from the Financial Times. The headline risks grow for investors as new economic framework emerges policies to address issues such as climate change and national security are piling up without a coherent strategy. Issues such as climate change, energy independence and national security plans are piling up for investors, and no one is certain where the pieces will fall. Before the global financial crisis of 2008, the economic policy framework was largely more transparent and predictable, manage demand by stabilizing inflation while controlling public debt. It required fewer policy instruments and benefited from expanding globalization and growing capital flows. It was a strategy that blossomed under the World Trade Organization's rules based system.
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