238 Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast March 30th, 2024
Transcript:
This week in the parish of bourses and market structure:
India Starts T+0,
Aquis Powers Ahead,
SGX Changing CCP Rules,
And JSE IPOs Rising
My name is Patrick L Young
Welcome to the Bourse Business Weekly Digest Episode 238
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, this is a very brief reduction of highlights amongst the key headlines from the week in market structure. 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
And remember, of course, this Easter weekend we will be off on Good Friday and Easter Monday ladies and gentlemen.
Over in parish notes: Aquis Proves Our Model
Ultimately, the top level and a brief drill down and the Aquis results for the year are very encouraging. The main trading venue is breaking through the 5% threshold for equity volume across Europe, which is a fabulous achievement, the SME growth market listed more stocks than AIM for the second year in a row and the tech division had a couple of good sales to boot.
The story here is not merely a rather indefatigable tale of Alasdair Haynes making a unique startup market, but also one of just how the exchange model actually works. Way back when Alasdair envisioned selling stocks akin to cell phones - a bundle of services for one price. The general market view was this was dumb because…
…well, because it was an innovation. Sorry, it's hard to discount the sheer immutable inflexibility of much of the market to understanding progress when it's outside the purely linear.
The key takeaway here as Aquis profits grow to almost $7 million a year, is another resounding vote of confidence in our model. The exchanges model, exchanges marketplaces remain a fabulous profit generator as soon as they reach scale.
Over in Bitcarnage:
By the time you listen to this, we will be celebrating Easter and it will be an Unholy Week for SBF in the valley of the Depraved Super Villain as he is due to be sentenced sometime later, Thursday 28th of March just before Good Friday…
SBF, the crypto King of “random probably bad ideas” can go to prison with the self-appointed epithet of ‘Depraved Super Villain’ as noted by CoinTelegraph, which is high apparently he views the perspective of a 50 year sentence in the slammer.
Certainly the FTX CEO cum liquidator Robert Ray made it very clear he was closer to the villain end of the scale on SBF judgment having cleared up the mess left behind at FTX.
As the headline went FTX's Caretaker Boss Blasts Sam Bankman-Fried's 'Life Of Delusion' Ahead Of Sentencing (FT) and that was none other than the Brussels bugle itself the Financial Times.
The market was 6.5 - 50 years with the prosecutors looking at a range of 40 - 50, let's see what eventuates… However, the SBF legal team are eagerly pursuing, as we record, the notion that high redemptions due to AI investments and crypto values rising mean real dollar value returns will be significant for FTX creditors but had the original investments been held in crypto and AI, I hasten to note, the money of the self same creditors would have quadrupled rather than merely being returned a year late.
Elsewhere in the world of distributed fecklessness, 3AC co-founder Kyle Davies says he won’t apologize for a crypto hedge fund going ‘bankrupt’. Don't even start me on these awful people.
Mr. Davies remains a fugitive from Singaporean justice while in the tricky position of apparently having surrendered his US passport in order to take Singaporean nationality. He may be hiding out in Portugal according to certain reports.
Then there was crypto fugitive Do Kwon, who was out of Montenegro jail last weekend pending extradition. Albeit Do Kwon is awaiting the ongoing lottery of where he gets extradited too, South Korea or the USA.
After listening to these stories, that is perhaps unsurprising that The Register reports Crypto Scams More Costly To The US Than Ransomware according to the Feds.
Meanwhile, one Binance executive was indicted for tax evasion in Nigeria but embarrassingly for the Nigerian authorities, his colleague managed to slip away thanks to a Kenyan passport after surrendering his British one.
On April 1st Coinbase will launch DOGE futures, saying it has ‘transcended’ meme origins.
At first we thought could it be a meta joke? On reflection we suspect not, as in all his public outpourings it appears Brian Armstrong’s sense of humor has long since been, at best distributed.
Anyway, somebody somewhere will be the boss of an April Fool's prank methinks.
If you enjoy 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, you can find Bitcarnage as a standalone on Substack.
In the world of exchanges this week, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange finally sees its IPO crisis easing reports Moneyweb and it is good to see JSE CEO Leila Fourie anticipating up to 10 listings in 2024 while the exchange will be trading carbon credits within two months, according to a report in Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, Singapore Exchange will launch Commitment of Trader data for commodities during Q3. And indeed, SGX are seeking views on a proposed cap refinement on clearing member liability for multiple defaults.
The major event of the week in terms of settlement is, by the time you listen to this, we will have T+0 in India, it launched Thursday 28th, just as the west was preparing for the Easter holidays.
Where the EU is thinking about talking about it (or is it talking about thinking about it…#whatevs) the US is heading to T+1 and India has just leapt the T+1 and a quarter later is trying out T+0. Easier in a world where you have no stock lending but still nonetheless pretty impressive.
Don't forget of course to check out my article on this topic of T+1 which was published in the Vermiculus newsletter during the course of March. You can find that at Vermiculus.se
In new markets this week, the Chittagong Stock Exchange has received the license of the country's maiden commodity exchange from the securities regulator, that was on Wednesday, March 20th, nearly four months after they published their rules. That's going to be operating as a subsidiary within the Chittagong Stock Exchange organization.
In deals this week, the big news of the week was Borse Dubai selling a $1.6 billion stake in NASDAQ losing its spot as top shareholder.
At first NASDAQ looked worried but despite the mini-shock, it was down a mere 2.5% on the day and in fact was up, by the time we recorded this podcast over the course of the following week, yes, there was surprised that Bourse Dubai would sell down but at the same time they wanted to lock up their remaining 10.8% holding (potentially 10.1% of underwriters exercise options on remaining block) Don't forget Bourse Dubai took their NASDAQ stake back in September 2007… While LSEG stake was sold in 2015, they have stuck with NASDAQ and look to be there for a while yet (having just signed an 18 month lockup to their remaining stake)
If you're trying to work out what's going on in the world of bourses going forward, don't forget you can pick up a copy of my most recent book “Victory or Death?” Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and the FinTech World. It's published by DV Books and distributed by Ingram worldwide.
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While you're waiting for your copy of “Victory or Death?” to arrived, check out our livestream, Tuesdays at generally speaking, it's going to be 5 o'clock London time, for the course of April we are back to midday New York time the IPO video live show.
You can catch the back episodes on Linkedin and Youtube via “IPO-Vid”.
Our last show was Modernizing Markets Episode IPO-Vid #137 with Magnus Haglind, the boss of the overall NASDAQ Technology Sales division and a great show it was to have a Magnus joining us for a very very interesting show.
Don't forget from April 9th we're going to be back, we're having a week off for Easter over the course of the 2nd of April because it's rather tricky as everybody's in transit after their Easter holidays.
“Finance Book of the Week” this week, don't forget if you want to, you can get the details of the finance book of the week, a week early. Just sign up to our free weekend newsletter at ExchangeInvest.com.
And while you're there, don't forget you can also get a one month free trial to the Exchange Invest daily newsletter also available via the same spot at ExchangeInvest.com.
Anyway, this week's Book of the Week was written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk and decision making in a world we don't understand. And take it from me if you haven't already. It's a must read.
And don't forget, if you want something else, it's a must read and that gives you all the news on the bourse business sent daily to your inbox. Subscribe to Exchange Invest via ExchangeInvest.com. We're giving away a free monthly trial at the moment. It's only $375 per user per year thereafter to join the exchange of information.
There was lots of product news this week, particularly indices and index futures aplenty - all the news was in Exchange Invest Daily, the bulletin of the bourse business.
Let's take one highlight, the VIX is going to Brazil S&P Dow Jones indices and B3 have launched the first implied volatility index for Brazil's domestic market based on the CBOE VIX index methodology.
Over in career path, Christian Reuss has bid farewell to SIX Swiss Exchange.
“After 15 Incredible years, the time has come for me to bid farewell to Swiss Exchange”, noted Christian in a note on LinkedIn. “I started as CEO of Scoatch (the former joint venture by Deutsche Boerse and Swiss Exchange and finished as head of SIX Swiss Exchange.”
All the very, very best to Christian Reuss who has had a terrific run at SIX. He's replaced on an interim basis by the SIX Swiss Exchange head of trading, Werner Bürki.
And that leaves us neatly and elegantly into the world of BigWorld ladies and gentlemen.
First of all, let's have a fun fact: In 1930 (despite or perhaps because of the great recession) 65% of Americans were going to the cinema weekly. In 2023 4% of Americans were going to the cinema weekly.
Our ace research team have been unable to corroborate this statistic, but my guess is, I would say right now, about 65% of all Americans fall asleep watching Netflix / HBO or similar every single week in the comfort of their own homes.
But here's a thought for a new market, albeit a single gram would upend the entire planet’s CCP provisioning (where in the status quo, parish CCPs are doing a great job in balancing the risk before this commodity was added).
So how about antimatter futures, anybody? It seems the substance weighs in at a staggering $62.5 trillion per gram.
Now, global GDP right now it's about $105 trillion, so two grams of antimatter and you can make considerable headway in buying the world, in some sense or another. Total CCP collateral according to the BIS - Global GDP is about $105 trillion, so two grams of antimatter and you can make considerable headway in buying the world, in some sense. Total CCP collateral (BIS - Liquid Assets At CCPs And Systemic Liquidity Risks was $1.3 trillion in June of 2023 - amounting to 2 grams worth of antimatter. was 1.3 trillion in June of 2023. So precisely two grams worth of antimatter right now.
And you thought Saffron was expensive at $10,000 a kilo after 150 flowers are pressed to create a single gram.
In terms of untapped potential, there are big possibilities for antimatter and energy and medicine to name but two avenues. However, I think prices may have to come down a bit before we can get around to the Exchange Traded Derivative variants.
…And on that mysterious and magnificent note, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to this EI Weekly Podcast # 238.
Join us daily via ExchangeInvest.com or if you've new exchange you'd like built get in touch.
My name is Patrick L Young, I wish you a great week in life and markets and a very Happy Easter to all celebrating!
LINKS:
FTX's Caretaker Boss Blasts Sam Bankman-Fried's 'Life Of Delusion' Ahead Of Sentencing
(FT)
SGX To Disclose Trader Positions On Commodities In Q3
Yahoo Finance
SGX Seeks Views On Proposed Cap Refinement On Clearing Member Liability For Multiple Defaults
The Business Times
BSE, NSE To Introduce 'T+0' Trade Settlement In Securities On March 28
The Economic Times
CSE To Get Maiden Commodity Exchange Licence
The Financial Express
Borse Dubai To Sell $1.6 Bln Stake In Nasdaq, Losing Its Spot As Top Shareholder
Reuters
Christian Reuss Bids Farewell To SIX
Christian Reuss LinkedIn
Member discussion