Metals prices rise after US, UK sanctions on Russia | Oil options activity surged ahead of Iran attack | ICE, CME, Eurex execs discuss European rates market
April 16, 2024
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Marex has initiated its initial public offering process, and will offer 15,384,615 shares for sale, or around 21.7% of total shares outstanding. The firm's estimated IPO price is between $18 and $21 per share, with the midpoint of the range expected to raise in the range of $300 million.
Aluminum posted its biggest intraday gain since 1987 following sanctions imposed by the UK and the US on Russian metal. Aluminum prices rose as much as 8.4% on Monday before falling back, trading 2.8% higher at $2,562 a ton. Nickel and copper also saw price increases of 1.5% and 1.6% respectively.
Oil investors traded a record amount of options contracts in the days before Iran's attack on Israel, with over 1 million calls on Brent Crude traded last week, data by Bloomberg showed. Volumes were focused on contracts at $95 and over $100, while futures contracts traded at just over $90.
Intercontinental Exchange, Eurex and CME Group executives discussed the European rates market at the FOW Trading Amsterdam conference. Integrity is what is needed to build a market, said ICE's Stelios Tselikas, while CME's Mark Rogerson argued the importance of liquidity as well as volumes and open interest. Consistency is also required, said Eurex's Lee Bartholomew, adding "You need to listen to what the participants tell you, you need a diversity of the ecosystem so you need banks, asset managers, the pension funds, the hedge funds and the market-makers, and you need that from inception."
Single-dealer platforms are posing increased challenges for banks, including the cost of maintaining them. The challenges have led to questions around the long-term future of SDPs. Despite their challenges' execution via SDPs has also grown since 2019, but "I would not expect the number of SDPs to significantly grow," said Julien Puvilland, head of FX and non-G3 rates electronic trading at Credit Agricole. "Most of the dealers know that the market share they can realize on their SDP is to some extent limited," Puvilland added.
The global financial system has continued to face risks and instability despite the increase in regulation since the great financial crisis. An increase in debt in advanced economies poses a threat to the financial landscape, but governments will need to continue issuing debt to backstop markets and the banking system.
The case for variation margin clarity Variation margin plays a fundamental role in the derivatives industry, complicated by the challenges of intraday margin calls and lack of standardization across CCPs. Despite several proposed solutions, the issue remains complex and multifaceted. Listen to the podcast.
Senators Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, are calling on Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair Rostin Behnam to explain his interactions with former FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried. Warren and Grassley sent Behnam a letter, requesting he accounted for "all meetings and correspondence between you and Sam Bankman-Fried during your tenure." CFTC officials met with Bankman-Fried as many as 10 times, and Behnam said in 2022 he had also exchanged "a number of messages" with the now-jailed crypto executive.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's new Consolidated Audit Trail program, aimed at monitoring all securities transactions and investor identities in real time, potentially violates privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment, writes former US Attorney General William P. Barr. The program's broad surveillance capabilities could lead to misuse and are being challenged in court, and Barr writes that less intrusive methods are available and effective for monitoring market misconduct.
FIA has updated its CCP Tracker visualizations with data from the fourth quarter of 2023. The CCP Tracker visualizations show risk-related metrics for 15 clearinghouses side by side for each quarter going back to 2015. The metrics include initial margin, default funds, margin breaches, stress losses and concentration ratios. The data were obtained from the public quantitative disclosures published by the clearinghouses, which are generally released two or three months after the end of the quarter. Read the highlights and access the tracker.
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