I am looking at the CME ICE Golden Cross topic in Premium today and while order flow continues to knock the website over, we’re happily issuing invoices for payment in USD/Euro/GBP in low latency mode to one and all looking to beat the price rise and lock in our $120 rate for 3 years. Those not paid up by 14th January will be welcome at the new $300 tariff – and frankly it’s still worth it at that price. Bulk deals can be negotiated.
Today in Exchange Invest, from the initial success of Luminex to the impending IPO of Tanzania’s bourse with news of what I sincerely hope will not turn out to be a government puppet as Warsaw Stock Exchange CEO.
Public Markets
Inventor Of Market Circuit Breakers Says China Got It Wrong
Nick Baker – Bloomberg
Chinese Regulator Suspends Circuit Breakers
Jacob Pramuk – CNBC
China suspended (announcement) its recently implemented circuit-breaker system Thursday, hours after trading in Chinese stocks was halted minutes into the session because of a plunge in prices.
PLY: Former Treasury Secretary Brady infers that China copied something and has made some mistakes in the process. Plus ca change some cynics might say…
Poland Taps Former Central Banker To Run WSE
Konrad Krasuski – Bloomberg
Poland’s new government chose a former Central Bank non-executive board member, Malgorzata Zaleska, as its candidate to be the Warsaw SE’s next CEO at a time it moves ahead with plans to revamp local pension funds.
PLY: Employing a career state-employed academic with only non-executive experience of commerce (and even then only through the somewhat rarefied lens of the Central Bank) – all with a significant message of political loyalty to the government – is another worrying sign for GPW. At least the last, dismally inept kleptocratic regime parachuted a capable financial figure into the position (dismal CSR by government, sound qualifications of candidate).
I wish Professor Zaleska every success. She is a shoo in for the position as GPW, while listed, is a state controlled government chattel due to the voting rights.
On a macro level, there is now a very, very, clear concern that the new government is going to, at best, continue, and at worst, accelerate, the prevailing Communist approach of state control over industry, and perhaps even further, ahem, ‘revamp’ the pensions system in the wake of the previous de facto theft of bond assets. Make no mistake, the Polish economy is in a very worrying slip back to the evils of a command economy and a recession is now imho inevitable as confidence crumbles against the backdrop of EU decline.
I sincerely hope Professor Zaleska can be a crusading advocate for better, more free markets in Poland but I am not confident.
QV Premium: Poland’s Presidency – A Warning for GPW?, Poland At the Crossroads, Warsaw’s Great Leap Backwards.
SGX Cool To Idea Of Third Market Board
Straits Times
A suggestion by business leaders that Singapore needs a third share market board to cater for “middle-class” firms has received a cool response from SGX.
Barclays Plans to Close Most of Its Asia Cash Equities Unit
Cathy Kit Ching Chan, Takahiko Hyuga & Stephen Morris – Bloomberg
Barclays plans to shut most of its cash-equities business in the Asia-Pacific region as CEO Jes Staley pushes to reduce costs.
This Thing Looks Like That Thing, SEF Rulebook Edition (subscription)
FT Alphaville – Joe Rennison
PLY: Hat tip to the eagle-eyed Joe Rennison who notes that FTSef, owned by Flextrade, intending to trade FX non-deliverable forwards, & has received temporary registration from CFTC appears to have a rule book which “is a carbon copy of Thomson Reuters’ existing rulebook for its own swap execution facility – which would also be FTSef’s main competitor trading FX NDFs.
FTSef’s rulebook can be found here (in PDF). The Reuters rulebook can be found here.”
ESMA To Cooperate With Canadian & Swiss Regulators On CCPs
MondoVisione
PLY: Good! The more cooperation the better as the current system through lack of resources or bad design or some other factor (I know not which but suspect a confluence of all three) is leading to a de facto apartheid in recognition against perfectly plausible CCPs in respectable trading nations.
Private Markets
Luminex Shows Early Promise With Exclusive Model (subscription)
Tim Cave – Financial News
Luminex has disproved critics of such platforms by matching some big trades during its first month of business.
PLY: I am not sure why anybody other than those with vested interests would think that Luminex’s ‘anti-Seth’ dark pool would not do some business. Yip, it likely needs more counterparties to be really viable long-term but at a starting point: when you inject a series of frustrated investment houses who want to make a point and are determined to battle incumbents (especially Liquidnet it seems) then they are bound to do business. Luminex is a coherently organised entity…the proof will clearly be in its longer term success as it broadens out but it has begun well. QV Premium: Luminex – Crazy Name, Crazy Development?
State Govt To Look Into Future Trading At NCDEx
The Indian Express
The state government will soon announce a mechanism to investigate the trading of sugar at the NCDEx platform…while the price of sugar on the platform was high, millers have been complaining of no demand – a phenomenon which needs to be investigated.
Pakistan SE: K-P Chief Minister Pushes For Peshawar Branch
The Express Tribune
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Chief Minister Pervez Khattak has welcomed establishment of the unified Pakistan SE (PSX) (merging Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad) & urged SECP to set up a branch of PSX in Peshawar for facilitating investors of the province.
QV Premium: Pakistan Exchanges Merger Brief.
Tanzania: DSE In Final Stages To Self-List As 5 Entries Expected This Year
Alawi Masare – The Citizen
The Dar es Salaam SE (DSE) plans for IPO & self-listing are in the final stages.
Special Section: FTI, NSEL, India at the Crossroads
PLY: MCX and FTIL up slightly.
Products
CME Reduces Minimum Price Increment On EUR/USD Futures To Half Ticks
LeapRate
Borsa İstanbul Derivatives Market (VIOP) Expands Its Market Making Activities In Electricity Futures
MondoVisione
Gibraltar SE Expands Services to include Debt Securities & Closed Ended Funds
GSX
PLY: Good to see the Gibraltar SE making headway and demonstrating how niche markets can flourish in the age of exchanges.
Coming Soon… Robo-Advice In The UK
Emma Ann Hughes – FT Adviser
Indexes
Solactive Starts Benchmark Offering – Sets The Foundation For New Smart Beta Index Creation
MondoVisione
Career Paths
Ministry of Treasury, acting on behalf of the Polish State Treasury, Warsaw SE‘s main shareholder holding 51.76% of votes at the General Meeting of the Company, named Małgorzata Zaleska as its candidate for the President of the WSE Management Board.
PLY: See concerns above. I sincerely hope Professor Zaleska can prove capable of delivering and executing a vision for GPW, managing the entity and indeed holding her own against a government which has, frankly, bizarre desires to build an even more totalitarian state than the previous incapable kleptocracy.
UK FCA Statement Re: Tracey McDermott
MondoVisione
FCA confirms that Acting CEO Tracey McDermott decided in early December to withdraw from the process to appoint the permanent CEO of FCA.
PLY: A statement spurred forward by remarks by the control freak left wing UK Chancellor George Osborne who claims to be a Conservative but is just another third rate carpet bagger seeking to run Britain inadequately.
Osborne Must Get On With Hunt For Outsider To Head FCA (subscription)
David Wighton – Financial News
Tracey McDermott is out of the running to succeed Martin Wheatley but the Chancellor is struggling to find a good external candidate who wants an ‘awful job’.
PLY: …An “awful job” with somebody who is not colourful enough to have a caricature in “Horrible Bosses” but you get the gist.
Financial Calendar
All forthcoming exchange / investment related events are now listed in our Events page.
Share Notes
ICE insider Charles A. Vice sold 1,000 shares on Tuesday, January 5th at $255.82 (bargain $255,820.00). He now owns 40,362 shares.
ICE CAO Dean S. Mathison sold 393 shares on Tuesday, January 5th at $257.00 (bargain $101,001.00). He now owns 2,845 shares.
Other stories
Fee Rate Advisory #3 for Fiscal Year 2016
SEC
Highlights From ESMA’s 2015 Financial Innovation Day
MondoVisione
PLY: ESMA and financial innovation is broadly oxymoronic. They ran the panel on Blockchain they ought to have run several years ago and that was the, ahem, highlight on an otherwise dreary day showing why the blob never gets the plot and is, embarrassingly behind practitioner thinking. “ESMA’s Day of Panic Because the Practitioners Keep Thinking” may be a better title for this third rate attempt to suggest the blob is able to keep up with the kids. ‘Dad dancing’ for markets, in other words. Given ESMA’s budget constraints, if they don’t have this sponsored to run at a profit, they ought to cancel this gratuitous waste of regulatory funds and use the money for, well, regulating instead. Goodness knows, they need it (QV CCP apartheid remarks above).
MondoVisione