10 July 2015

elb2

A greek ‘fold’ may provoke German discord as the Eurozone corners the market in duct tape, is sitting alongside an uneasy Chinese market being held, arguably against its gravitational wishes, by government fiat.

Today, I am in Warsaw – anybody within the GPW building is welcome to join me where I will be on a panel for the Paga Foundation capital markets symposium at 1300 CET this afternoon. Meanwhile, we have Plus 500 results, NYSE outage aftermath, Dubai seeking to grow leading Sukuk cluster. and there’s more, happy scrolling:

Public Markets

Euronext Amsterdam Welcomes Flow Traders – Successful IPO Values Flow Traders Over €1.5 Billion On Listing

MondoVisione

Plus500 H1 Financial Results

Andrew Saks-McLeod – LeapRate

Revenues $127 mln, up 19.59% compared to $106.2 million in H1 2014

EBITDA $55.8 mln, down 22.5%

Plus500 Chief Praises Investment Strategy As Revenue Jumps In H1

IGaming Business

Plus500 Says Still Facing Regulatory Scrutiny

Reuters

Read our Premium Plus500 Turmoil & Deal – Brief Part 1, Part 2.
China Stocks Jump Again After Beijing Puts Floor Under Market

Samuel Shen & Engen Tham – Reuters

Chinese stocks rose strongly for a second day on Friday, buoyed by a barrage of government support measures, but worries persist about the long-term impact that four weeks of stock market turmoil may have on the world’s second-largest economy.

China Short-Selling Probe Focuses On More Than 10 Organizations

Reuters

China Insurers Bought $18 Billion Of Equity Since Market Fall

Reuters

China Trading Halts Slip After Rally With 47% Still Frozen

Fox Hu – Bloomberg

China’s Dream of World Class Stock Markets Suffers Intervention Blow

Belinda Cao & Kyoungwha Kim – Bloomberg

Read our Premium China Capital Markets Transformation Brief – Main File.

DB1 & Shanghai SE Celebrate First Successful Year Of Market Data Cooperation

DB1

NZX ‘Strongly Opposes’ Unlisted Exemption

NZ Herald

NZX “strongly opposes” a bid by share trading platform Unlisted to be exempted from new licensing requirements, saying its lack of basic shareholder protections could tarnish the reputation of the country’s capital markets.

Previous discussions here.

As reported earlier this year, Unlisted is seeking an exemption from Commerce Minister Paul Goldsmith from the Financial Markets Conduct Act, which came into force in December and requires that it apply for a licence from the Financial Markets Authority, saying the costs would be too onerous for its market servicing smaller companies.

Bucharest SE & Depozitarul Central: A New Step Towards Flexibility Of Market Mechanisms

MondoVisione

From July 10th, Bucharest SE (BVB) & Depozitarul Central offer the possibility to settle deal trades on gross basis (T+0, T+1 or T+2). alongside T+2 net settlement.

CFTC Seeking Public Comment On A Petition By OTC Clearing Hong Kong Limited For Exemption From DCO Registration

CFTC

Private Markets

Bids Trading Broadens European Sights (subscription)

Financial News

CEO targets a route into the region regardless of whether the US equities block trading venue’s bid to become technology partner to Plato succeeds.

Previous discussions re. Plato here, here, here.

PLY: Interesting. Bids have built a great business without media hype, their presence in Europe is to be welcomed whenever it may arrive.

Taiwan Shuts Markets, Offices As Typhoon Chan-hom Approaches

Bonnie Cao & Cindy Wang – Bloomberg

‘There Will Always Be An Appetite For Nifty In Foreign Destinations’

dna

Chitra Ramkrishna, MD & CEO, National SE (NSE) talks about the 15 year journey of the exchange and the road ahead.

Special Section: FTI, NSEL, India at the Crossroads

PLY: MCX off 2% diverging from a 3.5% bounce in FTIL.

EOW Struggles For Forensic Auditors In The NSEL Case

Mateen Hafeez – TOI

The EOW of the Mumbai police, which is probing the cheating case involving NSEL, has for the third time written to the home department demanding the appointment of forensic auditors for this case.

Read our Premium NSEL Scandal Brief – Part 16.

PLY: The blob is failing India.

Technology

NYSE Outage Fails To Speed Up IT Upgrade (subscription)

Philip Stafford & Robin Wigglesworth – Financial Times

NYSE has no immediate plans to speed up a planned technology upgrade, despite revealing that it was a software update that halted trading on some of its markets for more than three hours.

PLY: Hmmm, I realise the EU reacts to all crises by saying the solution is ever faster and greater Union but it strikes me this is not an ideal way to manage software applications…

Market Complexity Broke The NYSE Before Saving It

Matt Levine – Bloomberg

So NYSE published its explanation of why it shut down this week. Here it is. Basically NYSE did a software update, and when it opened up the machine to put the updated software in, some bats got into the machine and flew around breaking stuff, and so NYSE had to open the machine back up and catch all the bats, and that took a while. I may not fully understand how computers work.

…the software update was not to like change the font for the stock symbols; it was to prepare for “the upcoming SIP timestamp requirement.”

SEC Says Meeting With NYSE Over Outage

Reuters

Ted Kaufman: Market Regulators Need ‘Black Box’ To Investigate Outages

Francine McKenna – MarketWatch

Former Senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware, a member of the SEC’s Equity Market Structure Committee and a long-time supporter of reforms to market structure, is worried.

“When these outages occur, the regulators are dependent on the exchanges and other platforms, the regulated parties, to tell them what happened,” he said.

What’s really needed says Kaufman is a black box, the recording device the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board turn to after a plane or train crashes. “You can’t regulate effectively if you don’t have an independent source of information to detect, monitor and investigate.”

Automation Could Determine OTC Swaps Survivors

Automated Trader

As MiFID II winds its way through a legal review in Europe, firms are preparing for a major shake-up in trading and markets and looking across the Atlantic for some clues as to how it might unfold.

Products

Treasury Market’s Bogeymen (HFT) Are Here To Stay (subscription)

Robin Wigglesworth – Financial Times

CME Lifts Force Majeure For Most Illinois River Grain Terminals

Reuters

CME on Thursday said force majeure was no longer in effect at a majority of Illinois River terminals that are regular for CBOT corn and soybean futures delivery.

Dubai Plans New Sukuk Channels As Listings Top Other Centres

Reuters

Dubai has overtaken other financial centres in listing Islamic bonds on its exchanges, and is mounting a global drive to attract more listings while developing new channels to trade sukuk.

Indexes

Nigerian SE Introduces Pension 40 Index

MondoVisione

Career Paths

Chris Dennis has joined Liquidnet as Head of US Fixed Income Sales, based in New York. Chris will be responsible for sales and strategy as Liquidnet builds out its high yield and investment grade trading platform scheduled to launch this quarter.

Reuters reports that the CEO of UAE stock market regulator, Abdullah al-Turifi, is due to retire, perhaps as soon as after the Eid al-Fitr holiday, due around July 17. Turifi, a founding member of the regulatory body, is serving his last month at the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA).

California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) named Tina Campbell as the new Chief of the Human Resources Division.

Rival Systems, a provider of comprehensive technology solutions for professional derivatives traders, appointed of Natasha Solis as Director of Sales and Business Development and Sara Goodman as Director of Marketing.

TechCrunch reports that Michael Casey, the co-author of The Age Of Cryptocurrency is leaving a senior columnist position at WSJ to work at MIT Media Lab as Senior Advisor at the Digital Currency Initiative.

Financial Calendar

New announcement

TMX Q2 Financial Results – Wednesday, August 5, 2015.

All forthcoming exchange / investment related events are now listed in our Events page.

Share Notes

ICE President & COO, Charles A Vice, sold 2,000 shares on Jul 6, 2015 at $224.15 (bargain $449,023.88). See all ICE insider stock transactions on our dedicated page here.

Analyst Notes

Zacks Upgraded CME From “Hold” To “Buy” – $106.00 Price Objective

CME Upgraded By Vetr From “Strong Sell” To “Buy” – $103.08 Price Objective

A full table of current analysis can be found on our Analyst Ratings page which is updated daily.

All Analysts, Banks and Brokers are welcome to contribute to this section.

Other stories

IOSCO Publishes Report On SME Financing Through Capital Markets

MondoVisione

EU CMU Should Ease Cross-Border Investment & Finance For SMEs

MondoVisione

Read our Premium EU CMU Brief.

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