234 Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast March 2nd, 2024
Transcript:
This week in the parish of bourses and market structure:
There's A Big SGX Buyback,
As We Celebrate,
C+100 USA!
NZX Keeps Growing,
The Little Worm Makes Another South American Breakthrough…
My name is Patrick L Young
Welcome to the Bourse Business Weekly Digest Episode 234
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, this is a very brief reduction of highlights amongst the key headlines from the world in market structure this past week. All the analysis of the many events and happenings from the past 7 days can be found in Exchange Invest Daily subscriber newsletter, the unique guide to the bourse business sent daily to your inbox.
More details at ExchangeInvest.com
Over in the crypto asset, digital asset world Bitcarnage, we were talking about Pig Butchering V2.0 this week.
The ugly spectre of ‘pig butchering’ a term for a vile thread of dating fraud raised its head again in the past week. Last year Binance managed to get off the hook from an $8 million Tinder ‘pig butchering’ lawsuit but this year, it's gone one better it's being sued by a Texan pensioner one Leonard Licht, he has Binance and indeed CZ right in his sights with a RICO lawsuit no less.
In the end meanwhile, despite extradition being imminent, it looks as if, as we expected the Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon will miss the start of his US SEC trial.
Finally, for Bitcarnage this week, we noted the Naira crisis which is causing the Central Bank of Nigeria all manner of problems - as its currency collapses, the central bank has been quick to cauterize this problem with as many crypto connections as possible being removed to reduce capital flight. However, the numbers are eye popping, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria some $26 billion passed through Binance Nigeria in the past year.
If you enjoyed this excerpt, you may be interested to know that you can read Bitcarnage every day in Exchange Invest. Alternatively if you want to follow Bitcarnage, the daily update and happenings in the world of crypto and digital assets as a standalone, you can find Bitcarnage on Substack.
Back in the mainstream markets that are driving the world of commerce, the Business Times that a wonderful headline this week: Stock Markets Are Driving A New American Century.
PLY (that's me) will not going to tire of noting the tedious “it's all about American decline” narrative has now been discussed since actually I was in prep school. It has therefore a considerable track record of inaccuracy.
The incredible success of NASDAQ and NYSE is historic in the parish of exchanges. Ruthless competitors delivering a standard of play which makes Exchange Invest so proud and indeed thus also the Exchange Invest Weekly, this podcast…it's not only because both Wall Street equity leaders have fantastic female leaders to manage their organizations. It's the fact that they do such an incredible job.
Vast plaudits to all who make the American equity markets - and particularly the listing franchises - so incredible. I have no idea if somebody can break what I have always termed “the country club” duopoly. But it's hard not to marvel at the idea one nation can so dominate the world stock markets.
And dominate they do, the S&P 500 hit 5,000 and “the country club” probably reigned supreme!
8 out of 10 of the MSCI global indexe’s top components are now US-listed tech giants.
Apple and Microsoft are leading the way via of course their listings on NASDAQ and NYSE but the USA in total amounts to nearly half of all global market capitalization. Food for thought ladies and gentlemen.
In results, not such a busy week this week, but we did have some very encouraging numbers are from the New Zealand Exchange (NZX), net profit slightly declining but overall operating revenue on the up.
In deals, two interesting pointers, one the Philippine Stock Exchange continues to tempt us that they're going to buy the PDS bond market during the course of this year. Meanwhile, the Singapore Exchange has commenced an equity buyback plan for no less than 107,164,240 shares, that's 10% of the entire issued share capital. While you're waiting for your SGX shares to be bought back, why don't you think about buying a copy of my most recent book “Victory or Death?” Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and the FinTech World, it's an explanation of how technology is affecting life and markets. It's published by DV Books and is distributed by Ingram worldwide.
While you're waiting for your copy of “Victory or Death?” to arrive, check out our live stream Tuesdays 5 o'clock London time, midday New York time - it's the IPO-Video live show.
Catch the back episodes on Linkedin and Youtube via “IPO-Vid”.
This week we have a cracking show #135: The Holistic Exchange & Operational Resilience with the head of Global Marketing for Sinara (they're a massive vendor powering many many different aspects of the world's financial market infrastructure) and their head of marketing Hamish Adourian joined us once again in the studio to talk about The Holistic Exchange & Operational Resilience, coming this week on Tuesday IPO-Vid #136.
We'll have another returning guest for the third time no less, Rainer Zitelmann following on from his excellent book discussions In Defense of Capitalism: Debunking the Myths and The Wealth Elite. We're going to talk about his latest tome Unbreakable Spirit: Rising Above All Odds.
That brings us neatly to our “Finance Book of the Week” of course you can manage to find out what our Finance Book of the Week is by subscribing free of charge ladies and gentlemen, to the Exchange Invest weekly newsletter which comes out on a Saturday. The EI Weekly is free of charging get that by signing up via ExchangeInvest.com website.
Freakonomics it's a classic of the genre, it was written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. It's a rogue economist exploring the hidden side of everything. A fascinating discussion of the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Klu Klux Klan, and much more. Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner showed that economics is, at root, the study of incentives - this is a classic tome, ladies and gentlemen, a paperback you really must read and add to your finance bookshelf. And of course, you can get a copy by dropping by via website where we'll be happy to sell you one via the good folks of amazon.com.
In product news, this week, the Securities Commission of Malaysia have pledged with Bursa Malaysia a speedier IPO approval process for prospectuses for the men and ACE markets.
One of the horrible bottlenecks in IPO listing is to be found where sedate regulators demand approval. Australia is amongst the nations with an advantage here not seeking prospectus approval, leaving it to the exchange itself, while in the European Union it's a hotchpotch from those who can move with ultra low latency speeds (such as Austria and Luxembourg, to name but two) while the laggards materially disadvantage the entire capital markets process mainly, in my humble opinion, because regulators are often not empowered to make decisions as that involves responsibility down the line and this gums up the entire IPO process as a result.
Elsewhere, fascinating discussion in India, the Reserve Bank of India is in talks with various global platforms to expand their government bond traders to international investors. The central bank is apparently in talks with Bloomberg, Tradeweb and MarketAxess to provide an interface that would allow foreign investors to access the local Indian bond markets.
Very interesting, albeit I wonder why there's no mention of ICE’s bond platform in these discussions? Given in particular ICE’s existing and significant facilities in India, it would make sense.
In technology news this week, this was the week where the Lockbit hackers were taken down for their ION hack amongst many others but there's some very positive news from South America and Scandinavia simultaneously, namely from Sweden, Nuam Exchange and Vermiculus Financial Technology will establish a partnership to create a technological core for the central counterparty clearing houses in Chile, Colombia and Peru.
Exciting times after Nuam announced their strategic partnership with NASDAQ last year on the 5th of December. That dev team I mentioned at the time within Nuam, specifically in Santiago, Chile, may it seems to be gainfully occupied in the integration process for a while yet, as many little microservice mice from Vermiculus make their way from Stockholm and course through the veins of the United Chilean, Colombian and Peruvian exchanges. Great news for Nuam and excellent new for Vermiculus.
In career paths this week, one huge story over at G.H. Financials you may remember Gedon Hertshten was our guest in a recent episode of IPO-Vid. They're going to have a rotation of the Chairman of the Board of G.H. Financial.
All the very very best to the departing chairman of G.H. Financials Mark Ibbotson, who I hear is off to some very very exciting new pasture in the near future. Following him will always be a challenge of course, but it's good to see another excellent candidate stepping up to the plate. Good luck to Jerome Kemp, former Citi ETD head and Chairman of the FIA.
Meanwhile, as we mentioned at the start of this year, and on various previous episodes of this podcast, as well as in the BigWorld column of Exchange Invest daily itself, which of course you can subscribe to by dropping into ExchangeInvest.com and get 30 day free trial. Thereafter, it's $375 per user / year, a snip in order to manage to understand everything that's going on in the world of exchanges, ladies and gentlemen.
Anyway, there's been such a busy start to this year psephological speaking, we didn't have a chance to discuss last December's elections in Serbia where a President Aleksandar Vucic was re-elected. Of course the likes of The New York Times have paroxysms, noting and headlines Serbian leader tightens grip on power in general election.
“Like all previous elections in the deeply polarized Balkan nation, Sunday's poll was marred by reports of voting irregularities and complaints that Mr. Vucic’s stranglehold on much of the Serbian media and on a large state sector employing hundreds of thousands of voters had again given his party and unfair advantage.”
Well, yes indeed has a coyote ugly state of affairs ladies and gentlemen when the President even issues executive orders demanding government officials intervene in expanding voter participation and actively seek to count votes / man ballot boxes, etc.
Oh, except the President who made that order wasn't Vucic, it’s none other than Joe Brezhnev himself, yes, President Biden signed Executive Order 14019 in 2021 Executive Order On Promoting Access To Voting according to the White House's own headline. Strangely enough, I haven't seen the New York Times so worried about that one, oddly.
Meanwhile, after the general election in Pakistan, the outlook remains #it’scomplicated:
Despite imprisoning party leader Imran Khan and making his candidates run as independents, his PTI party is still emerged as the largest party in Parliament with 149 seats, albeit 20 short of an overall majority.
Naturally, the military have manipulated a weak coalition of 8 other parties to keep Khan out of office, as is their want, broadly guaranteeing the new government will not last but the army's influence on the country remains assured.
(Readers are of course welcome to wonder aloud at how the Pakistani manipulation of the election is a vast threat to democracy…according to the same sorts of journals, which cheered Poland's new government being formed by second place PO along with small parties, under Europhile PM Donald Tusk).
…and on that mysterious and magnificent note ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for listening to this EI Weekly Podcast Episode 234.
Join us daily via ExchangeInvest.com or if you have a new exchange you like built, get in touch.
My name is Patrick L Young and I wish you a great week in life and markets.
LINKS:
Stock Markets Are Driving A New American Century
The Business Times
NZX Full Year 2023 Results & Annual Report Published
NZX
PSE Eyeing PDS Buyout This Year
The Manila Times
Securities Commission Malaysia, Bursa Malaysia Pledge Speedier IPO Approvals For Main, ACE Markets
SC Malaysia
RBI In Talks With Global Platforms For Govt Bond Trades, Say Sources
Deccan Herald
G. H. Financials Limited - Board Chair Rotation
GH Financials
Member discussion