| September 26, 2022 | "Irreverent, but never irrelevant" | | | | John Lothian
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Hits & Takes
John Lothian & JLN Staff
Henry Schwartz of Cboe shared on LinkedIn that "Effective today, there are 55 expiration cycles available for SPX index options. Longest-dated expiry is Dec 2027, while short term weeklys give traders the choice of any expiration any day in the next three weeks." I believe this type of extreme product extension is making the best of a really good thing.
CoinDesk has a story about the best universities for blockchain for 2022 and the University of Zurich came up number three. You have to look to Asia for the top two. The number one university was The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The National University of Singapore was in the number two slot. For the record, the University of Edinburgh in the heart of the Lothian Region of Scotland, the sixth oldest university in the English-speaking world, is ranked number 41.
Luc Fortin, president and CEO - MX & global head of trading at TMX Group shared on LinkedIn two days ago that "Canada's Five-Year Bond Futures (CGF) reached a new daily volume record of 96,954 contracts, reflecting strong demand for cost-efficient capital exposure to mid-term interest rate risk and duration."
StoneX is now providing access to environmental options and futures contracts on the Nodal Exchange via its StoneX Financial subsidiary, The Trade reported.
The Trading Show is in Chicago this week at Navy Pier from September 28 - 29.
In the latest episode of HKEX Voice podcast, HKEX Head of Policy and Secretariat Services of the Listing Division Katherine Ng talks about the momentum to create a more inclusive and gender-balanced boardroom, as well as what HKEX sees as its role in fostering board diversity, and more broadly, a diverse corporate culture across all levels of companies in Hong Kong.
LCH has a new white paper out titled "LCH ForexClear: UMR and the Growth of Client Clearing."
The uber talented Debbie Carlson announced she is a contributing writer to Britannica Money. Britannica Money launched on Friday and its executive editor is former JLN hand Doug Ashburn
Have a great day and stay safe and treat people the same way you want to be treated: with respect, equality and justice.~JJL
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The 27th annual Cboe Risk Management Conference (RMCSM) will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland, bringing together practitioners in the derivatives and digital asset markets. Academy Award-winning filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi, who made the film "The Rescue," will deliver the keynote address. The conference will be held Oct.17-21. You can learn more here. ~SAED
Eurex is hosting Derivatives Forum Amsterdam 2022 on October 11. The forum is co-hosted with ABN AMRO Clearing Bank and sponsored by Optiver. You can learn more here. ~SAED
The United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative today launched the Derivatives Exchange Database, which contains data on a dozen exchange members. The SSE says the data will expand and deepen over time. You can view the database here.~SAED
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MWE SHORT: Michael Patak - The Game of Trading
JohnLothianNews.com
In this video from MarketsWiki Education's World of Opportunity event in Chicago, Michael Patak, founder of TopstepTrader, analyzes the game of trading and how to find success. After suffering three $30,000 losses while trading during college, Patak retooled his approach and subsequently started TopstepTrader. The simulation platform at TopstepTrader helps new traders learn how to manage risk and maintain discipline. If they can prove they are profitable, TopstepTrader will fund their account. Patak doesn't want new traders to make the same mistakes he did and sees this as a way to enable talent in markets regardless of background.
Watch the video »
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The Wild Plan to Export Sun From the Sahara to the UK; An ambitious cable project aims to power thousands of homes with renewable energy by 2030.
Charlie Metcalfe - Wired
By the time Scotland's Hunterston B nuclear power station closed in January of this year, its dual reactors had produced enough energy to power 1.8 million British homes for 46 years. It also provided over 500 jobs to people living in one of the country's most deprived areas. Now, a project borne on the tide of a new era of energy production will take its place.
/jlne.ws/3DXP0xJ
****** String a cable from where there is wind or sun? Seems pretty smart.~JJL
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Climate Change Forces French Vineyards to Alter the Way They Make Wine; Growers change grape varieties and reshape the landscape to protect some of the world's most valuable vineyards from warmer temperatures
Nick Kostov - The Wall Street Journal
The wildfire began on an usually dry summer day in a forest bordering the Liber Pater vineyard. Winemaker Loïc Pasquet saw the flames rise and spread toward his precious vines, which produce Bordeaux that sells for $30,000 a bottle. Hours before evacuating Mr. Pasquet and his staff destroyed the grass around the vineyard to prevent it from catching fire and dug trenches to block the blaze's path. He also sprayed local trees with water drawn from the vineyard's ponds. The vineyard was spared.
/jlne.ws/3f8P1o6
****** Say it ain't so! What is next, twist off tops?~JJL
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Crypto industry is not as ethical as private equity, says buyout billionaire; Orlando Bravo has personally championed bitcoin while his firm Thoma Bravo has a stake in FTX
Kaye Wiggins - Financial Times
Orlando Bravo, the billionaire co-founder of Thoma Bravo and bitcoin enthusiast, has said he was disappointed to find that ethical standards in parts of the crypto industry are not as high as in private equity. Bravo, whose buyout group invested about $150mn in Sam Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange FTX last year and has stakes in four other businesses in the sector, said in an interview with the Financial Times that his firm is pausing investments in other crypto companies.
/jlne.ws/3dKZAgY
****** Bravo to Thoma for using "crypto" and "ethics" in the same sentence.~JJL
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Jupiter is coming closest it's been to Earth in 59 years on Monday
James Doubek - NPR
The gas giant Jupiter is coming the closest it has come to Earth in 59 years this Monday and will be particularly visible because it coincides with another event called opposition. When in opposition, a planet is on the opposite side of Earth from the sun, so you could draw a straight line from the sun to Earth to Jupiter, all in alignment. Jupiter's opposition happens every 13 months. Looking from the Earth, when the sun sets in the west, Jupiter will rise in the east, directly opposite. During opposition, planets appear at their biggest and brightest.
/jlne.ws/3f9excT
****** I don't remember Jupiter being this close when I was two.~JJL
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Friday's Top Three
Our top story Friday was Success at Work Is Warped by Your Co-Workers' Salaries, from The Wall Street Journal. Second was Ken Griffin moved Citadel out of Chicago after colleague was robbed at gunpoint: report, from The New York Post. Third was CFTC Warns DeFi Traders: Exercise of Governance Tokens Could Result in Personal Liability for Illegal Activities of DeFi Protocol, from Katten.
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MarketsWiki Stats
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| All MarketsWiki Sponsors» | | | | | | | John Lothian News (JLN) is the news division of John J. Lothian & Company, Inc. (JJLCO). The online media and financial services firm is staffed by derivatives industry, journalism and technology professionals. | | | | | | | John Lothian News Editorial Staff: | | | John Lothian
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| Lead Stories | The financial system is still dealing with the fallout from 2008; Questions we should have addressed — on regulation, transparency and capital requirements — remain unanswered
Rana Foroohar - Financial Times
Watching the heads of several major US banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup — being grilled in front of Congress last week, I couldn't help but be reminded of that familiar image of downcast chiefs of systemically important financial institutions on the Hill following the 2008 crisis. This time around, politicians wanted to know not what Wall Street had done wrong, but what they were planning to do right should there be another crisis, either geopolitical (yes, the bank heads would pull out of China if Taiwan was invaded) or financial.
/jlne.ws/3DYrH6W
Crisis Level Risks Loom in Asia as Major Currencies Crack
Matthew Burgess, Ruth Carson and Tania Chen - Bloomberg
Asian markets risk a reprise of crisis-level stress as two of the region's most important currencies crumble under the onslaught of relentless dollar strength. The yuan and yen are both tumbling due to the growing disparity between an uber-hawkish Federal Reserve and dovish policy makers in China and Japan. While other Asian nations are digging deep into foreign-exchange reserves to mitigate the dollar's damage, the yuan and yen's slump is making things worse for everyone, threatening the region's mantle as a preferred destination for risk investors. "The renminbi and yen are big anchors and their weakness risks destabilizing currencies to trade and investments in Asia," said Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy at Mizuho Bank Ltd. in Singapore, using another name for China's currency. "We're already heading toward global financial crisis levels of stress in some aspects, then the next step would be the Asian financial crisis if losses deepen."
/jlne.ws/3SetHfJ
Investors pile into insurance against further market sell-offs; A surge in put options reflects fears of more asset price falls as central banks take action against inflation
Eric Platt and Nicholas Megaw - Financial Times
Investors are buying record amounts of insurance contracts to protect themselves from a sell-off that has already wiped trillions of dollars off the value of US stocks. Purchases of put option contracts on stocks and exchange traded funds have surged, with big money managers spending $34.3bn on the options in the four weeks to September 23, according to Options Clearing Corp data analysed by Sundial Capital Research. The total was the largest on record in data going back to 2009, and four times the average since the start of 2020.
/jlne.ws/3UAiRSZ
Crypto DAOs and Their Token Holders Aren't Safe From the CFTC; Agency charges decentralized group after targeting predecessor; Action signals enforcement precedent with wide implications
Olga Kharif and Allyson Versprille - Bloomberg
A recent enforcement action by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission signals that the community-run projects popular in crypto known as decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, are within the purview of the agency's oversight -- as are the millions of people who hold DAO governance tokens that are used to make decisions.
/jlne.ws/3Rfcul5
SEC targets ESG asset managers and fuels critics
Lene Powell, J.D., Brad Rosen, J.D., and Matthew Garza, J.D. - Wolters Kluwer
As the ESG investing boom continues, the SEC wants to make information clearer for investors.
CALL FOR ESG STANDARDS
With "sustainable" U.S. investments at $17.1 trillion by one estimate, an enormous pool of money is at stake. Yet there are few standards for marketing investments that consider environmental, social, and governance factors. In crackdowns on exaggerated ESG claims, the SEC issued a risk alert in 2021 and brought two enforcement actions against advisers in 2022.
/jlne.ws/3BJI0ly
Singapore Bourse Follows Global Rivals With EV Metals Futures
Annie Lee - Bloomberg
Singapore Exchange is set to launch its first lithium and cobalt contracts, adding to efforts by commodity exchanges to get battery materials companies and investors interested in using futures. SGX is due to kick off trading in two lithium and two cobalt contracts on Monday. The London Metal Exchange and CME Group Inc. already offer futures for both metals, although trading liquidity is still far below established commodities contracts.
/jlne.ws/3C7GM4S
The Inside Story on Crypto ETFs; Exchange-traded funds are becoming a popular substitute to owning digital tokens. Here's what you need to know.
Victoria Vergolina - Bloomberg
For investors trying to get exposure to crypto, there are many different options available these days. Crypto ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, are some of the most popular alternatives to owning tokens directly.
/jlne.ws/3rbtyhf
Poor IPO-Stock Performance Weighs Further on New-Issue Market; About 87% of companies going public last year are trading below their initial-public-offering prices
Corrie Driebusch - The Wall Street Journal
Recently public companies are among the worst performers in this year's stock-market rout, contributing to a deep freeze in the IPO market that shows few signs of thawing. Roughly 87% of companies that went public in the U.S. last year are trading below their offering prices, down more than 49% on average as of Friday's close, according to Dealogic. By rough comparison, the S&P 500 is down 23% this year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has fallen 31%.
/jlne.ws/3r9dlJy
Coinbase Completed $100M Transaction to Test Proprietary Trading: Report
Jamie Crawley - CoinDesk
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) completed a $100 million transaction as a test of its proprietary trading efforts earlier this year, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The exchange hired at least four Wall Street traders to form a group called Coinbase Risk Solutions to use the firm's own cash to trade crypto, the report said. Proprietary trading is when a firm engages in trading of stocks, bonds, currencies or commodities using its own money as opposed to that of its clients. Such activity is fraught with risk and the potential of conflicts of interest for the financial firm should its trades have an effect on the prices of those assets, which could in turn hurt its clients.
/jlne.ws/3DOIE3M
Leaked Study Shows Exxon, Partners Overspent by $138 Billion; An internal analysis performed by Exxon in 2020 suggested mismanagement by operators and poor planning were behind cost overrun
Kevin Crowley - Bloomberg
Oil and natural gas projects that Exxon Mobil Corp. invested in between 1998 and 2017 ended up costing $138 billion more than early-stage estimates, potentially due to mismanagement by operators and poor planning, according to an internal analysis seen by Bloomberg.
/jlne.ws/3SuQ4x6
GM Tells Corporate Workers to Return to Office Three Days a Week; Automaker says it's 'committed to maintaining flexibility'; Rival Ford is sticking with a 'flexible hybrid' model
David Welch and Victoria Cavaliere - Bloomberg
General Motors Co. became the latest company to ask corporate employees to return to the office at least part of the time. Employees who had worked remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic are expected to "pivot to a more regular in-person work cycle," which includes three days on GM's campus each week, a spokesperson said Friday. The return-to-office mandate will take effect later this year, the spokesperson said.
/jlne.ws/3RdkCSY
How Many of Gensler's Trading Reforms Will the SEC Achieve? Few, Says Wall Street.
Bill Alpert - Barron's
Wall Street celebrated a report that its chief regulator is getting stymied in his effort to reform the investing world. Bloomberg reported Thursday that Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler hadn't persuaded his own agency to ban payment-for-order flow—a business arrangement in which off-exchange market makers pay retail stockbrokers to send them customer orders.
/jlne.ws/3xVHsrE
A $31 Billion Credit ETF Hits Lowest Since 2010 as Outflows Grow; LQD sees nearly $800 million of outflows in single day; Historically aggressive Fed has helped spark global selloff
Katherine Greifeld - Bloomberg
The Federal Reserve's campaign to quell inflation is crushing credit as well. The $31.3 billion iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (ticker LQD) slid to its lowest level since May 2010, when a flash crash shaved 1,000 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The drop follows data overnight that showed a nearly $800 million outflow for the fund tracking US dollar-denominated high-quality bonds, which is poised for for its biggest weekly cash exodus since June.
/jlne.ws/3BNPwLV
Special Report: A human rights lawyer pays the painful price of standing up to Xi's China
David Lague - The Wall Street Journal
As Xi maneuvers to secure a third term as leader at a Party congress next month, the campaign grinds on. Hundreds of lawyers, legal academics and activists have been swept up. Some have been tortured and given lengthy prison sentences, while others have been disbarred and subject to secret detention, according to Chinese lawyers and human rights groups.
/jlne.ws/3SB9wZh
U.S. Warns Russia of 'Catastrophic Consequences' of Using Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine; National security adviser Jake Sullivan says U.S. will continue to provide weapons to Ukraine despite Putin's nuclear threats
Michael R. Gordon and Gordon Lubold - The Wall Street Journal
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. has warned Russia that it would face "catastrophic consequences" if it uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine. "We have communicated directly privately to the Russians at very high levels that there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia if they use nuclear weapons in Ukraine," Mr. Sullivan said Sunday on the ABC News show "This Week."
/jlne.ws/3UCFG8l
Officials Quit $137 Billion Pension Fund in Kuwait Shakeup; Shift comes amid political pressure, before Thursday's polls; PIFSS owns stakes in Stone Point Capital, Oak Hill Advisors
Fiona MacDonald - Bloomberg
A broad shakeup of state institutions deepened in Kuwait after top officials in the Gulf state's pension fund were asked to resign. Director General Meshal Al-Othman and three of his deputies, including Raed Al-Nisf, were asked to quit Kuwait's Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSS). The officials had spent years revamping the roughly $137 billion fund, which owns a quarter of US private equity firm Stone Point Capital LLC.
/jlne.ws/3CaMEdK
Got Crypto? The IRS Really Wants to Know
Kelley R. Taylor - Kiplinger
The 2022 crypto price crash understandably has some investors concerned. But for those of you who haven't run for the hills, it's worth knowing that cryptocurrency currently has the attention of not only the Biden administration, and Congress, but the IRS as well. In terms of crypto news and taxes, the IRS recently proposed changes to cryptocurrency tax reporting question on the Form 1040. The agency will also receive $80 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, some of which will be directed to digital asset enforcement—including cryptocurrency tax compliance.
/jlne.ws/3xU6APs
The TradeTech FX Daily launches with official guide to the event; The magazine features exclusive interviews, insights, and the official accompanying event agenda for this week's upcoming event in Amsterdam.
Editors - The Trade
The TRADE is delighted to present the digital edition of the TradeTech FX Daily 2022, the official magazine of TradeTech FX Europe, offering 30+ pages crammed with news, features and interviews. This year's TradeTech FX Daily provides you with crucial coverage including in-depth interviews with keynote speakers, detailed features on some of the most pressing issues of the day, as well as the full event agenda to help organise your time.
/jlne.ws/3ffzLpD
StoneX to provide access to environmental options and futures contracts via Nodal Exchange; Latest move will aid clients in implementing environmentally conscious business practices, managing risk effectively and achieving regulatory compliance.
Wesley Bray - The Trade
StoneX Group's subsidiary StoneX Financial will now give clients access to a full suite of physically deliverable environmental futures and options contracts via the Nodal Exchange. The move will allow StoneX Financial's clients to adopt and maintain environmentally conscious business practices, manage risk effectively and achieve regulatory compliance.
/jlne.ws/3ralw8o
We're Drawing the Wrong Lesson From the Third Energy Crisis; Our consumption of gasoline peaked and entered terminal decline while the world was distracted by the pandemic.
David Fickling - Bloomberg
To hear some of the commentary, you'd think that the past 12 months had brought the world's transition away from fossil fuels juddering to a halt. With prices of natural gas and coal heading to record highs and those for crude oil not far below their 2008 peak, the world seems more hooked on carbon than ever. Plans to shift to clean energy are "a chain of sandcastles that waves of reality have washed away," Amin Nasser, chief executive officer of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., said in a speech in Switzerland last week. We've been watching "the revenge of the fossil fuels," according to Thierry Bros, an expert in natural gas at Sciences Po in Paris.
/jlne.ws/3r8p6jq
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| Ukraine Invasion | | News about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and its military, economic, political and humanitarian impact | U.N. experts find that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine.
Nick Cumming-Bruce - The New York Times
Russian soldiers have raped and tortured children in Ukraine, a United Nations-appointed panel of independent legal experts said in a damning statement on Friday that concluded war crimes had been committed in the conflict. A three-person Commission of Inquiry set up in April to investigate the conduct of hostilities in four areas of Ukraine laid out the graphic allegations in an unusually hard-hitting, 11-minute statement to the U.N Human Rights Council in Geneva.
/jlne.ws/3C2BhUW
It's a Mistake to Shrug Off Putin's Threats; As we saw before World War I, it's easy to become complacent as trouble builds into catastrophe.
Peggy Noonan - The Wall Street Journal
Vladimir Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine must be received soberly, if for no other reason than that leaders occasionally do what they say they'll do. There are reasons beyond that. He has lost hardware, soldiers, ground and face. He is cornered and escalating, increasing the odds of mistake and miscalculation.
/jlne.ws/3LMsMkm
Putin's Ukraine War Forces Ugly Bargains on Food and Fuel; The conflict has laid bare the world's addiction to freely flowing fuel and grain. Disrupted supplies and surging prices will force the have-nots into desperate choices.
Liam Denning - Bloomberg
Russia's escalating, if struggling, invasion of Ukraine provides an ugly reminder of Europe's war-prone past. In threatening supplies of energy, crops and other necessities, it also resurfaces something globalization obscured: Our dependence on complex, free-flowing trade routes. Germany's reliance on Russian gas to ease its energy transition is one of the more obvious examples laid bare. But this summer's Sri Lankan unrest, and the ousted president's frantic calls to Moscow for oil before he fled, also demonstrated how prices transmit crisis.
/jlne.ws/3Cb1Uam
Turkey Stands With Ukraine in the War, Erdogan Spokesman Says
Kerim Karakaya - Bloomberg
Turkey stands with Ukraine in the war and will defend its territorial integrity and sovereignty, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said. The country won't recognize the result of Russia's referendums to annex occupied Ukrainian territories, Kalin said in an interview with NTV channel late Friday. Still, Turkey has sought to mediate in the conflict, maintaining good ties with both Russia and Ukraine and refraining from joining Western sanctions against Moscow.
/jlne.ws/3SeVWee
Finland to close borders to Russian tourists after mobilisation order; Decision to stem flood of people escaping draft comes as EU summons crisis response meeting
Richard Milne, Henry Foy, Sam Fleming and Alice Hancock - Financial Times
Finland is to ban Russian tourists from entering the country in the coming days, becoming the last EU neighbour to do so after Vladimir Putin's decision to order a mobilisation prompted a flood of Russians to flee the country. Under pressure both from the Finnish public, who strongly favoured a ban, and the rightwing opposition, Finland's centre-left government said on Friday evening that it would stop Russian tourists from crossing the border in the next few days. "The aspiration and purpose is to significantly reduce the number of people coming to Finland from Russia," President Sauli Niinistö told state broadcaster Yle.
/jlne.ws/3SffPSs
Zelenskiy says he is shocked by Israel's failure to give Ukraine weapons
Reuters
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was "in shock" at Israel's failure to give Kyiv anti-missile systems to help counter Russian attacks, according to an interview made public on Saturday. Zelenskiy has been asking for the weapons since shortly after the war started in February. He has mentioned Israel's Iron Dome system, often used to intercept rockets fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza.
/jlne.ws/3UGQYZe
UK says Russia struck dam this week on Siverskyi Donets river
Reuters
Russia struck the Pechenihy dam on the Siverskyi Donets River in northeast Ukraine this week using short-range ballistic missiles or similar weapons, the British military said on Saturday. The attack on Sept. 21 and 22 followed an earlier one on the Karachunivske dam near Krivyi Rih in central Ukraine on Sept. 15, the Defence Ministry said in its daily intelligence bulletin, adding that Ukrainian forces are advancing further downstream along both rivers.
/jlne.ws/3UFh131
Pushing East of Kupyansk, Ukrainian Forces Expand Offensive; Russian shelling turns neighborhoods into rubble as Ukrainians advance in urban combat
Yaroslav Trofimov - The Wall Street Journal
The grain elevator towering over the eastern edge of Kupyansk, the former seat of Russian power in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, was supposed to be defended by soldiers from an elite Russian unit. But when troops from Ukraine's International Legion moved to seize the compound on Thursday, part of the developing Ukrainian military offensive east of the Oskil River, the expected firefight never happened. "They just ran away. They know they are finished here," said the team leader, a Latvian soldier who goes by the call-sign Ulvis, as his comrades from the U.S., Britain and other nations gathered with Ukrainian officers in a warehouse in eastern Kupyansk to plan their next mission.
/jlne.ws/3Sv72eT
White House Says Kremlin Has Been Warned on Nuclear Weapons; Sullivan says using them would be 'catastrophic' for Russia; UK's Truss: Ukraine allies can't bow to 'bogus' Putin threats
Tony Czuczka - Bloomberg
President Joe Biden's administration has privately told the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine would have "catastrophic consequences" for Russia, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said. Russian President Vladimir Putin renewed his warnings of a nuclear threat last week as he mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists after Ukrainian forces recaptured a swath of Russian-occupied territory. Those nuclear threats are "a matter that we have to take deadly seriously," Sullivan said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
/jlne.ws/3SgRkUM
The Cost of Putin's Ukraine Escalation Is Already Clear; It turns out that Russians care about securing a better life for themselves, not a war being fought for a dictator's abstract goals.
Lara Williams - Bloomberg
A country with one of the world's largest populations and the biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons is mired in a hopeless war. What happens next? We found out the answer to that question last week, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a call-up of reservists. Airfares for those trying to flee spiked massively.
/jlne.ws/3Sib62u
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| Exchanges, OTC & Clearing | | Top news from exchanges, clearing, settlement and trade execution facilities | CME Group has investment ideas for the masses; The owner of Chicago's futures markets has rolled out event contracts tied to leading market statistics.
David Roeder - Chicago Sun-Times
How confident are you in your sense of where the markets are headed? Are you pretty good at guessing when some big company will surprise investors with boffo earnings and send stock indexes higher? Or are you prescient about Federal Reserve decisions or new inflation data that can make stocks tumble? Well, step right up, chum. Chicago's futures markets are giving you a chance to profit from prophecy. CME Group, the Chicago-based owner of futures markets with a global reach, last week introduced a product line that opens a new phase of its business. They are called event contracts and are touted as a way to bring more everyday investors into the daily action.
/jlne.ws/3xV2uX8
Cboe Announces Global RMC Keynote Speakers Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi; Cboe's premier educational forum to take place October 17 - 21 in Reykjavik, Iceland
Cboe Global Markets
Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (Cboe: CBOE), a leading provider of global market infrastructure and tradable products, announced Academy® Award-winning filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi will deliver the keynote address at Cboe's upcoming Global RMC 2022. From Monday, October 17 through Friday, October 21, traders, investors, strategists and researchers from around the world will come together for the 27th annual Cboe Risk Management Conference (RMCSM) in Reykjavik, Iceland. Leading practitioners in the derivatives and digital asset markets will share their latest insights, research and real-market applications at the first-ever Global RMC.
/jlne.ws/3D82x5o
Cathay Securities Investment Trust Selects ICE FactSet Global Top 50 Brands Index for New ETF
Intercontinental Exchange
Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE: ICE), a leading global provider of data, technology and market infrastructure, today announced that Cathay Securities Investment Trust ("Cathay SITE") has selected the ICE FactSet® Global Top 50 Brands Index for a newly launched ETF. The ICE FactSet Global Top 50 Brands Index (ICFSTBR) is a modified, float-adjusted market capitalization-weighted equity benchmark designed to track the performance of companies that are characterized as having globally recognizable and strong consumer branding, based on the metrics set forth in the index methodology. The Cathay Global Top 50 Brands ETF (Ticker: 00916) uses ICE's index as its benchmark and is expected to list on the Taiwan Stock Exchange on September 26, 2022.
/jlne.ws/3BLGrmZ
Initial Listing of the EURSTR Short-Term Rate (EURSTR) Futures and Euro Short-Term Rate (EURSTR) Three-Month Single Contract Basis Spread Futures Contracts
CME Group
Effective Sunday, October 30, 2022 for trade date Monday, October 31, 2022, and pending all relevant Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC") regulatory review periods, Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. ("CME" or "Exchange") will list the Euro Short-Term Rate (EURSTR) Futures and Euro Short-Term Rate (EURSTR) - Three-Month Single Contract Basis Spread Futures contracts (the "Contracts") for trading on the CME Globex electronic trading platform ("CME Globex") and for submission for clearing on CME ClearPort as more specifically described below.
/jlne.ws/3UJpT82
Derivatives Forum Amsterdam 2022; Derivatives Forum Amsterdam is back on 11 October. Join us!
Eurex
We are pleased to invite you to our annual Derivatives Forum Amsterdam, co-hosted with ABN AMRO Clearing Bank and sponsored by Optiver. Are you looking for new ideas to manage the new normal? Under the current geo-graphical pressure, where are energy markets and the sustainability principles heading? How can you manage funding & financing requirements and discover new trading opportunities via CCP cleared repos? What is the new role of liquidity providers in the changing market structure? Where are the new opportunities in volatility? We will focus on these four topics - Ask, discuss, and find answers at the Derivatives Forum Amsterdam, 11 October.
/jlne.ws/3DgGM3o
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| Fintech | | A roundup of today's market tech news and a look at tomorrow's disruptors | ECB Exploring Distributed Ledger Technology for Interbank Settlements: Panetta
Camomile Shumba - CoinDesk
The European Central Bank (ECB) is looking at "the potential" of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in improving the efficiency of interbank settlements, said Fabio Panetta, a member of the executive board at the ECB. After listing the many benefits of DLT, Panetta also highlighted some drawbacks, and made a case for a system that builds on the ECB's existing infrastructure for wholesale settlements, instead of building a new one based entirely on DLT.
/jlne.ws/3xRZ5bE
Corporate America is fretting over Taiwan risks, regulatory filings show; Technology is the sector most concerned, the semiconductor industry raising the loudest alarm
Federica Cocco - Financial Times
Executives at publicly traded US companies are becoming increasingly worried about the spectre of a further escalation of tensions over Taiwan, a major supplier of crucial components like semiconductors.
/jlne.ws/3SyYZO9
Big tech groups face probe by UK regulator over cloud services; Ofcom will assess whether Amazon, Microsoft and Google are limiting innovation and growth
Anna Gross - Financial Times
The UK has launched a probe into the cloud market to assess whether Amazon, Microsoft and Google are limiting competition and innovation, as it steps up its scrutiny of Big Tech. AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google, referred to as "hyperscalers" because of the size of the data centres used to process and store data, generate about 81 per cent of revenues in the £15bn UK cloud market, having increased their share from 70 per cent in 2018, according to Ofcom, the communications regulator.
/jlne.ws/3dKASgK
FTX, Uniswap and Visa talk blockchain economy and opportunity at Disrupt
Lauren Simonds - TechCrunch
Whether you're bullish or bearish, web3-native or web3-naive, you have to admit nothing remains the same for long in the growing blockchain, crypto, NFT and web3 universe. And the entirety of the rapidly evolving space is under increasing scrutiny — both public and regulatory. This constant change, combined with plenty of controversy, are just two reasons why we're thrilled that Brett Harrison, president of FTX US; Mary-Catherine Lader, the COO at Uniswap Labs; and Cuy Sheffield, the VP and global head of crypto at Visa will join us for a panel discussion at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18 - 20 in San Francisco.
/jlne.ws/3BO45iG
JPMorgan Sees Concerns for Ethereum Blockchain After the Merge
Will Canny - CoinDesk
JPMorgan spelled some concerns about the Ethereum blockchain following the network's transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, a process that was called the Merge. The change earlier this month spurred a hard fork, splitting the blockchain in two and giving rise to an offshoot chain called Ethereum PoW. Some exchanges and platforms have shown support for the forked version, which still uses proof-of-work (PoW) verification, and at least 19 former ether mining pools are active on it, JPMorgan said in a research note on Wednesday. The forked chain could divide the Ethereum community, the firm said.
/jlne.ws/3LFMT3z
Ethereum Centralization Debate Rages on After Much-Hyped Upgrade; Some crypto watchers turn to industry measure to weigh change; Nakamoto Coefficient for blockchain has shrunk after the Merge
Olga Kharif - Bloomberg
The high-profile upgrade of the world's most commercially important crypto network was supposed to make it less centralized and vulnerable to attack. A little more than a week after the enhancement, industry observers fear it may have the exact opposite effect. Crypto enthusiasts are poring over an obscure indicator birthed during the early days of crypto, dubbed the Nakamoto Coefficient, to evaluate the consequences of the 'Merge'. The event replaced Ethereum's power-hungry computers called miners with so-called validators that pledge Ether tokens as security so they can profit from ordering network transactions.
/jlne.ws/3LGZymT
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| Cybersecurity | | Top stories for cybersecurity | The OCC's Mark Morrison: Balancing security with the modern-day tech environment
Stephen Weigand - SC Magazine
Mark Morrison joined OCC in 2017 and is responsible for all information security, cyber risk, business continuity, privacy and records management. Before joining OCC, Morrison served as senior vice president and chief information security officer for State Street Corp., as well as multiple senior executive and information security roles in the federal government, including at the Department of Defense, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency and the Mitre Corp. Morrison graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a bachelor's in economics.
/jlne.ws/3C7Ixim
Why Even Big Tech Companies Keep Getting Hacked—and What They Plan to Do About It; Hackers keep tricking employees to gain access to corporate networks, so companies are changing their approach to make it harder to wreak havoc once they're in
Christopher Mims - The Wall Street Journal
The companies that should know best how to fight hackers, tech firms, have reached an arresting conclusion: The weakest link in security, as it's been since the Trojan War, is humans. Increasingly, they are taking a new approach: Trust no one. The philosophy, known as zero-trust architecture, assumes that no matter how robust a company's external defenses are, hackers can get in. So companies need to make sure that even users inside a network can't do serious damage.
/jlne.ws/3C9LcrP
Australian Police Probe Optus Cyberattack as Data Threats Emerge
Sybilla Gross - Bloomberg
Australian authorities are investigating reports alleging that customers' personal data are being sold online after the Australian unit of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. was hit by a major cyberattack earlier this week. Federal police on Saturday confirmed its personnel were "using specialist capability" to monitor the dark web and a number of other forums as concerns mount about the scale of the data breach and the millions of Optus customers that may have been affected.
/jlne.ws/3LGp5fW
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| Cryptocurrencies | | Top stories for cryptocurrencies | Richard Walker joins Bain & Company as a partner focusing on web3 and metaverse in the Financial Services practice; Richard Walker brings to Bain his deep expertise on web3, metaverse, digital assets, technology strategy and transformation
Bain & Company
Bain & Company announced today that web3 and metaverse expert Richard Walker will join the firm as a partner in the Financial Services practice in the New York office and co-lead the global scaling of Bain's web3 and metaverse services. As a leading thinker and practitioner in this space, Richard brings deep expertise in navigating how web3 has the potential to introduce new opportunities across a variety of sectors. He has deep experience having recently led web3 projects for global banks, regional banks, hedge funds, payments companies and digital asset natives.
/jlne.ws/3xPyMTG
Canadian Digital Asset Brokerages Coinsquare and CoinSmart to Merge
Michael Bellusci - CoinDesk
Coinsquare said late Thursday it's signed a deal to purchase peer CoinSmart for a combination of cash and stock. Consolidation is the word in crypto as trading platforms and exchanges grapple with global competition alongside the ongoing market downturn. Earlier this year in Canada, Kevin O'Leary-backed WonderFi rolled up crypto platforms Bitbuy and Coinberry. This new deal has a current value of just under $30 million Canadian dollars, but performance incentives for CoinSmart's SmartPay business and over-the-counter services could add up to another $20 million.
/jlne.ws/3UGMXUE
Cryptocurrencies Extend Drop as 'Tough Environment' Culls Demand; It's going to be tough environment for crypto: TIAA's Gaffney; Macro continues to be challenging theme for crypto, equities
Vildana Hajric and Carly Wanna - Bloomberg
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies slid on Friday as investors continued to bail from riskier assets following the Federal Reserve's promise that it will stay aggressive in its fight against inflation. The largest digital coin by market value fell as much as 3.7% during the session to trade around $18,538. Ether, the second-largest, was down 4.7% at one point to $1,262, while an index of 100 of the largest coins lost 1.6%. The S&P 500, meanwhile, was down 2% a little before noon in New York.
/jlne.ws/3ra9Gv0
Crypto Investors Got Burned by Celsius. Then They Battled Back.; Thousands who used lender Celsius Network to bet on cryptocurrency are banding together on Telegram and Twitter to retrieve their assets in bankruptcy. It's a tall order.
Soma Biswas - The Wall Street Journal
Cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network LLC attracted scores of people over the last five years who wanted to make money betting on bitcoin. After a crypto crash pushed the company into bankruptcy this summer, some of these amateur investors found unity around a new goal: getting that money back. Thousands of Celsius customers are gathering on social media apps such as Telegram and Reddit to parse legal filings together, pooling funds to pay for lawyers and making YouTube summaries of developments at court hearings. Some are reading up on U.S. bankruptcy law, providing translations for non-English speakers and trying to engineer their own white-knight rescue deals.
/jlne.ws/3UHmVAA
Newsom Vetoes 'Premature' Crypto Oversight Bill for California
Shiyin Chen - Bloomberg
California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would require crypto financial-service businesses to get a special license to operate, calling it premature and costly. Newsom on Friday declined to sign the legislation known as the Digital Financial Assets Law, which was passed by the state assembly and senate last month. While the governor said he shares the bill's intent to protect Californians from financial harm and provide clear rules for the industry, his administration has been conducting research and gathering input on the right approach.
/jlne.ws/3xWsbXp
One Bitcoin Equals One Bitcoin Becomes the Narrative as the Drop Gets 'Too Painful'; Bitcoin, other digital tokens are tumbling while Fed tightens; 1 BTC = 1 BTC is something Bitcoin maximalists say, says Lim
Vildana Hajric - Bloomberg
Virtual money, digital gold, inflation hedge, uncorrelated asset, store of value: those are phrases once used by Bitcoin's fans to describe the cryptocurrency's virtues. Its new narrative? A Bitcoin is a Bitcoin. That's the expression that's making its rounds on Twitter in recent days, where users, amid a deep decline in prices, have been posting that 1 BTC = 1 BTC. The idea is that it doesn't really matter what the coin's price is. Its supply is fixed and that should, theoretically, act as a buoy for prices in the long run.
/jlne.ws/3DPAHvb
SEC Is 'Out to Damage or Destroy' Crypto Industry in America: LBRY CEO; Jeremy Kauffman expressed contempt for the SEC as its lawsuit with the regulator reaches a critical point.
André Beganski - Decrypt
LBRY CEO Jeremy Kauffman called out the Securities and Exchange Commission at Messari's Mainnet conference in New York this week, as the decentralized file-sharing network continues to navigate legal action from the regulator. The SEC charged LBRY with selling unregistered securities in March of last year. The Commission took issue with the $11 million in funding raised through the sale of LBRY Credits, tokens that are now used to upload files and make payments on the blockchain-based platform but were offered for sale before the network was built.
/jlne.ws/3C9WjRw
Crypto bankruptcies could put some customers at the 'bottom of the totem pole'
Alexis Keenan - Yahoo Finance
For the first time in the short life of cryptocurrency, major crypto platforms have turned to US bankruptcy law to salvage their insolvent businesses. Now it's largely up to bankruptcy courts to determine how to divvy up customers' frozen crypto assets.
/jlne.ws/3dJcR9L
Bank of America Says Cryptocurrencies Continue to Act as Risk Assets
Will Canny - Yahoo Finance
Digital assets continue to act as risk assets, falling as global interest rates rise, Bank of America (BAC) said in a research report Friday. Still, positive signs of an eventual recovery include stablecoin inflows. Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to another asset, such as the U.S. dollar or gold.
/jlne.ws/3RjubzH
Binance Seeks Permit to Return to Japan Market After 4 Years
Suvashree Ghosh and Emi Nobuhiro - Bloomberg
Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, is seeking a license to operate in Japan, four years after retreating from the country as it didn't have a permit, according to people familiar with the matter.
/jlne.ws/3fgPp46
China cracks US$5.6B cryptocurrency money laundering case
Timmy Shen - Forkast
Chinese police have busted a large criminal group allegedly behind a 40 billion yuan (US$5.6 billion) crypto money laundering case, as the country steps up efforts to combat illicit fund flows. Police in Hengyang, a county in China's southern province of Hunan, said on Monday that authorities have arrested 93 suspects across the country, busted over 10 physical sites, confiscated over 100 electronic devices and froze about 300 million yuan involved in the case, in a law enforcement campaign dubbed "Hundred-day Action."
/jlne.ws/3Ca0eOf
The overlooked nuclear risk to crypto just jumped a level
Zack Guzman - Zack Guzman Bulletin
Sometimes it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "Something has dropped in price. Surely it must come back." Buy low, sell high, right? Well, life is never as easy in an environment that moves as fast as crypto.
/jlne.ws/3DXRhcf
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| Politics | | An overview of politics as it relates to the financial markets | In Brexit's Wake, U.K. Still Lacks a U.S. Trade Deal; A pact between London and Washington was supposed to be the jewel in a post-Brexit crown
Max Colchester and Yuka Hayashi - The Wall Street Journal
One of the big dividends of Brexit was supposed to be a U.K. trade deal with the U.S., helping offset the economic pain of putting up trade barriers with the European Union, Britain's largest trading partner. That isn't happening soon, further adding to the woes of a U.K. economy beset by slow growth, a plummeting pound and high inflation. U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss told reporters last week that there were no current negotiations taking place, and that she didn't expect any in the "short to medium term." While the U.K. government had been playing down hopes for a deal for the past year, the comments were the most open admission yet.
/jlne.ws/3fkPtQa
EU Draft Energy Plan May Allow for Lower Electricity Cuts; Energy crisis plan being drafted ahead of Sept. 30 meeting; Draft update gives countries leeway on cuts, newspaper says
Vernon Silver - Bloomberg
The European Union's plan to contain the energy crunch will give member states leeway to cut electricity consumption less than currently proposed, Corriere della Sera reported, citing a draft document. The European Commission aims to publish on Sept. 28 a document detailing future steps the bloc could take to ease the crisis, Bloomberg reported earlier.
/jlne.ws/3SgrEHU
European Commission cracks down on revolving door of law firm jobs; Brussels staffers seeking to go on unpaid leave told they can no longer work for private companies
Javier Espinoza and Sam Fleming - Financial Times
Brussels is clamping down on EU officials working for private-sector firms while on leave from the European Commission as it seeks to address a revolving door that allows people to move between the institution and law firms and consultancies. Staffers seeking to take lengthy unpaid absence are increasingly being told they will no longer be permitted to represent private companies against the interests of the commission.
/jlne.ws/3R8L941
Russians Seek to Mount Resistance to Putin as Mobilization Gears Up; Some activists are staying in the country and protesting, despite threat of prison or a draft summons that could send them to the front lines
Evan Gershkovich - The Wall Street Journal
Russians nationwide protested President Vladimir Putin's order to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people for the war in Ukraine, as Russia's beleaguered activists hold out despite a clampdown on dissent that has sent hundreds to jail and driven tens of thousands to flee the country. In more than two dozen cities across Russia on Saturday, Russians demonstrated against the Kremlin's decision this week to mobilize more than 300,000 to address manpower shortages in Ukraine, where the Russians recently suffered a stinging defeat and lost swaths of territory.
/jlne.ws/3DTWulj
At anti-war protests in Russia, fears for the drafted as 'cannon fodder' and a brutal response by police
Anna Nemtsova and Michael Collins - USA TODAY
Olga Zhgun couldn't stay silent. Zhgun, a 45-year-old film director, marched through the streets of Moscow with other anti-war protesters Wednesday night, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to mobilize another 300,000 reservists to bolster his troops fighting in Ukraine. Before the night was over, Zghun would end up in the back of a police truck, bleeding, after a police officer smashed her head with a club.
/jlne.ws/3xRX0g6
Lofgren signals that stock trading ban will include Supreme Court justices
Mychael Schnell - The Hill
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) signaled in a letter to colleagues that legislation banning congressional lawmakers from trading stocks will include Supreme Court justices. Lofgren, the chair of the House Administration Committee, outlined a framework for "Combating Financial Conflicts of Interest and Restoring Public Faith and Trust in Government" in Thursday's letter, with the first prong pertaining to a stock trading ban for "senior government officials," their spouses and their dependent children.
/jlne.ws/3BM6rif
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| Regulation & Enforcement | | Stories about regulation and the law. | SEC Ramps Up Scrutiny of Private Equity Firms' Writedowns
Dawn Lim - Bloomberg
Buyout firms have been forced to erase billions of dollars from the value of their wagers in the economic downturn, and financial regulators are now scrutinizing whether managers are reducing fees for investors when those deals sour.
/jlne.ws/3Rgwkwd
Glencore Wins Judge's Approval of Market Manipulation Settlement; A federal judge accepted a plea deal between prosecutors and Glencore's U.S. arm
Richard Vanderford - The Wall Street Journal
A federal judge has accepted part of a $1.2 billion settlement that commodities giant Glencore PLC entered to resolve criminal probes over its involvement in foreign corruption and market manipulation. A plea deal that Glencore's U.S. arm entered with Connecticut federal prosecutors received approval from U.S. District Judge Sarala V. Nagala at a sentencing hearing Friday in New Haven federal court, according to a spokesman for the prosecutors. Friday's proceeding focused solely on the market manipulation component of the resolution.
/jlne.ws/3LHPie7
China Probes Former Mutual Fund Executive in Anti-Graft Push
Bloomberg
Chinese authorities put a former general manager of a local asset management firm under investigation, as the Communist Party further tightens oversight of the financial sector ahead of a key congress next month. Ao Chengwen, former general manager and Communist Party chief of Shenzhen-based Lion Fund Management Co., is being probed for alleged severe violations of party disciplines and law, the city's anti-graft agency said in a statement posted on its WeChat account.
/jlne.ws/3dLZJAL
CFTC Orders Two Chinese Companies to Pay $720,000 for Wash Trading, Position Limit Violations, and Reporting Failures
CFTC
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today issued an order simultaneously filing and settling charges against Beijing-based COFCO Corp. and Chinatex Corp., Ltd., for wash trading, position limit violations, and reporting failures. The order requires that COFCO and Chinatex pay a $720,000 civil monetary penalty, for which they are jointly and severally liable, and cease and desist from violating the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations, as charged.
/jlne.ws/3LM2dvG
CFTC Charges New York Introducing Broker with Failing to Maintain Required Audio Recordings
CFTC
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued an order today simultaneously filing and settling charges against XP Investments US, LLC (XP), a New York-based Delaware corporation, with failing to maintain certain records required to be kept under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations.
The order requires XP to pay a $500,000 civil monetary penalty and to cease and desist from any further violation of the CEA and CFTC regulations as charged.
/jlne.ws/3BG7Nee
Registration Opens Today for a CFTC Financial Education Event as Part of World Investor Week - October 3-9
CFTC
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Office of Customer Education and Outreach (OCEO) and Office of Technology Innovation (OTI) today opened registration for financial educators, innovators, and regulators to participate in a two-panel virtual event featuring discussions about the future of money and how educators can help investors avoid fraud and other harmful investment mistakes. The discussions are presented as part of World Investor Week, a global effort to raise awareness about the importance of investor education and protection, recognized October 3-9.
/jlne.ws/3xRVwCc
SEC Charges Compass Minerals for Misleading Investors about Its Operations at World's Largest Underground Salt Mine
SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settled charges against Compass Minerals International Inc. for misleading investors about a technology upgrade that the company claimed would reduce costs at its most significant mine, but in reality, had increased costs, and for failing to properly assess whether to disclose the financial risks created by the company's excessive discharge of mercury in Brazil. Compass is ordered to pay $12 million to settle the charges.
/jlne.ws/3r8yenX
SEC Charges Convertible Note Firm and Its Managing Member with Acting as Unregistered Securities Dealers
SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against Morningview Financial, LLC ("Morningview Financial") and its managing member, Miles M. Riccio of Los Angeles, California, for failing to register as securities dealers with the SEC. Morningview Financial and Riccio allegedly sold billions of newly issued shares of microcap securities, or "penny stocks," which generated millions of dollars for Morningview Financial and Riccio.
/jlne.ws/3Sv2sOh
SEC Charges Executives and Director with Lying to Auditors
SEC
On September 22, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against the former Chief Executive Officer of Spyr, Inc., James R. Thompson, the company's former Chief Financial Officer, Barry D. Loveless, and director, James A. Mylock, Jr., for making false and misleading statements to Spyr's auditors. The SEC also charged Thompson and Loveless for filing periodic reports with the SEC that failed to include required information in the financial statements.
/jlne.ws/3LNiVL8
SEC Charges Los Angeles-Based Company and Its Principal with Perpetrating an $11.7 Million Offering Fraud Targeting the Vietnamese-American Community
SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that it filed charges against Brian Lam of Los Angeles, California, and his company, NineSquare Capital Partners LLC, for allegedly targeting the Vietnamese-American community in an $11.7 million offering fraud from March 2020 to January 2022. The SEC charged Lam and NineSquare with securities and investment adviser fraud and with securities offering registration violations. The SEC also charged Nathan Nguyen of Anaheim, California, and his company, Nguyen Group LLC, with securities offering and broker-dealer registration violations for his alleged role in raising money from investors.
/jlne.ws/3fnd4jd
SEC Charges Company President in Fraudulent Microcap Scheme
SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Ohio resident Christopher P. Vallos, a former President and Chief Executive Officer of a publicly traded microcap company, with engaging in a fraudulent scheme to sell his stock to the public while concealing his identity and control over the company. Vallos previously agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges for the same conduct and was recently sentenced to 24 months in prison. He has agreed to settle the SEC's action on terms that will include, among other things, bars from serving as an officer or director of a public company and from participating in penny stock offerings.
/jlne.ws/3fm3X2g
Cryptocurrency lobby group gets court approval to weigh in on SEC vs Ripple's XRP lawsuit
Timmy Shen - Forkast
Cryptocurrency lobby group Chamber of Digital Commerce (CDC) has received approval from a U.S. federal court to be an amicus curiae (Latin for friend of court) in the lawsuit that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed in 2020 against Ripple Labs.
/jlne.ws/3LJSMNh
SEC advisory committee recommends revamp of FASB
Michael Cohn - Accounting Today
The Securities and Exchange Commission's Investor Advisory Committee released a set of recommendations for reforming the way the Financial Accounting Standards Board operates so it can be more responsive to the needs of investors. "In recent years, investors have increasingly voiced concerns that accounting standard-setting has not kept pace with the evolution of the sources of value and risk, leaving investors without the information they need to value modern companies," the committee wrote in draft recommendations delivered during a meeting Wednesday. The group pointed to concerns from the CFA Institute, an organization for investment professionals, which sent a letter last year to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler: "Investors are working with a 19th century manufacturing accounting model in a 21st century service-oriented, global, intangibles-based economy," said the letter from Sandra Peters, senior head of global financial reporting advocacy at CFA Institute.
/jlne.ws/3fosVOs
RBNZ and FMA seeking feedback on draft FMI Standards
Financial Markets Authority
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand - Te Putea Matua (RBNZ) and the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) - Te Mana Tatai Hokohoko are inviting feedback on the exposure drafts of standards for financial market infrastructures (FMIs). The Financial Market Infrastructures Act 2021 (the FMI Act) establishes the RBNZ and the FMA as the joint regulator of designated FMIs. The development of the FMI Standards is a key milestone in the implementation of the FMI Act. The FMI Standards provide a comprehensive framework for the regulation of FMIs operating in New Zealand.
/jlne.ws/3Uzm05u
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| Investing & Trading | | Today's top stories from equities, indices and FICC (fixed income, currencies and commodities) | The Great Bond Bubble Is 'Poof, Gone' in Worst Year Since 1949; Bonds keep sliding in the face of aggressive central banks; Losses mount as Fed vows to pull inflation down to 2% target
Michael Mackenzie and Liz McCormick - Bloomberg
Week by week, the bond-market crash just keeps getting worse and there's no clear end in sight. With central banks worldwide aggressively ratcheting up interest rates in the face of stubbornly high inflation, prices are tumbling as traders race to catch up. And with that has come a grim parade of superlatives on how bad it has become.
/jlne.ws/3SQ0APV
Rampant Dollar Threatens to Break China's Tight Grip on the Yuan; PBOC has tools to defend currency but is largely on sidelines; Few good options in strong dollar world: China Beige Book
Bloomberg
As the list of central banks intervening to protect their currencies against the surging dollar gets ever longer, one country is notable by its absence: China. While the People's Bank of China has plenty of tools it can use to defend its currency, it's largely sitting on the sidelines despite the yuan's decline to its weakest levels since the early days of the pandemic. The currency hasn't been this close to the weak end of the fixing band since 2015.
/jlne.ws/3xRkfXo
Pensions Brace for Private-Equity Losses; Retirement officials predict grim results from investments in private equity and other illiquid assets
Heather Gillers and Dion Rabouin - The Wall Street Journal
Public pension funds are already reporting big losses in 2022. Things are likely to get uglier. That is because the funds, which manage around $5 trillion in retirement savings for the nation's teachers, firefighters and other public workers, haven't yet factored in second-quarter returns on private equity and other illiquid investments. "You should expect sometime over the next three to four quarters to see write-downs in the illiquid part of the portfolio," Allan Emkin, a consultant to large pension funds with Meketa Investment Group, told the board of the $300 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System last month.
/jlne.ws/3flQGXF
Fed Finally Vanquishes Stocks From Asset Allocation Throne; Equities among least attractive assets amid Fed tightening; Money markets, short-dated bonds offer low risk returns
Denitsa Tsekova - Bloomberg
For years, asset allocators had it easy: Buy the biggest American tech companies and watch the returns rack up. Those days are gone, buried under a crush of central bank rate hikes that are rewriting the play books for investment managers across Wall Street. TINA -- the mantra that investors had no alternatives stocks -- has given way to a panoply of actual choices. From money market funds to short-dated bonds and floating-rate notes, investors are now locking in low-risk returns that, in some cases, exceed 4%.
/jlne.ws/3UIvRWr
Spooked Traders Just Piled Into Stock Protection at Record Rate; Overall volume in put options surged to highest level ever; 'Fear clearly arrived,' says Alon Rosin at Oppenheimer
Lu Wang - Bloomberg
Options traders spooked by turmoil across Wall Street snapped up protection against further losses in stocks at the fastest pace on record. More than 33 million bearish contracts changed hands Friday across the board, the busiest session since data began in 1992. The largest exchange-traded fund tracking the S&P 500 (ticker SPY) also saw volume in puts spike to an all-time high after a week of central bank-induced volatility in everything from equities and bonds to currencies.
/jlne.ws/3xRMLrM
Commodities Gauge Slumps to Lowest Since July Amid Broad Selloff; Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index settled 3.1% lower on Friday; Dollar's surge is drag on commodities priced in greenback
Gerson Freitas Jr - Bloomberg
A key gauge for commodities prices has sunk to a two-month low as investors rushed to shed risk assets amid mounting fears of a global recession. The Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index, which tracks futures contracts for everything from oil to copper and cotton, settled 3.1% lower on Friday to a level not seen since July. The measure has lost more than 20% since peaking in June.
/jlne.ws/3foALYM
Some investors backing out of SPAC merging with Trump's media firm
Reuters
Some investors are backing out of Digital World Acquisition Corp's (DWAC.O) plan to acquire former U.S. President Donald Trump's social media firm Truth Social, the blank-check firm said on Friday. Digital World said it had received termination notices from private investment in public equity (PIPE) investors ending nearly $139 million in investments out of the $1 billion commitment it had previously announced.
/jlne.ws/3r7sACB
Oil Markets Are Volatile But They're Not Broken; Hold onto your hats, 2022's wild oil ride isn't done yet.
Julian Lee - Bloomberg
Oil markets are broken. Extreme volatility and a lack of liquidity mean that crude futures have become disconnected from tight physical oil markets. At least that's what some loud voices in the oil world are telling us. But I suspect they may be talking their own books. Complaining that markets are broken suggests to me that somebody has traded on the wrong side of the recent tumble in oil prices, positioning for a rise that hasn't happened.
/jlne.ws/3r7Ls4l
Baring PE Asia Weighs $8 Billion Deal to Merge Hong Kong's Tricor and Vistra, Sources Say; Buyout firm working with advisers on merging Vistra and Tricor; BPEA could also sell a minority stake in Vistra to an investor
Manuel Baigorri - Bloomberg
Baring Private Equity Asia is exploring a combination of two Hong Kong-based business services firms it owns, Tricor and Vistra, according to people familiar with the matter. BPEA is working with advisers on a merger that could value its two portfolio companies at $7 billion to $8 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. The pan-Asian buyout firm -- which itself is merging with Swedish investment firm EQT AB -- has notified Tricor and Vistra's creditors about the merger plans, the people said.
/jlne.ws/3xSJ9Gl
Wall Street Banks Prep for Grim China Scenarios Over Taiwan; Insurers hike costs for political risk policies tied to China; Withdrawal would represent sharp about-face for global firms
Ambereen Choudhury, Natasha White, and Denise Wee - Bloomberg
Global financial firms, still smarting from multi-billion dollar losses in Russia, are now reassessing the risks of doing business in Greater China after an escalation of tensions over Taiwan. Lenders including Societe Generale SA, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS Group AG have asked their staff to review contingency plans in the past few months to manage exposures, according to people familiar with the matter. Global insurers, meanwhile, are backing away from writing new policies to cover firms investing in China and Taiwan, and costs for political risk coverage have soared more than 60% since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
/jlne.ws/3DTr2Ul
The Dollar Is On the Rampage: Elements by David Fickling
David Fickling - Bloomberg
The most important commodity in the world isn't oil, or gas, or copper or iron ore: it's dollars. That should set those on the long side of commodity trades trembling right now. A US dollar on steroids is laying waste to currencies from the UK and Europe to Japan, India and China, which have all slumped below long-term levels in recent days. Unlike those countries, though, crude, grains and metals lack any central bank to prop up their value against the surging denominator in which they're priced.
/jlne.ws/3UH294k
Beware the 'Cover Curse:' How to Tell When a Market Meltdown Is Overdone; Something significant is going on in the markets. The question is whether investors are falling victim to the propensity of extrapolating trends infinitely.
John Authers - Bloomberg
The last week might well go down in market history. Just to re-cap, central banks across the planet hiked rates aggressively, often by more than expected, and often with promises that more tightening was in the pipeline. In response, bond yields shot up, and equities sank to new lows for the year (outside the US), a fate that the S&P 500 only escaped with the aid of a dramatic late bounce on Friday afternoon. This is important stuff, bringing the economy into territory that few people much under 60 can even remember, at least during their working lives.
/jlne.ws/3BJ6R8R
When Bad Things Happen to Good Stocks; Investing in quality stocks seems like a smart move—but the bet on the blue chips hasn't paid off lately
Jason Zweig - The Wall Street Journal
In this year's market bloodbath, you might think funds with "quality" in their name—and in their holdings—would lose less money. You'd be wrong. Quality funds, in Wall Street lingo, tend to own companies that are highly profitable, with steady earnings growth and low debt. In principle, such stocks as Home Depot Inc., Microsoft Corp. and 3M Co. are among the bluest of the blue chips. In practice, many funds holding them are in the red.
/jlne.ws/3r9BiQQ
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| Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance | | Stories about environmental, social and governance investing | What Sustainability Means to Consumers; A Brand's Guide to Consumer Attitudes, Behavior and Expectations
Morning Consult
As the reality of climate change becomes more pronounced in our everyday lives, consumers are holding institutions more accountable —including corporations. But when it comes to sustainability, there remain more questions than answers in understanding what sustainability means to consumers.
/jlne.ws/3DTUjOQ
Carbon-Credit Surplus Could Soon Turn to Shortage; Demand for emissions offsets is soaring, threatening to overwhelm supply
Shane Shifflett - The Wall Street Journal
Hundreds of companies plan to achieve their climate goals using carbon credits to offset the emissions they can't eliminate on their own. Soon there might not be enough of the credits to go around. Despite record demand for carbon credits last year, supply of new offsets has still outpaced demand. That has created a surplus that has has kept most carbon credits cheap. The surplus could soon turn to shortage as businesses, acting to meet their climate pledges, boost demand. That will make it harder and more expensive for companies to claim to be offsetting their emissions. Demand for carbon credits could also run up against other important uses for land, such as farming.
/jlne.ws/3feDEet
Dodging Blackouts, California Faces New Questions on Its Power Supply; Extreme heat is testing the way energy is generated, delivered and traded — and raising the prospect of perpetual emergencies.
Ivan Penn - The New York Times
California finds itself on edge more than ever with a lingering fear: the threat of rolling blackouts for years to come. Despite adding new power plants, building huge battery storage systems and restarting some shuttered fossil fuel generators over the last couple of years, California relies heavily on energy from other states — the cavalry rushing over a distant hill. Sometimes the support does not show up when expected, or at all. That was the case this month, when millions of residents got cellphone alerts urging them to cut their energy use as the state teetered close to blackouts in blazing heat.
/jlne.ws/3UBtKDU
Al Gore Calls Out 'Greenwashing' Risks as Funds Quit Green Club
Alastair Marsh - Bloomberg
Al Gore, the former US vice president turned climate activist, said investors are growing increasingly impatient with evidence of potential "greenwashing" amid signs that net-zero pledges made by some members of the financial industry weren't credible. Gore, who spoke in an interview just before Climate Week in New York got under way last week, said commitments made by members of the No. 1 green club for bankers and investors -- the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero -- are "very welcome" and "not meaningless."
/jlne.ws/3SBPZIe
China's goal of ESG standards with Chinese characteristics faces challenges in effectiveness, global recognition; In July, Shenzhen Securities Information launched its CNI ESG Ratings Methodology, along with a set of indices based on the methodology; Chinese alcohol giant Kweichow Moutai is one of the top holdings in the CSI 300 ESG Index for its efforts in poverty alleviation
Yujie Xue - South China Morning Post
China wants to set its own environment, social and governance (ESG) standards for the financial market, with an emphasis on the country's "dual carbon" and "common prosperity" goals, but these efforts are being complicated by market volatility as ESG investors focus on short-term returns, according to analysts.
/jlne.ws/3dDZ3NW
If Companies Really Want to Do Some Good, They Should Unbundle 'ESG' and 'DEI'; Businesspeople should think carefully about the new acronyms that increasingly govern their lives.
Adrian Wooldridge - Bloomberg
The business world is in thrall to six letters — or, more accurately, to two groups of three letters — ESG and DEI. These stand, respectively, for "environmental, social and governance" and "diversity, equity and inclusion." Taken together, they constitute the ruling business ideology of our age.
/jlne.ws/3RfJbii
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| Banks, Brokers & Managed Funds | | The latest from banks, brokers, hedge funds and managed futures | Credit Suisse Needs the Deal of the Decade; Bank's deal makers can prove their worth by finding a creative way to avoid raising capital with a rock-bottom stock price
Rochelle Toplensky - The Wall Street Journal
Credit Suisse's latest restructuring plan will require all the deal-making prowess it can muster. Shares of the Swiss bank have tumbled to record lows this week in reaction to a drip-feed of leaks about how its new board might overhaul the business. On Friday, a Reuters report that it was sounding out investors about raising more capital sent the stock down 12% by the European close to trade at around 21% of book value. Now is clearly not the time to be selling more shares. To avoid that, the bank's deal makers would need to be creative in how they overhaul their investment bank.
/jlne.ws/3CeH61X
BofA Strategists Dial Back Predictions for a US Digital Dollar; Prior estimate 'too optimistic,' they say in new report; Other countries' CBDCs could 'pressure the dollar's status'
Allyson Versprille - Bloomberg
Strategists at Bank of America Corp. are walking back a previous prediction that the US would issue its own digital dollar between 2025 and 2030, saying that the estimate now seems "too optimistic." The US is still early in the research and development stage, Alkesh Shah and Andrew Moss wrote in a report Thursday. "An extensive set of complex design choices will need to be discussed before moving into any potential pilot phase," they said.
/jlne.ws/3DTpNV6
Credit Suisse aims for stronger franchise from global review
Scott Murdoch - Reuters
Credit Suisse's (CSGN.S) top two executives have told staff the bank is working to establish a stronger franchise in the longer term, according to a memo seen by Reuters on Saturday, amid uncertainty over a global review of its operations. The memo sent by Chairman Axel Lehmann and Chief Executive Ulrich Koerner said a "heightened level of media and market speculation" regarding the review had raised questions among the bank's staff and clients.
/jlne.ws/3SBaFjA
Commerzbank Exec Criticized for Work Obsession Wins London Suit; Manager wins her sex discrimination case for a second time; Commerzbank says it's considering appropriate next steps
Jonathan Browning - Bloomberg
A female Commerzbank AG manager who was described by her manager has having an "unhealthy obsession with work" won her sex discrimination claim for a second time. Jagruti Rajput, a compliance officer in the London office, was denied a fair opportunity to be promoted into a senior role, a decision "tainted" by her sex, a London tribunal ruled. Her manager then proceeded to downplay the fact that he'd treated a male colleague as the senior member of the team.
/jlne.ws/3UDtbtb
Barclays Tells Dealmakers to Return to Offices Four Days a Week; Move to boost in-person work ahead of "tougher" market cycle; Firms across Wall Street are pushing for more office work
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou - Bloomberg
Barclays Plc has told its investment bankers to work from the office at least four days a week, saying worsening market conditions mean a greater need for in-person collaboration. Starting Oct. 3, the company expects dealmakers around the world to be back in the office Monday through Thursday, according to a memo sent to staff this week and seen by Bloomberg.
/jlne.ws/3DVqb5M
Asset Management: Rees-Mogg's Somerset Capital in sale talks again; Plus, hedge funds short long-only peers, mounting concerns over Taiwan, and modernists at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Harriet Agnew - Financial Times
One thing to start: On Friday UK chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced the biggest tax reduction since 1972. Investors have warned that the bonanza of tax cuts and spending measures risk undermining their confidence in the country. Meanwhile the City is contemplating its love-bomb Budget.
/jlne.ws/3SC05bJ
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| Wellness Exchange | | An Exchange of Health and Wellness Information | Moderna Covid-19 Booster Shortage Leads to Fewer Appointments at Pharmacies; Manufacturing-quality problem has led to some vaccine providers offering only the Pfizer-BioNTech booster shot
Peter Loftus - The Wall Street Journal
Some U.S. pharmacies and other vaccine providers are offering the new Covid-19 booster shot only from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, after a manufacturing-quality problem at a contract manufacturer caused a shortage of Moderna Inc.'s new booster shot. In recent days, federal officials have advised state officials there is a limited supply of Moderna's updated booster shots, said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
/jlne.ws/3re4N3L
Omicron Boosters for Children Could Be Coming Soon
Angelica Peebles - Bloomberg
Moderna Inc. submitted regulatory applications for an updated Covid-19 booster shot for adolescents, the company said Friday. Moderna is seeking emergency use authorization for an updated shot targeting the BA.4 and BA.5 subtypes of the omicron variant for children between the ages of 6 and 17, the company said in a tweet Friday. Moderna plans to seek clearance for its Omicron-targeting booster for children 6 months to 5 years later this year.
/jlne.ws/3Sd3ttT
Is the pandemic over? Pre-covid activities Americans are (and are not) resuming.; Biden says the pandemic is over — and when it comes to casinos, concerts and cosmetic procedures, Americans seem to agree. For theater, therapy and funerals though, not so much.
Marc Fisher and Taylor Telford - The Washington Post
CarLa Bryant's family reunion would have celebrated its 46th straight meeting this year, but there will be no such gathering of the generations. Too many of Bryant's older relatives are still not ready to travel again. "I'm not around too many people yet," relatives told Bryant, 56, who lives in Prince William County and works for the Fairfax County government.
/jlne.ws/3SPY3oT
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla tests positive for Covid-19 again
Carma Hassan - CNN
Albert Bourla, CEO of drugmaker Pfizer, has tested positive for Covid-19 and is "feeling well," he said in a tweet Saturday. Bourla said he does not have any symptoms. "While we've made great progress, the virus is still with us," he said. The CEO said he did not get the updated Covid-19 booster shot yet because he is waiting for three months after his previous Covid-19 infection. He tested positive for Covid-19 in August.
/jlne.ws/3Sa2HOm
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| Regions | | Stories of local interest from the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions | Crisis Level Risks Loom in Asia as Major Currencies Crack; Heavyweights yen, yuan both tumble as Fed hikes boost dollar; Rapid slide creates deadweight for other Asia currencies: BNY
Matthew Burgess, Ruth Carson, and Tania Chen - Bloomberg
Asian markets risk a reprise of crisis-level stress as two of the region's most important currencies crumble under the onslaught of relentless dollar strength. The yuan and yen are both tumbling due to the growing disparity between an uber-hawkish Federal Reserve and dovish policy makers in China and Japan. While other Asian nations are digging deep into foreign-exchange reserves to mitigate the dollar's damage, the yuan and yen's slump is making things worse for everyone, threatening the region's mantle as a preferred destination for risk investors.
/jlne.ws/3r3QjDP
Solar Outshines Wind to Lead China's Clean-Energy Transition; Capacity from panels is overtaking turbines by the end of this year in China.
Dan Murtaugh - Bloomberg
In some ways solar is having too much success in China. Installing panels has become so popular that Chinese officials drafted regulations to make sure developers don't put them on land needed for other uses. And new data suggests the solar frenzy has only just begun. Solar panels have overtaken wind turbines in the world's biggest renewables market as photovoltaic manufacturers ramp up output to lead the energy transition.
/jlne.ws/3UE01dx
Typhoon Noru Slams Into the Philippines, Shuts Markets; Marcos suspends work, classes on Monday as flooding likely; Typhoon may affect 1.47 million hectares of rice land
Ian C Sayson and Cecilia Yap - Bloomberg
Typhoon Noru slammed into the Philippines' main Luzon island, prompting President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to suspend work and school while authorities closed the local currency, stock and bond markets for Monday. The typhoon, called Karding locally, is packing maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometers per hour near the center and gustiness of up to 170 km/h, the weather bureau Pagasa said in its 5:00 a.m. report on Monday. It was last located over the coastal waters of Zambales province in central Luzon and headed to the South China Sea on its way to Vietnam.
/jlne.ws/3CbL3UI
Korea's Won Not Facing Woes Seen in Earlier Crises, Fin Min Says; Current situation is different from 1997 or 2008 crisis: Choo; No urgency to pursue currency swap with US now: Choo
Heejin Kim - Bloomberg
South Korea's current currency weakness is different from the situation the country faced during the global financial crisis or the Asian market turmoil in the late 1990s, according to the country's finance minister. "You don't have to worry excessively," Choo Kyung-ho said on a television show Sunday. "We have about $430 billion worth of foreign reserves, which ranks the 9th in the world."
/jlne.ws/3DSfjFs
China Traders See Property Boost, Covid Zero Resolve at Congress; Property stocks emerge as key bet ahead of leadership meeting; Traders have low expectations for change in Covid Zero policy
Bloomberg
Bruised from a tumultuous year, China stock investors are looking to capitalize on any potential policy shifts at the twice-a-decade Communist Party congress next month. A key strategy is to bet on more stimulus for the property market as authorities seek to rescue the ailing industry. Bloomberg Intelligence expects some steps to complete stalled housing projects following the Oct. 16 leadership gathering, which can in turn support the banking sector by reducing loan risks and boosting mortgage demand.
/jlne.ws/3BO9WVc
Typhoon Noru to Bring Heavy Rains to Vietnam's Coffee Belt; Storm threatens to slow harvest in the second-biggest producer; Global benchmark robusta prices have jumped on supply problems
Mai Ngoc Chau - Bloomberg
Typhoon Noru is expected to bring extensive downpours to Vietnam's coffee belt in the Central Highlands, threatening to delay harvest in the world's second-biggest coffee producer and top robusta supplier. The storm may delay bean collection by about one or two weeks, said Tran Thi Lan Anh, deputy director of coffee exporter Vinh Hiep Co., based in Gia Lai province. She had expected the harvesting to start in mid-October.
/jlne.ws/3ReWNKG
China's Commodities Demand Faces Another Headwind in Weaker Yuan
Bloomberg News
Commodities in China dropped as a surge in the dollar heaped pressure on markets already plagued by concerns over Chinese growth. Tin led losses among base metals traded in Shanghai, with copper also falling sharply by the midday break. Crude tracked international markets lower. Producer stocks also fell, with the nation's biggest listed oil company, PetroChina Co., and aluminum giant China Hongqiao Group hitting their lows for the year in Hong Kong.
/jlne.ws/3CbI3b4
China's Maike Metals will sell assets and restructure, says chair; Commodities trader pursues investment talks with state-owned companies after liquidity crunch
Cheng Leng - Financial Tims
Maike Metals International is selling assets and studying a broader restructuring as it battles to survive a liquidity crisis, said chair He Jinbi in an interview with the Financial Times. The final plan could involve "shareholding restructuring, asset restructuring and debt restructuring", said He, illustrating the extent of the difficulties at one of China's biggest commodity trading houses.
/jlne.ws/3dLObNU
Unrealistic Demands Hindering European LNG Deals: Total CEO; Buyers can't have cheap gas and flexibility, Pouyanne says; Germany's Scholz visits Middle East to drum up energy supplies
Verity Ratcliffe - Bloomberg
Europe's frantic search for gas supplies in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is being stymied by buyers' unrealistic demands, TotalEnergies SE's chief executive officer said. "If Europe wants some security of supply, it has a cost," Patrick Pouyanne said in the Qatari capital, Doha, where the French energy company signed a deal to invest about $1.5 billion in a massive liquefied natural gas project. "If you want a cheap price for a short duration, the answer obviously is 'no.'"
/jlne.ws/3BIGXlS
Swiss Back Plan to Work Longer, Lift VAT to Pay for Pensions; Also up for vote: Domestic-bond withholding tax; farm animals; Swiss cast votes several times a year on a variety of measures
Claudia Maedler - Bloomberg
Swiss voters backed a plan to reform the state pension system, which includes women working longer and higher sales taxes. The measure to increase the retirement age for women by a year was supported by 50.6% of voters, according to preliminary government results. A vote in favor of the move was expected based on predictions earlier this month. A separate proposal to raise value-added tax and help fund the social security system received 55.1% of votes.
/jlne.ws/3C9NzLf
Germany Secures Just One Tanker of Gas During Scholz's Gulf Tour; UAE delivery to floating terminal will be made by early 2023; Europe's biggest economy may face blackouts and rationing
Birgit Jennen and Omar Tamo - Bloomberg
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz secured just one shipment of liquefied natural gas from the United Arab Emirates, with a non-binding agreement for more, as Europe's biggest economy struggles to replace Russian supplies. The cargo -- 137,000 cubic meters -- will be delivered by Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. to German utility RWE AG by early 2023. ADNOC also signed a memorandum of understanding to make more deliveries next year. An ensuing trip to Qatar didn't immediately yield any more deals.
/jlne.ws/3dL27HY
Fire Breaks Out At World's Biggest Produce Market in Paris
The Associated Press - Bloomberg
A billowing column of dark smoke towered over Paris on Sunday from a warehouse blaze at a massive produce market that supplies the French capital and surrounding region with much of its fresh food and bills itself as the largest of its kind in the world. Firefighters urged people to stay away from the area in Paris' southern suburbs, as 100 officers and 30 fire engines battled the blaze at the Rungis International Market.
/jlne.ws/3r5YoHV
Zimbabwe Faces More Power Cuts Due to Aging Infrastructure
Desmond Kumbuka - Bloomberg
The Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company warned of possible outages on its Twitter account on Sunday, saying there will be increased "load curtailment" from Sept. 24. ZETDC said it's experiencing technical challenges at its main Kariba and Hwange power stations, as well as import constraints. "The utility is therefore conducting a maintenance exercise to ensure full restoration of service," it said.
/jlne.ws/3DU3JcU
UAE agrees LNG deal with Germany as Berlin looks to replace Russian gas; Chancellor Olaf Scholz visits Gulf states in drive to secure energy imports
Simeon Kerr - Financial Times
The United Arab Emirates has agreed a deal to supply liquefied natural gas to Germany as Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the Gulf state as part of a regional tour seeking to drum up alternatives to Russian energy. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company will supply Germany utility RWE with 137,000 cubic metres of LNG later this year, which will be the first delivery to the under-construction import terminal on the north-west coast at Brunsbüttel, RWE and the UAE state media said.
/jlne.ws/3BODT7t
Pump Prices in US Soar as Supply Cracks Outweigh Weak Demand; West Coast, Midwest low on fuel amid refinery outages, work; Physical gasoline market is diverging from bearish futures
Chunzi Xu - Bloomberg
The US is running low on gasoline on the West Coast and in the Midwest, where prices are surging on the street, defying falling futures markets. Wholesale fuel prices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland have all reached record highs this week as a spate of unplanned refinery shutdowns compounded scheduled maintenance, at a time when seasonal stockpiles are already at their lowest level in 14 years.
/jlne.ws/3DTMEjj
US gas export pioneer's venture flounders amid ravenous demand; Charif Souki's Driftwood LNG loses Shell and Vitol as customers and bond sale is scrapped
Justin Jacobs - Financial Times
US energy tycoon Charif Souki's plans to build a $25bn natural gas export plant are on the rocks after the project had lost pivotal buyers and failed to raise funds despite rising global demand for the fuel following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The stumbles are a big blow to Souki, a pioneer in the US liquefied natural gas business, and could signal trouble in the effort to quickly expand America's capacity to ship more energy to Europe.
/jlne.ws/3Rfg0M0
New York City's Empty Offices Reveal a Global Property Dilemma; The rise of remote work will hurt older buildings, leaving landlords in the lurch
Natalie Wong, John Gittelsohn and Noah Buhayar - Bloomberg
In the heart of midtown Manhattan lies a multibillion-dollar problem for building owners, the city and thousands of workers. Blocks of decades-old office towers sit partially empty, in an awkward position: too outdated to attract tenants seeking the latest amenities, too new to be demolished or converted for another purpose. It's a situation playing out around the globe as employers adapt to flexible work after the Covid-19 pandemic and rethink how much space they need. Even as people are increasingly called back to offices for at least some of the week, vacancy rates have soared in cities from Hong Kong to London and Toronto.
/jlne.ws/3Sg9Psx
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| Miscellaneous | | Stories that don't quite fit under the other sections | To Find Success at Work, Match Your Job With Your Personality; New research suggests aligning our personalities with our occupations leads to happiness and engagement.
Arianne Cohen - Blooomberg
Certain jobs attract people with predictable personalities. Office managers tend to be outgoing, detail-oriented, and respectful of authority, as do fitness instructors, flight attendants, and beauticians. Industrial designers, creative directors, and executive producers tend to be excellent listeners, with an ability to understand the needs and feelings of others.
/jlne.ws/3UIwGyv
Gucci, Burberry Join Booming Secondhand Luxury Trade; But some high-end fashion giants are shunning the used goods market, splitting the industry
Trefor Moss - The Wall Street Journal
The booming market for secondhand luxury goods is creating a dilemma for makers of high-end handbags, fashion and jewelry: Join the trend, or ignore it. Secondhand luxury isn't new, but its popularity is surging. Steep price hikes by prestigious brands like Chanel SA are driving some luxury buyers to look for less expensive used items. Others are seizing on secondhand goods' sustainability bona fides: A used pair of designer jeans doesn't cost any more of the planet's resources to make.
/jlne.ws/3RfJolv
Crowded Campsites, High Demand Cause Fights, 'Camp Pirates'
The Associated Press - Bloomberg
Some Oregon parks officials say high demand for crowded campsites is leading to arguments, fistfights and even so-called "campsite pirates." Brian Carroll with Linn County Parks and Recreation said park rangers have had to play mediator this summer as would-be campers argue over first-come, first-served campsites at Sunnyside County Park, the Statesman-Journal reported Friday.
/jlne.ws/3Sx2IeZ
Why Is a New York Apartment Still So Hard to Find? The pandemic exodus from the city hasn't led to an era of cheaper rents.
Justin Fox - Bloomberg
New York City's population fell by an estimated 336,677, nearly 4%, between April 2020 and July 2021, according to the US Census Bureau. Timelier data from US Postal Service address changes, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel and other sources indicate that more people are probably still leaving the city than moving in. Payroll employment (which includes those who commute into the city) has been rising but remains 161,500 lower than in February 2020. So, uh, why is it so hard to find an apartment?
/jlne.ws/3Rd4oJM
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