Calcutta Renaissance!

IGX’s IPO,

ASX Alive?

Mobile Bells,

HKEX Longer Hours?

CME Counsel Swap,

Nasdaq’s TransAtlantic Lead,

24*7 Paused?

CME T+2891+ Integration,

& EU Kerfuffles

Trim Beef & Single Stock Futures,

AI Unleashed,

The Paradox of Value,

Australia Shames New World,

NSE Fast Track

Horror Stories,

24 Hour Consultation,

Points Mean Prizes,

Clearstream 60,

Seoul Searching,

Nasdaq Bahrain Tech Upgrades

Oh Calcutta!

NSE Sellers,

El Tel Dominates Headlines,

And Is There Perpetual Harmony In DC?

AIX HKEX,

Fascinating AI,

Perp Wars,

S&P 500 Status Quo,

& No Show Witness

NSE Advisor Choice,

E6 EACH, 

Hong Kong Exchanges at 40 Driving SuperConnection. 

The ASX Lesson,

Euronext Soars,

Novel-tosh?

Boujnah DB1 No!

Token Exuberance?

On Data Moats,

Up & Attia,

IBKR Predicts,

Parish In The Wake of Airforce One,

Hong Kong Leads In IPO.

FEX-Prediction?

NSE Ahead,

Biannual is Best Says SEC,

B3 Best Of All,

And Welcome to the NYSE Club,

As we celebrate our 13th birthday, Exchange Invest reaches its teenage years!

OPEC Upended,

Hongkong Exchanges Shines,

ICE Hits  A Home Run,

Amidst Strength In Depth In Parish Results.

CHESS On?

NSE Co-Lo Settlement,

TMX Bulk Buy, 

Nasdaq Sparkle,

Saudi Divi Drop,

Zero Coal BSE.

Token Times - Or Bonds?

DB1 Kraken,

Indian Fat Fingers

And A Parish First,

While Victoria Rises

NSX Advances,

Texas Funds,

NSE IPO Kick Off,

& Arca T+50 (Years)

Hello KOFR,

Resurrection or Crucifixion,

It’s Easter As We Ponder ASX’s Disgrace

Mega Tokens,

Paradise Postponed,

Private FaaS,

A Tale of 2 Investments,

UZEX Impresses

LSEG Refinancing,

NSE Fee Squeeze,

The Growth Race Is On,

As A Devoted European Declares Europe Obliterated

The Singapore Long End, 

NASDAQ Issuing Tokens, 

EUthanasia,

Markets Predicted,

& MDF RIP. 

Nasdaq Predicts,

ASX Buys LSEG Tech,

ICE Buys Into OKX,

Nasdaq Texas Live,

And Nasdaq Makes a Token Move that is ANYTHING but Token

RIP Jim Oliff,

Hongkong Exchange Excels,

Outlook Terminal,

& A Tale Of 2 JSE’s

NCDEX Looks Forward

Titanic Sightings?

Another ASX Red Alert

And New York’s Perfect Uptime White Out.

Loft-off,

ASX Wobbles,

DB1 Meh!

COIN Beast,

DB1 Adds Liquidity?

And There’s An Indian Courtroom Update…

ICE Bond Clear,

Nasdaq Wins OSE,

ICE Excels,

CQG Sells,

And NSE looks to Coal

Hongkong Exchanges B3 Carbon Deal,

ASX Atrophy,

NASDAQ / JPX Power Ahead,

Sebi Is OK On NSE IPO,

& There’s Bloodbath In Jakarta

Riyadh Open,

IBKR Throws Down Results Gauntlet,

MIAX Sells Again,

As MCX Soars,

And a tale of 2 exchanges shows the contrasts between CBOE and SGX.

In a big week for digital settlement Taurus’ Ghost rapidly gave way to NYSE’s Tokenization,

Although in DC there’s a form of legislative,

Crypto Stasis,

Great Change Afoot in Egypt

Reitz Exits EEX,

Proxy Off The New Argument,  

Indian Cross Asset Competition

SIP-tastrophic,

Piranha Fish & More,

La Pham Into Orbit,

There’s A Healthy IPO Pipeline Debate & More.

CME’s Lost Half Day,

Bugle Says No,

Nasdaq IPO Crackdown,

And ASIC Flagellates ASX With a Soggy Lettuce

It’s Morning At The SEC!

As ICE Gets a UK Carbon Extension,

EU Polishing AfterFood…

And There Are Some FaaS Failure As A Service Updates

SiX Buys Baymarkets, 

LedgerX Sold Again,

SSE At 35,

CME Meltdown And The Dream Is Over, 

And ASX A Failure For All Seasons. 

Bank of England CCP Suicide, 

Euronext has 75% of HELEX,

There's a Slovene Shock,

As BvB Celebrates 30 Years.

TASE Profits Leap, 

As Hong Kong Exchanges Makes An OmniClear Deal,

Euronext Buys ATHEX,

& PEX Launches On Nasdaq

Namibia Demutualizes,

Hong Kong Exchanges Profit Blitz,

It’s A Dire DB1 Day,

& ATHEX Gets A Deal Tweak

DB1’s 1984 Results, 

SiX Gains Aquis Power, 

ICE Record,

CBOE Restructures,

Alongside Toxic CMU

Nasdaq Sparkles,

Alongside Flaccid CME Fail,

BMLL Is Bought,

As SwapClear Is Reworked,

And Selig Is The Surprise Choice For CFTC Chairman.

ASX Unrepentant,

Small Exchange Sold,

Eu Seeks Monobourse,

ATHEX Maybe Repricing?

Embedded FaaS,

JSE Announces CEO Change,

OSTTRA Has Been Sold, 

& LME Makes A Middle Eastern Move.

As DC Regulators Talk Kumbaya, 

BQ is Canceled, 

While LSE & ASX Pioneer FaaS, 

There's an SEC Dream Probe, 

& ESMA Makes A Power Grab.

Marking A Decade Without Yogi, 

With Storms & Swaps in Hong Kong, 

There’s A Calypso Cloud for Nasdaq, 

And Down Under, it’s the ASX PermaCrisis. 

John Greenan To Aquis,

India Seeks To Open Commodity Futures, 

While Two Markets Range From Bullying To Scientology, 

As IEX Options Is Approved

NSE IPO Timeline? 

Quintenz Hits Back,

New MIAX Floor Opens,

& DB1 CEO Calls To End The Promise Ponzi Pensions. 

New Indian Rules Post Jane Street Debacle,

Turkey Lifts Short Selling Restrictions,

FINA Advance On Zagreb, 

New NSE Chairman Signals IPO Advance, 

As PISCES deploys A Fishy Tale

ETFs Exceed Stocks,

The Crumbling AMEX,

CEESEE Cooperation,

IBKR Joins S&P 500,

NCDEX Funded

Normal service from Exchange Invest as Hurricane Erin tore through the Caribbean,

In results, Hong Kong Exchanges Sparkles, 

Manila Soars,

As ICE Published Bond Rules,

A Token Crackdown is sought for misaligned market integrity, 

And in Central / Southern Europe, a form of SEELINK2 is Rising

Bangla Bust Up,

Zimbabwe SE is on an IPO roadshow, 

MIAX Lists On NYSE,

& the producer of Conclave is making a movie about the 1929 Wall Street crash the parish hits summer strides…

ASIC moves, 

Ei is right again on many levels,

SGX ticks up,

And a debate is raging over retail priorities.

ICE Up As Enervus Takeover Rumours Gain Pace,

ATHEX Powers Ahead As Euronext looks to buy,

CBOE Shines in results,

NSDL IPO is vastly oversubscribed, 

& Sebi Seeks to Write an RIP for Weekly Stock Options,

Quinten builds towards fever pitch.

A Happy 6th to STAR 

Strong Nasdaq, Weak Tadawul

And NSDL IPO is looming

DB1’s KOSPI Copy,

HKEX Gears Up For T+,

IBKR Leaps,

& Schwab Stars,

Ahead of an Impending MIAX IPO

Kazakh Merger Freeze,

Zimbabwe Lists!

And on a personal note, Our Sad Day

Euronext Bids for ATHEX, 

TASE Moves Monday-Friday, 

SEBI Creates A Jane Street Crisis, 

And it's the Floors Day in Court.

Hong Kong Exchanges celebrate a glorious first quarter century,

ASIC’s panel lacks exchange expertise,

Xavier expresses LSE frustration,

& CME proposes its own consolidated tape.

ASX Clearing House Split!? 

As ASX marks a staggering new benchmark for corporate tone deafness,

EU Consolidated Tape Bidding Opens,

No perceived hurdles to NSE IPO,

NYSE Texas finds a spacious new home. 

And then there's the best bourse marketing idea in ages - ‘The Gong Show’ rolls in Hong Kong. 

NSE IPO Looming as MCX and NSE Gain Electricity Futures licences

ASX Pyrrhic Victory Followed By Unprecedented Review

And We salute OM Group 40 Years On

Damascus Exchange reopens after a six month hiatus following the ousting of the Assad regime,

Australia remains firmly at a crossroads of competence,

Circle IPO is hugely popular,

SEBI delivers an MCX Power Nod,

And a key RMB MOU is signed.

Celebrating US T+1 Day At T+1 Years Old

NSE IPO Talk Harms Private Markets,

Sino Commodity Internationalization Is Coming,

AMX Trades Tabadul, 

& There's A Kenyan CEO Pickle. 

Bloom-Bust, The World's Biggest Terminal As A Near Terminal Failure Stopping Europe’s Bond Markets Amongst Others…

As the SEC Likes Private Markets For All,

Does The Death of The Penny Mean New Tick Sizes?

ASX Cutting Staff, 

NASDAQ Gains A Tie Extension as Thoma Bravo Sells Out of their Stock,

RMB Curve Tweaks Help Hong Kong Exchanges, 

And That All Comes During Our 12th Birthday Week Here at Exchange Invest.

There's A Big Sip Surprise,

Worries About An FMX Folly?

While ASX Has A Brave New Plan For IPOs But Is Anybody Listening? 

B3 Disappoints, 

And London Is Running Scared.

Hong Kong Exchange Dazzles as TMX Impresses And There's Hope CBOE is Rising With News of Good Results And A Dynamic New CEO. 

A Week of Broadly Poor Results as Shanghai Plans Expanded Warehouse Network,

NASDAQ Goes Great Guns With AWS,

And LSEG Also Extends

Atkins Sworn In As SEC Chairman,

StoneX Buys RJO,

LME Announces Hong Kong Warehouses,

And Hong Kong Exchanges Are Headed Towards T+1,

As ASX Delays Yet Another Tech Upgrade. 

SEC Chairman Atkins Confirmed,

Zimbabwe Moves to T+2 Clearing,

Tales of Woes At Ion?

And Happy 100th Birthday to The Great Gatsby.

Saving the CFTC Is A Big Deal,

CME Launches CFDs,

XYT Bids For The EU Consolidated Tape, 

As KRX Looks To Host Its Own Markets Overnight. 

ASIC Cracks Down On ASX - At Last! 

CME & Google Look At DLT,

As ICE Plans Battery Metals & Signs Exploratory MOU With Circle,

And NYSE Texas Launches With Its First Listing. 

MIAX Buys TISE,

As Bakkt is Adrift,

FCA Raises Nickel Concerns but the market Raises FCA Concerns,

& Euronext Boss Reckons Europe is Back, Baby.

EU Renews London CCP Equivalence,

Indian Battle Lines Drawn as Sebi Throttles Options Volumes, 

SIPs Stasis as The 24 Hour Schlepp Begins,

And NASDAQ Announced their Texas Plans.

Now it's NASDAQ with Plans 24*5, 

As Hong Kong Exchanges and Hong Kong Monetary Authority Add Heft to CONNECT Clearing, 

Over at LSEG, Misery Loves Company, 

While MOEX Post More Robust Results.

ASIC Tightens Noose On Market Monopolist Problem Child ASX,

NYSE 22*5 Progress,

As LSE is Stagnant,

And Hong Kong is Upbeat

Another Sell Side Data Spat, 

Loeffler Confirmed at SBA, as It's Howard’s Way at the Department of Trade and in BGC,

And is the great CSD game is finally on.

Korean Competition Rising, 

TXSE DOA?

NCDEX To Stocks, 

Coin Sparkles, 

Seoul Searching Still, 

And the Haynes Presidency. 

T + A Decade Later, Philippine Stock Exchange Hits the Philippine Dealing Systems 60% Ownership Threshold Bond Market Merger in Action,

Dugan In A Shock Move to CBOE,

As ICE Excels,

& CBOE Achieves Stasis.

Good results from Nasdaq as integration continues to work well, 

And Euronext Buys Nasdaq Power,

ASX Close to Checkmate in the CHESS fiasco?

While Euroclear Is In The Cloud.

The Battlecry Begins: End the FCA!

European Union Sees Sense in CCP,

IFAD Expands,

As Europe Confirms it will be T+1232 Days Behind the USA.

LME Hong Kong Warehouse Confirmed,

B3 CSD Goes Live In the Cloud, 

Is a privatization wave looming at JSE?

Regulatory Rumblings as Trump Is Inaugurated & it’s Morning in America as the Macro Picture Outshadows the Parish of Exchanges this week.

Ethiopian Stock Exchange Launches, 

B3…A5 Sounds like a CHESS move, but it's a big talking point in the Brazilian market,

Tel Aviv Buys Back Stock, 

And SEBI is setting new limits for Exchange Traded Derivatives. 

Come Back Xav All Is Forgiven,

ASX Xmas Shambles, 

PSE Bids for PDEX, 

Rate Sensitive ICE,

It’s a Festive Catch Up Edition, a podcast covering the parish of exchanges up to the end of 2024

Kill the PCAOB?

Death to Banking Regulators?

Trump World Gets Ambitious,

As Trump, Man of the Year, Rings the NYSE Bell, 

European Union in focus Over CCP Rules Again as India Ponders the SEBI Stock Options Restrictions. 

Is CMU Dead?

$17 Billion Bounty For CFTC,

SEBI Sued For IPO,

And There's A New DB1 Chairman While In New York, We Say A Fond Farewell to Art Cashin.

Sibbern to Head SiX,

As Yiu Goes From HKEX,

And First 23 hour venue gets US regulatory Go Ahead

NYSE Plot Defused,

SEBI Cleaves Clearing, 

And the FCA Savaged By British MPs. 

As EUREX Lacks EU Faith,

We Ponder Whither EU Bond Futures?

LSE Looks Lost - Again,

& EBRD Backs CEE Once More

We're celebrating a decade of AFEX and some marvelous results across parish firms but there's a wave of sadness in the world of exchanges as we mourn the best turnaround team in the history of the bourse  business.

Derivatives Coming Next As Baku Prepares A New Electronic Trading System,

Deja Vu One More Time As ATG Looks To Launch Their New Brazilian Exchange,

MOEX Sells Their Caissa Stake Under Sanctions Pressure, 

& VettaFi Buys Index

Vermiculus Keeps Wriggling,

NSE IPO Back On The Agenda,

As Elliott Lose Their LME Appeal.

Dawn Raids in Europe, 

As ASX Goes From Bad To Worse,

NSE Have Got 3X Rack Size Coming,

CME’s Lost Lustre,

As Boujnah Cries “Let’s Make Equity Great Again!”

BMLL Answers A Key Data Question 21 Million Times.

MGEX Name Dies,

New Tick Regime In The USA, 

BYMA Buys Nasdaq IT, 

There's a Mer-Zinger In The Conversational Universe At The CFTC, 

And We're Wondering Is AIM Just A Tax Dodge?

ASX Chairman Leaving At Last,

Euro Market Integrity Isn’t What You Think, 

But Liquidity Begets Liquidity,

Lawfare Means A False Start For Kalshi, 

& The Flash Boys Are Going Options Trading

Last Typhoon Call?

Kalshi Wins Case But Is Stayed…

It’s Die-Bor As We Bid Bye-bor To Libor,

And DB1’s Chairman Announces His Retirement.

CFTC Fining Old Markets,

CBOE Buys Into JapanNext,

Is An NSEL Resolution Looming?

Euronext’s Edisonian Mojo,

50 Years On, Celebrating Legislation Which Helped Secure A Wall Of Money For US Stocks & Bonds

Is the MIAX IPO Off?

Is OSTTRA On The Block? 

7 Ring Dealers Remain,

& There Is HyperCompetition In Scandi Electricity

Another Week Of Entrenched Mediocrity At ASX,

LSEG’s Terminal Troubles,

& Blue Ocean Upgrades

ASIC Snaps - Sues ASX,

ICE Trolls LSE First Glint Of Sapphire, 

& A Tale Of Two Cities (Podcast Edition)

The White Heat Of ICE Reigns Supreme,

As CBOE Has A Problem Keeping Up With Leaders Like ICE & NASDAQ, Judging From Their Recent Results.

There’s A Smooth Bravo Nasdaq Sale,

As The ICE Age Opens A $15 billion Gap.

Ethiopia's Stock Exchange Licensed, 

As The Exchange Parish Outplays CrowdStrike, 

And Tadawul Profit Soar 

Time To Split ASIC?

Time to Split ASX?

Whatever Happens ‘Down Under’ Splits Look Highly Likely,

While the UK Rearranges Deckchairs on IPO Titanic,

The ICE Age Is Heating Up. 

Exchanges To IOSCO Drop Dead!

As 25 Years of Capital Market Revolution! Are celebrated At The New York Stock Exchange!

NASDAQ - EEX Out,

LME Plans Hong Kong Warehouse, 

The SEC Courts Have Been Curtailed, 

And 7 Out Of The Top 10 IPOs Choose NYSE In First Half 2024 With A Fabulous $12 Billion Raised Across All Listings. 

ASX Spooks Investors Again!

RIP The Incredible William Donaldson, 

& Hello Mega Trillion IT3!

Texas Breaks Cover, 

Weimer Jumps Out Of The Deutsche 'Box', 

And FESE Appoint Brilliant New Director General

T+1 Is A Thing In The World's Biggest Market, 

FESE Published Their Checklist Manifesto, 

Euronext Completes GRSS Takeover, 

As New York Is The Epicenter of Bourse Country Cool.

Praise Canada!

It’s the T+1 Show!

In A Week Of All Round Expansionism, 

We Celebrate FTSE 100 Futures At 40 Years Young, 

But The Big Birthday Is At The Big Board, NYSE Is Growing Fast at 232

CFTC All Politics No Markets,

Yield Curve Connect Improves,

Oz Parl collates Feedback On The ASX “CHESS Mess”

LSEG Reckons Its IPO Pipeline Is Growing,

As the US country club duopoly look unstoppable for IPO flow.

All Weather Excellence as Leading Exchanges Grow More Than 20% In Q1,

There’s A Dash of Spring MOU Madness In The Air,

While Europe’s Leading Financial Industry Bodies Warn The Flywheel Needs To Turn

MCX Shines Bright,

Nasdaq Makes A Revenue Leap,

Third Time For Lucky Lutnick?

Sebi’s Calculated Insanity,

DFM Results Sensation,

And there’s Hosking’s Broadside At ASX

CBOE Flings A Gauntlet,

Is Blue Ocean The Tide Towards 24-Hour Trading? 

And DB1 Posts a Good Q1

DB1’s MidPoint Mamba,

Russian Metals Banned,

And A Fond Farewell To Laura Cha

FEX Global Offer Puts Australia In Play,

NASDAQ Seeks A New Formula For The Cloud,

There's Talk Of Approval For An NSE IPO,

Gary Gensler’s Green Zeal Is Postponed,

LSE Investors Launch An ODD Pay Revolt,

& US T+1 Is Looming In <30 Working Days

JSE IPOs Rising, 

Props Throttled By EU Red Tape, 

Hong Kong Pushing Away From Men Only Boards, 

And Tokyo Shines As The Yamato Reforms Kick In

India Starts T+0,

Aquis Powers Ahead,

SGX Changing CCP Rules,

And JSE IPOs Rising

Amidst Typhoon Warnings, There's A Sino St. Petersburg Pivot And More Funding For Abaxx, 

As Johannesburg Starts To Cloud Hop, 

While The Big Sale Of The Week Is Bourse Dubai Trimming Their NASDAQ Stake.

Does ASX+ASIC=Awful?

Gazza G Shoehorns Climate Regulation Into the US Securities Regulation Sphere,

CBOE Says No Deal,

DB1 Has A New CEO,

And T Bond CCP Competition Is Coming To The USA...

Is T Bond Clearing Competition Looming? 

Amidst Multiple Worries & Thoughts From European Union,

FT Criticizes Its Core Readers,

NASDAQ Outlines Its Priorities,

As Hong Kong Exchanges Profits Soar!

There's A Big SGX Buyback, 

As We Celebrate, 

C+100 USA!

NZX Keeps Growing,

The Little Worm Makes Another South American Breakthrough… 

TCS Falls Over Again, 

Sound CME Results, 

And ASX In Shambles,

While EU Fin Mins Blame The Exchanges For Their Woes…

EU Suicide Move, 

TMX Goes For Box 2.0?, 

As DB1 Cries Subsidise Me,

There's A Terrific Trio Of Results At The Top Of Young's Pyramid

Nasdaq Outperforms,

SiX 36 Months To A Deal?,

NYSE Reddit?,

And A GPW Management Shake Up As Expected…

Ackmans’ Parish Boost,

Aquis Powers Ahead,

LSE Atrophies, 

And There's Good Results From IEX and JPX

Magna Carta For Markets? It’s the MicroConnect MAP,

Tadawul Rescues DME,

NYSE Pulls Back From Its Land Grab,

Gary Gensler Gets T Bonds CCP Clearing, 

& IMX Is Cleared To Build the First Health Futures Exchange

Adena Friedman Leads CES agenda as NASDAQ Verafin Highlights The Extent Of Financial Crime,

SEC Yet To Master 2FA,

Nikkei Invest in Wilshire Indexes - Is Mr FTSE Remaking The Band?

& FIA Worries About A 7x Margin Hike

TMX Completed VettaFi Acquisition, 

LSEG Under Duress With Talk of a Race to the Bottom,

As A New ICE Age Commences

There Is Another FCA Tinker, 

Overworked Swedes, 

And Calls To Break Up London Stock Exchange Group

T+1 Month Settlement Window For The UK Group To Suggest A T+1 Plan,

TMX Buys VettaFi, 

Hearty Congratulations To Bonnie Chan On Becoming The First Female CEO of Hong Kong Exchanges,

CBOE Unifies Its Canada Assets

New CME FX Markets,

EU Bond Tape Breakup,

LSEG Under Duress,

Yet London Raises More Capital Than Anywhere Else In Europe…

LME Defeats Elliott, 

And Thus LME Reboots, 

As There Are Winds Of Trading Change In Hong Kong, 

LCH Cuts Fees,

NASDAQ Wins The Nuam War,

And LSEG Remind Us Why They Dropped Off The Shortlist Of This Tender, As Their Systems Fall Over In LSE Once Again

ASIC Talks Tough, 

India's Conscious Coupling, 

Sino T Bonds Loom, 

ASX On The Rack, 

And St. Petersburg Lives

It's A Tale Of Two Techies,

BSBY Bye Bye,

Meanwhile In Crypto Land, 

The FUD has gone, as David Guetta Might Have Sung…

ADX Joins The ICE Network, 

Calcutta Reborn,

LME Raises Prices, 

Excellence At MOEX Amongst Other Results, 

As PLY Lands In Almaty, Kazakhstan To Celebrate The 30th Anniversary of KASE (Kazakhstan Stock Exchange)

NASDAQ Closes A $10.5 Billion Adenza Deal Alongside A Slew Of Excellent Parish Results, 

Amid Contrasting Tales Of Short Selling,

There's #Zeroshock As SBF Is Found Guilty

ICE CDS clearing leaves Europe as the EU drives the business across the Atlantic,

Everybody everywhere all of the time is guilty except SBF,

There's a new ICE Fixed Income boss,

…and RIP Patrick Birley.

NASDAQ Report Strong Numbers As Turkeys Vote For Christmas Down Under,

In Washington DC, The GG SEC Suspends Basic Economic Logic In The Long March Towards A Socialist USA,

HKMA Announces A Bond Expansion,

…And CME Has The Most Cash But May Not Use It For M&A

A Brave New LME World As London Metals Week Ushers In Greater Cooperation With The Shanghai Futures Exchange,

Hong Kong Has A Typhoon Broker Wobble As The Calls For The Departure Of The ASX Chairman Grow… 

And MIAX Announces A New Floor In Miami With The Proposed Launch Of The Sapphire Options Exchange

London Has Myopia,

In Chicago - The Love Has Gone,

And In Sydney: The RBA Are They Twisting The ASX Knife?

FTC Vs Amazon,

Cushing Crushed?

Another MCX TCS Delay.

Crypto Goes E2E if Not ESueE, 

As JPEX Implodes Amidst A Growing Hong Kong Clampdown,

And Is There A Fat Lady Aria For London?

As the UK Blob Launches Blamestormers Anonymous

CSR Whodunnit?,

MIAX Exudes SPIKES Appeal,

And Farewell To Ed Tilly,

Competition In Australia,

Sebi To T+0,

ICE Makes Mortgages Work,

Is Gary Gensler - Finance’s Kardashian?

And Elizabeth Sam Dies.

Deals Done!

TT Buys Abel Noser In A Super Speedy Completion

Tradeweb Complete Their Purchase Of Australian Platform Yieldbroker

And The Biggest News Of All: ICE Closed The Purchase Of Black Knight Within Hours Of The FTC Confirming They Were Permitting The Deal At Last.

It's A Big Week For Takeovers: ICE Black Knight Gets The Okay From The US FTC, While European Authorities Green Light The DB1 Purchase Of SimCorp

Hong Kong Exchanges Profit Surge,

Hong Kong Still Loves LME,

 A Naughty Parish Clone was on the loose,

 EEX Hits Antitrust,

…and CBOE have Canadian Options On Their Mind.

While legacy thrives, crypto dives, 

Adena buys her own stock,

SBF is jailed while resorting to pleading for his medicine.

LedgerEdge Closes,

Is The DOJ Blinking On Binance Charges?,

ICE Black Knight Springs Back To Life,

As Tokyo Goes International

ASX Under Pressure To Further Manage Its Conflict Of Interests,

Nigeria Says Absolutely No To Binance,

MCX Maintains Profitability Despite Re-enriching Jignesh Shah’s 63 Moons In The Interim While TCS Failed To Deliver The Replacement System - So Far,

And then there was our big story of the week: The Failed Promise.

Steady NASDAQ Growth As DB1,

Euroclear Makes Great Leaps Forward Thanks To Interest Income Growth,

CME Pauses With 3% Layoffs,

And Exchange Invest Finds The Barbie Effect

Nigerian Derivatives Go Live,

AIX Makes A Great Leap Forward,

ASIC CHESS Intervention,

And there’s a Big GIFT Horse Looking From India To The Rest Of The World.

LME Make A Chairman Surprise, 

DB1 SimCorp Delayed, 

There's a New B3 NASDAQ Deal, 

And the UK Extends Short Selling

New DB1 CEO is scheduled for 2024,

63 Moons has another Bagatelle deal,

Brian Winterflood Dies,

And we have GIFT Lift-Off,

National Stock Exchange Ordered Back To School,

Hong Kong Exchanges Open Their Office In New York City, 

And Euronext Exits Clearnet

China High Yield?, 

Hong Kong Dollar Renminbi - Dual Counter LiftOff!, 

Binance is Dying,

NASDAQ Goes Ex-Power

Adena’s Adenza Cadenza,

Vermiculus delivers in Minneapolis,

ITS A Go Go,

And ASX have gone almost orbital with their latest shark jump - pondering T+1 settlement after their CSD software upgrade collapsed following a T+700 delay.

Adam Smith 300 - No, that's not a NASCAR race!

Xavier Rolet skewers London’s market problems 

Binance D Day gives way to Coinbase getting sued too and TTF is back, baby! - as Bigworld meets the parish of bourses head on!

The LSE Public Markets Private Delusions, 

There's an EU Prop Crisis Looming, 

NASDAQ Secures The Arm Listing, 

Columbia Soars, 

And GreeCE Gains.

There's a New Chairman at NZX, 

Adena Friedman Argues for AI Regulatory Sense,

And 63 Moons Hit MCX’s Profits.

Shock New Chinese Regulator

As we celebrate a wonderful Hong Kong Double

While LSEG can’t sell you the tech for an exchange, they can open another Centre of Excellence for, er, Technology and best of all we have a golden commencement speech as Exchange Invest celebrates its 10th birthday.

Senator Gazza?, 

ICE Masterclass once again, 

Record CBOE Profits for their 50th anniversary, 

And indeed, a similar Happy Birthday at the half century mark to the DTCC.

Hong Kong Exchanges profits soar 28% as Hong Kong is open for business once again, 

NPM seeks to go T+10 from T+forever,

Euroclear’s Curious Windfall,

And we ask the question: what do the Taiwanese, Malaysian, Israeli and even Colombian CCPs have that LCH, ICE Clear London, LME Clear et al do not?

A Dangerous Consolidated Tape Row,

Nepalese Stampede,

NASDAQ Announce Co Presidents,

Ronan Ryan’s impassioned IEX plea…,

And it's a case of “deja vu one more time” for MIH and LedgerX

Transcript:

This week in the parish of bourses and market structure:   

Ameribor Swaps Owner

A Coup For eToro?

The London Stock Exchange Group Exits IT Sales

Transcript

This week in the parish of bourses and market structure:       

Crypto is dead!

Long live crypto! 

Goes my argument in an Op-Ed for City A.M. 

The FDIC issued a blistering cease and desist crypto warning 

…and the New York Stock Exchange half a billion dollar tick tweak 

My name is Patrick L. Young.

Welcome to the bourse business weekly digest.

It’s the Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast Episode 158.

Good day ladies and gentlemen, this is a very brief reduction of highlights amongst the key headlines from the week in market structure. All the analysis of the many events and happenings from the past seven days can be found in Exchange Invest’s daily subscriber newsletter, the unique guide to the bourse business sent daily to your inbox.

More details at ExchangeInvest.com.

A price improvement study as explained by CEO Michael Blaugrund from the NYSE this week on LinkedIn explains that a little tick tweaking here and investors can save a billion dollars or so what’s not to like about the concept of tech harmonization. 

The Hong Kong Exchange are going to be diversifying products and pursuing listing reforms in the special administrative region of China. HKEX CEO Nicolas Aguzin was revealing that plan in interviews in the aftermath of the HKEX results. Meanwhile, Stock Connect it’s going to have fewer holidays next year. Thanks to the wonders of the calendar and weekend coincidence, that ought to bring a $110 billion dollar trading boost to Hong Kong exchanges and the pertinent Chinese mainland forces in Shanghai and Shenzen. 

The UNCDF (United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to help develop Cambodia’s security sector. 

Over in Bangladesh, they’re having problems due to cabinet directives to save electricity in the wake of the current various issues relating to the power supply the world over. The new timing for all stock exchanges in Bangladesh will be from 9:30 am to 1:50 pm,  that started last Wednesday, 24th of August.

In results this week, it was a busy week for results in the parish. All the details were in Exchange Invest daily, the newsletter no person can afford to be without in capital markets and market structure. For the sake of this podcast let’s look at some edited highlights.

Singapore Exchange Group has posted record revenue, but unfortunately, net profits were only up, fractionally revenues +4% to overall $794.3 million, EBITDA however only creeping +1%. 

ASX Limited their revenue was +7.5%, their profits slightly better in improvement terms than the SGX +5.7% and meanwhile NZX they were a bit more flattish, EBITDA +2.8% over the course of the quarter.

New markets this week, another busy week for new markets and of course naturally what else could I say at this juncture but ladies and gentlemen, all of the details of the new markets that are coming developing with added pith can be found in Exchange Invest daily. 

Anyway, Russia they have presented a proposal to create a new precious metals exchange. They’re even proposing their own ambitious international standard for precious metals, dubbed the “Moscow World Standard” (MWS). 

Presumably, if you don’t settle promptly on the “Moscow World Standard” a man called Vladimir ensures 3 divisions of tanks arrived to demand the trade has made good?

Over in deal news this week, lots of buybacks taking place, the Hellenic Exchange has been buying back their own shares as has the London Stock Exchange group. Meanwhile, a revaluation rumba Robinhood slashed their acquisition offer to crypto app Ziglu by more than half. An aggressive unilateral reprice, has the Musk-Twitter playbook spawned a trend in FinTech? I wonder.

Elsewhere, Zagreb Bourse is on the open market boosting its stake in its Skopje counterpart, the Macedonian Stock Exchange to 29.98%. 

Good news from Cape Town, the Cape Town Stock Exchange (CTSE)  that’s the native city’s FinTech’s best stock exchange looking to encourage SME business, announced the closing of a $5 million or 85 million (R85-million)  funding round. 

Elsewhere, Valereum (that is of course a group of which PLY, the person talking to you from behind the microphone today is an Executive Director). Valereum we conditionally acquired a major shareholding in Vinanz Limited in exchange for the sale of our Bitcoin mining assets on Bitcoin holdings. Can’t say much about this as an insider but the modest mining arm of Valereum has been sold on to one of the biggest VLRM investors, David Lenigas and an associate will now build Vinanz so that they will be concentrating on their aspect of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining while Valereum will concentrate on its previous public aims of Gibraltar Stock Exchange takeover, awaiting regulatory permission and NFT projects. 

If you’re looking to try and understand better what all this FinTech malarkey means for you, then remember there’s a book for you “Victory or Death?” –  Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and the FinTech World, with a foreword by Jeff Sprecher is my most recent tome discussing the future of finance, markets, the blockchain cryptocurrency, and much much more. “Victory or Death?” is published by DV Books and is distributed by Ingram worldwide. 

Don’t forget also that you can access a huge raft of information free of charge, go to, for instance, YouTube, and look for IPO-Vid, where you can find a huge number of different Livestream, interviews as recorded over the course of the last couple of years and that series is coming back in just a few weeks time. 

In crypto land this week, well I have to lead with something that I contributed myself: Crypto Is Dead Long Live Crypto! That was the message that was coming from my Opinion Editorial piece (OpEd) in the City A.M. Newspaper, the voice of the City of London itself. It was mid-summer, it was Friday and Bitcoin may not be dead (yet) but I do believe it’s about to give way to the nextgen…those are #Excitingtimes as we look at how the big ex-Bitcoin transition is likely to happen over the course of the rest of the crypto winter whenever that might end and how that bites the legacy crypto industry and the great transition begins to crypto 2.0. 

Speaking of those who are trying to make the transition to crypto 2.0, none are feeling the pain more acutely than Coinbase. Their CEO Brian Armstrong, he’s been giving some quite interesting interviews this week, most notably on CNBC, about how they can possibly manage the crypto winter. “Anything could happen”, he said issuing stock crypto market predictions after a recent price collapse in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Somewhat of an endorsement, I think for my “Crypto Is Dead Long Live” crypto message. 

Meanwhile, Crypto.com got UK regulatory approval this week, but at the same time, Crypto.com has reportedly laid off hundreds of employees. Now that hundreds more employees than we were discussing on medium and LinkedIn in an article analyzing job losses across the crypto sector in the course of the first half of this year. Indeed, the latest round of cuts at Crypto.com appears not to have been mentioned publicly as one Crypto.com employee commented on LinkedIn: “The company is hiding the fact that they’ve laid off more than 1,000 employees even though they officially announced laying off 260” 

Meanwhile, as the crypto winter bites, the regulators have been biting admittedly slightly toothless on the part of the FDIC (they’re the people who ensure banking deposits in the United States of America) nonetheless, they sent a strongly worded letter cease and desist, they said to FTX US and four other entities who it seems had been hanging out we put this charitably erroneously stating that they had FDIC insurance backing for their customer deposits. 

I must say I found this a rather gutless statement by the FDIC. Hopefully, we’ll see a bit more backbone from the likes of Senator Elizabeth Warren in due course to make the US government actually enforce what amounted here to be, it seemed to the parish of exchanges, a prima facie example of companies fundamentally misleading clients to the safety of their deposited money. Whether this was just abject incompetence or outright nefarious activity was tough to discern but either way, it is, frankly a disgrace that US regulators are not taking more action, particularly given the fact that just a few months ago, the FDIC issued the same message to Voyager and what happened to Voyager? Oh, yeah, it’s going through chapter everything at the moment and about to disappear into, I would imagine bankruptcy emulation. 

We had lived in hope, of course, that the CFTC is paying close attention to this FDIC initiative and will use this compliance lapse by FTX is another reason not to pursue their flawed “a little $250 million – clears us of the deed” CCP proposals as Lady Macbeth might have termed them, had she been doing public policy advocacy for FTX. 

Speaking of FTX, they had an interesting leak last week, apparently, their revenue grew 1,000% during the crypto craze, and their revenue soared more than 1,000% from $89 million to $1.02 billion in 2021. Operating income was $272 million up from $14 million a year earlier. FTX saw a net income of $388 million during the course of last year, up from just 17 million in the previous year. 

Now, an optimist would be hugely impressed by these numbers in raw statistical form, they look awesome. A more cynical soul might ponder a series of points, for example. Just how much fundraising FTX may need, as, after all, it has been spending a lot on rescuing / acquiring different burning crypto entities of late. A billion dollars has been mentioned even in interviews with the FTX founder Samuel Bankman-Fried himself. Then again, some might consider the angle that FTX has been rumoured to be doing the twin funding tango on their own corporate assets (that’s topco and the US subsidiary) a little bit of a concern given just how profitable they were during the course of the last year. 

That doesn’t altogether the fact that they’re looking for twin funding, ie they’re trying to raise funding at the topco and/or the US subsidiary or indeed on both, we believe it may be that ultimately FTX balance sheet is just as safe as it might be despite the stratospheric growth before crypto winter bit. Then again, what would the multiple of FTX US actually be at the moment as it only amounts to apparently 7% of total US crypto business, presumably that spin is a big growth number which is part of the reason why they’re trying to raise on either or indeed both of these entities. 

Others might say it’s just convenient to have such a document leak at this point when we believe FTX are trying to raise money, or it’s a case of this document has been so widely distributed, which some might say could smack of funding desperation that in their search for series, whatever, ultimately the results have appeared in the public domain. 

Meanwhile, over at Binance, their CEO CZ has cautioned investors against crypto bad players. I wonder who on earth he could have been speaking about. 

Elsewhere, hackers have apparently impersonated the CCO of Binance Patrick Hillmann in a series of video calls with several representatives of crypto projects. Sounds like another nail in the Work From Home coffin to me at least if you make meetings with people face to face it’s a lot harder to plant dummy staff.

In product news this week, well it seemed to be almost all about ICE. ICE launched 10 carbon credit futures vintages extending out to 2030. ICE has seen early industry support for its new US residential mortgage futures and the terminal transfer fees have been waived. Well, actually the wave has been extended I ought to say for the ICE Midland West Texas Intermediate AGC futures, which are making such a fascinating stir around the storage points of Houston. in competing against the rather decrepit Cushing WTI concept contract listed on the CME. 

Speaking of the CME they’re going to be launching Ether options on September 12th, which will in fact be just ahead of the infamous ‘merge’ of the Ethereum blockchain as they jumped from proof of work to proof of stake. 

Moscow Exchange finally this week they have banned the use of dollars as collateral from August 29th. 

In technology news this week, there’s a bit of a whoops nasty brewing at MCX (Multi Commodity Exchange). Even SEBI have raised concerns over the uncertainty of the implementation deadline. SEBI has been told by MCX that MCX has chosen vendor TCS will not be able to deploy the new system in September as planned. 

Now, I’m not sure what the Gujarati for ‘schadenfreude’ is, but this is the perfect dictionary example to accompany it. 

MCX (Multi Commodity Exchange) of India, as you will recall was the brainchild of Jignesh Shah and indeed it was his poster business as he expanded into the exchange world. Jignesh was unceremoniously thrown out of the MCX over the National Spot Exchange fiasco. Financial Technologies now known as 63 Moons were banned from tendering the replacement of their system at the MCX exchange last year. 

Now, TCS has failed to deliver, leaving the Multi Commodity Exchange’s new management having to go cap in hand with Financial Technologies, who at the best of times have retained shark-like perceptiveness when there are a few molecules of blood in the water.

 The MCX is now openly bleeding from an artery with no sign of rescue. Clearly, the legacy vendor will not so much be demanding a pound of flesh as pondering whether to leave any flesh behind when calculating its interim fee… From Macbeth and FTX we have Shylock personified in the Indian parish of exchanges.

 And thus, in what is only a brief review of the many exciting pieces of news in the world of exchanges. If you want to see and read them all, you need to be a subscriber to Exchange Invest daily, which is well worth the money at only $300 a year these days. 

However, let’s look at “Big World” finally to wrap out the week. First of all, a little reported fact: Greece last weekend concluded 12 years of European Union fiscal surveillance that was imposed in return for multiple bailouts after their crushing debt Euro crisis. 

Paolo Gentiloni, the European Commissioner for economy stated: “The end of enhanced surveillance for Greece also marks the symbolic conclusion of the most challenging period the Euro has experienced”, that’s presumably until the next Euro crisis and of course, this all happened just days ahead of the Euro crashing below parity against the US dollar. 

Over in South America, Argentina is preparing to restrict imports amid a foreign exchange shortage yet again, and indeed, an Argentine Presidential candidate has been sued for promoting a crypto Ponzi scheme.

Given pretty much every Argentine President (and please message me if you can think of any exceptions) since World War 2 has been running a Ponzi scheme masquerading as a national economy, should this not be a badge of honour in the perverse world of Argentine (for want of a better term) political ‘economics’?

And on that mysterious and magnificent note, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Patrick L. Young, creator of exchanges and markets the world over, advisor to exchange markets the world over, and indeed also the publisher of the Exchange Invest news service for the bourse business. 

I want to wish you all a very good week in blockchain, life, and markets. We’ll be back next week for episode 159.

LINKS

Price Improvement Study Suggests Tick Harmonization Could Save Investors $1B+
Michael Blaugrund, NYSE COO LinkedIn

Price Improvement, Tick Harmonization & Investor Benefit
NYSE

HKEX Will Diversify Products And Pursue Listing Reforms
South China Morning Post

Hong Kong Exchange Sees Further Headwinds After First-Half Profit Drop
Reuters

Stock Connect: Fewer Holidays To Bring US$110 Billion Trading Boost For HKEX And Mainland Bourses
South China Morning Post

UNCDF Signs Deal To Help Develop Cambodia’s Stock Exchange
NNN

Stock Exchanges In Bangladesh Cut Trading Hours By 10 Mins 
The Business Standard

SGX Group Reports FY2022 Net Profit Of S$456 Million
SGX

ASX Limited Full-Year Results 2022
ASX

Russia Presents Proposal To Create New Precious Metals Exchange
ValueWalk

Hellenic Exchanges S.A. Purchases Of Own Shares
ATHEX

Robinhood Slashes Acquisition Offer To Crypto App Ziglu By More Than Half
Sifted

Zagreb Bourse Boosts Stake In Skopje Counterpart To 29.98%
SeeNews

Valereum Conditionally Acquires Major Shareholding In Vinanz Ltd In Exchange For Sale Of Bitcoin Mining Assets And Bitcoin Holdings
Valereum

Crypto Is Dead Long Live Crypto!
City A.M.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Reveals New Details About Pivot To Subscriptions

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong On Managing The Crypto Winter
CNBC

‘Anything Could Happen’—Coinbase CEO Issues Stark Crypto Market Prediction After Bitcoin And Ethereum Price Collapse
Forbes

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong: CNBC interview
CNBC

Crypto.com Gets UK Regulatory Approval
The Economic Times

FDIC Sends Cease And Desist Letter To FTX US, Four Others Over Insurance Statements
Yahoo

FTX Grew Revenue 1,000% During The Crypto Craze: Leaked Financials
CNBC

Binance CEO Warns Investors Of Crypto’s Bad Players
TronWeekly

Hackers Used Deepfake Of Binance CCO To Perform Exchange Listing Scams
Bitcoin.com News

ICE Launches 10 Carbon Credit Futures Vintages Extending Out To 2030
ICE

ICE Sees Early Industry Support for New U.S. Residential Mortgage Futures

ICE U.S. Residential Mortgage Rate Lock Indices
ICE

Terminal Transfer Fee Waiver Extended For ICE Midland WTI AGC Futures
ICE

CME Group To Launch Ether Options On September 12
CME

Why The CME Will Launch Ethereum Options Ahead Of “Merge”
Bitcoinist

Moscow Exchange To Ban Use Of Dollars As Collateral From Aug. 29
Reuters

MCX Tech Transition: SEBI Raises Concern Over Uncertainty Of Implementation Deadline
The Hindu Business Line

Argentina Prepares To Restrict Imports Amid Foreign Exchange Shortage
Nasdaq

Argentina Presidential Candidate Sued For Promoting A Crypto Ponzi Scheme
CryptoPotato

TP ICAP in decent results shock

Huobi is for sale

…and could Adena Friedman be returning to an old stomping ground?

My name is Patrick L. Young.

Welcome to the bourse business weekly digest.

It’s the Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast Episode 157.

Good day ladies and gentlemen, this is a very brief reduction of highlights amongst the key headlines from the week in market structure. All the analysis of the many events and happenings of the past seven days can be found in Exchange Invest’s daily subscriber newsletter, the unique guide to the bourse business sent daily to your inbox.

More details at ExchangeInvest.com.

Just a thought to start off from mid-summer with the US dollar in the stratosphere it’s interesting that so far we have yet to see a real drive for mergers and acquisitions from the western side of the Atlantic. Yet, Biden’s economic confusion isn’t a recession, isn’t a recession, well, whatever, it’s driven the greenback up and up and up and it entitles a corporate form of “exorbitant privilege” to those who earn US dollars on their balance sheet. 

Will we as a result see an M&A boom out of the USA towards the UK and Europe? Or is the US worried about the Ukraine situation (already heading CEE/SEE tourism and business trips hard, even in places far from the conflict). It could even be that a pro-business new UK PM (presuming they choose Liz Truss over the spendthrift Rishi Sunak) might be the recipient of more bids come the autumn? Watch this space. It could be exciting, particularly in the parish of bourses. 

Speaking of the parish of bourses specifically interesting to see that new brokers building up their commodities franchises from China, they are skeptical about the Baltic Exchange, earning its motto. When some Chinese brokers are unconvinced by “my word is my bond” then all of a sudden, it would appear the SGX owned London Baltic Exchange has reached a form of contango in the kettle pot black methodology with these accusations from China. 

The Moscow Exchange are opening its bond market to non-residents from what they termed “friendly” countries, ie the countries that have not sanctioned Russia as a result of their invasion of Ukraine. There’s still no news on stock trading access derivatives have been enabled and since Victorian Japan day, August 15. 

Non-sanctioned or at least non-sanctioning nations against Russia can play in the Moscow bond market. At the same time there is a Russian law firm that’s seeking to unfreeze funds tied up with Euroclear and indeed, the Russian Central Depository is removing fees for the transfer of stock in certain circumstances again, all trying to get around these sanctions at the same time as various hedge funds are placing into their side pockets Russian assets. 

Dubai Clear and the Saudi Securities Central Clearing Company “Muqassa” have signed a memorandum to promote mutual cooperation and share knowledge. At same time the Philippine bourse, President Ramon Monzon said in a virtual briefing that he expects there could be up to 150 billion pesos (about $2.7 billion in real money) a record number of IPOs on the Philippine bourse this year. 

Also looking optimistic, Victoria Falls VFEX can be a magnet for capital according to the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange CEO Justin Bgoni. Indeed he said the government could make Victoria Falls a Zimbabwean “Hong Kong” and transform it into a magnet for capital as the country leverages on capital markets for economic growth exploiting the US dollar-denominated Victoria Falls Exchange. Certainly, there’s a phrase to conjure with a “Zimbabwean Hong Kong”.

In results news this week, it was a very busy week for results in the parish all the details were in Exchange Invest daily. Unfortunately, Hong Kong Exchange were somewhat disappointing, but at the same time when you’ve got all those C’s together, China closed down COVID ccan result in an economic problem or two, and there have certainly been fewer IPOs in recent months, if only because of COVID itself, as well as a general malaise in stock markets per se, both in China and overseas. Interesting, fun fact well, probably not a fun fact, if you’re a homeowner, the Chinese property market has now been down for 11 consecutive months.

TP ICAP they surprised with actually good numbers. We saw there and adjusted EBIT +15% for once TP ICAP did not disappoint, and the stock has now rallied 50% from its loss – albeit that has to be put in the perspective of the fact that it has still even on those recent highs declined something like 75% over the years. Me thinks a single swallow just means he’s lost touch with his flock and all that malarkey.

In new market news this week, trading on Egypt’s Commodity Exchange is going to be starting in Q1 of 2023 and we got a lot of exciting news on carbon, the Indonesian Exchange and the Indonesian Commodity Derivatives Exchange are both competing in the hope that they will be appointed the institution to organize carbon trading in Indonesia. That of course came against the backdrop of a report as noted by the AFR (Australian Financial Review) the ‘Fragmented, Inefficient, Uncomplicated’ carbon market needs fixing. Large numbers of blobsters are now gathering in sunny places across the planet to try and do the fixing. Me thinks the bottom-up market approach might actually be better, but we shall see. 

Anyway, another exciting new carbon market coming soon, Bourse Malaysia is going to be launching a voluntary carbon market by the end of the year, and they’ll be adopting Verra the Verified Carbon Standards to ensure the integrity of the carbon credits. 

Deals news this week, interesting news in deals this week. First of all, the Chinese crypto tycoon, founder of Huobi Leon Li is in talks with investors to sell his majority stake in the Huobi Group at a valuation of up to $3 billion, according to reports by Bloomberg. 

Elsewhere another much, much smaller deal, ABRDN that’s the fund manager named after the city of Aberdeen and headquartered in Edinburgh in Scotland, they’ve taken a stake in the digital exchange Archax. “Blockchain technologies are inevitably going to form a big part of the future of financial markets,” Abrdn Chief Executive Stephen Bird has said.

Now ladies and gentlemen if you’d asked me last week, what was the future of Archax I would have said “insolvency”. Having heard that Abrdn has invested, I would posit that the long-term future of Archax is…still insolvency. It has big ambitions and – to be fair – a broad regulatory tableau of UK licences are at the core of this wannabe exchange but there’s the rub “Wannabe”. Two full years has now passed since Archax were regulated by the FCA and yet they have failed to launch a single market which worries me. Who in the modern world can afford to staff 24 months of non-execution not even launched market? We’re not talking about a market that doesn’t have any listings because it’s launched. It still has not been launched. The management is sound in many respects, but they are big corporate types. Evidence they have the startup hustle or mojo is just not clear. Moreover, constant rumours of mega money investments have not in fact eventuated at the required scale to pay (rather hig) bills, including that prime office in the tower beside the Bank of England where the London Stock Exchange used to have its headquarters pre-Paternoster Square. 

All in all, I have to say I think the Abrdn investment sounds more like a bit of a damp squib. Hopefully, I am spectacularly wrong, but I think Archax has set itself on a path to financial failure, even before it managed to actually launch. The latter will apparently finally take place this year. I’m not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, if you’re trying to catch up and understand better the world of digital markets, you need to read my latest book “Victory or Death?” – Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and the FinTech world, it’s published by DV Books and distributed by Ingram worldwide. While you’re waiting for your copy of “Victory or Death?” to arrive, while we are on our summer holidays from producing Livestreams, you can catch all the back episodes. They are available on Facebook, YouTube and indeed linked and if you go to YouTube, for example, search IPO-Vid to get all of the output, hundreds of hours of viewing, suitable for all the families that are interested in greater financial literacy.

In crypto land, well, lots of sad news all round, and we’re seeing crypto exchanges to the left and the right of us going bankrupt. Nuri GmbH, one of Germany’s largest crypto exchanges filed for insolvency with the Berlin Court this week. EQONEX have closed down their crypto exchange, they’re going to be focusing on funds and other products nonetheless Binance says its winning clients thanks to inflation, although this week Binance was amongst the crypto exchanges blocked in a clamp down in Uzbekistan but at the same time, they got approval to operate in a nearby stan Kazakhstan.

Binance is distancing themselves from Wazirx as Indian regulators keep chasing crypto and indeed we saw similarly a problem this week where the Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange vauld saw its assets frozen and some $46 million being seized by the Indian authorities in a money laundering probe. Meanwhile, back to creditor protection, Singapore, their exchange Zipmex has been granted three months of creditor protection as it struggles to avoid a full-on bankruptcy. 

Product news this week, interesting to note actually that China’s IPO market has still been booming (certainly booming relative to the rest of the world anyway) during what has been a challenging time for the western world is NASDAQ going to manage to be resiliently out of its recent bear market as it approaches bull market territory once again in the course of the last week. Nonetheless, there’s a stop for you in the first six months of 2022 the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges accounted for almost half of the world’s IPO proceeds. 

Much more modest ambitions in Africa, Angola, finally they have got their first IPO coming to market. “Will It Open the Privatisation Floodgates? African Business magazine was asking while there’s bad news, the ongoing audit spat continues between the USA and China. Five Chinese state-owned companies announced last week they’re going to delist from the New York Stock Exchange. 

In technology news this week, SEBI are going to use their ‘fund blocking’ mechanism to empower investors. Essentially, you’re going to be able to much more easily take money from retail investors who can’t block it before they actually complete trade and therefore, they can bring the entire market under the T+1 settlement regime leveraging the efficiency and the payment system built by the Reserve Bank of India the Central Bank and thus making near real time settlements a reality, at least in retail trades. 

Unfortunately, New Zealand Exchange (NZX) has a slight technology glitch this week. The markets kept trading but investors could not locate company announcements for a few hours. Finally, a little heartening news from ASX and their troubled blockchain projects. We know that they’ve been having years of problems with digital assets and indeed there is a semi-permanent it seems state of delay. We await the end of the hiatus when finally a CHESS replacement is ready. Nonetheless, the ASX has scored a much-needed modest win for its world’s first blockchain settlement scheme, which will of course actually not be the world’s first blockchain settlement scheme at an established exchange by the time they have implemented it. They’ve completed a test pilot with Melbourne-based digital custody providers Zerocap to show how ASX-listed companies could store and trade all kinds of digital assets via the ASX’s infrastructure. 

Regulation news this week, wow meme stock news, way back when, you know, “man down!” meant a soldier was going to be rescued on the battlefield. In financial markets, it now means that the troops of Gary Gensler SEC will come in and give you a PTSD kicking after whatever the trauma was that killed your business in the first place. That I imagine is how they must feel over at Melvin Capital Management, the people who lost the most from shorting game stock, including ultimately their entire fund. They’re being investigated by the SEC just to pile oil on troubled waters. 

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren seeking to pour a little more oil on some various waters, whether they’re troubled or not. She’s pushing for the SEC to crack down further on insider stock sales and the US courts have authorized a service of a John Doe summons seeking the identities of US taxpayers who have used cryptocurrency. Deputy Assistant Attorney General David A. Hubbert of the Justice Department’s Tax Division noted: “The information sought by the summons approved today will help to ensure that cryptocurrency owners are following the tax laws. Taxpayers who transact with cryptocurrency should understand that income and gains from cryptocurrency transactions are taxable”.

Career news this week, the National Stock Exchange held an extraordinary general meeting. They have passed a resolution resoundingly. So Ashish Chauhan is their new MD and CEO.

Meanwhile, a bit of shareholder upheaval or at least angst. A lawsuit has been filed against Cantor Chief Howard Lutnick saying his $50 million bonus package was undeserved. Of course, parishioners will recall that we recovered what appears to a rather outsized relative to other Ceo’s $12 million in annual remuneration in our Magnificent Seven Chart (you can find that via Echange Invest or Patrick L Young on medium and LinkedIn) and now we discover there’s a $50 million bonus package to boot. Congratulations to Dr. Giorgi Paresishvili he has been appointed the new chairman of the Toshkent. Republic Stock Exchange he’s also been the head of the Georgia Stock Exchange from 2014 to the present and chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Georgian Securities Depository at the same time. 

However, the big news in career paths this week is a rumour: “Who could succeed David Rubenstein as CEO of the Carlyle Group? Bloomberg profiled the runners and riders that they deemed to be on the shortlist and parishioners will be fascinated to note that one amongst their number is Adena Friedman, CEO of NASDAQ. Of course as a former CFO, Adena would be ideally placed to run Carlyle while her excellent stewardship of NASDAQ would be in her favour but then again right now, which offers the most opportunities #InterestingTimes – at least for those who can perceive the possibilities of the nexus of digital markets, legacy bourses, data technology et al. which clearly Adena has been proving from her hot seat at NASDAQ. 

Now, amidst all this recessionary talk, there are some very, very contradictory currents. Yes, the property is wobbling in places, I mentioned earlier, the fact that Chinese property has been down 11 months in a row and there are a lot of supply chain SNAFUS out there but one set of results this quarter looked remarkable to me – and actually it was not alone amongst luxury product companies reporting in recent weeks: Ferrari the purveyors of fine automobiles from modern Italy reported such a strong order book that they promptly hiked prices without it seems dislodging a single advance booking. 

There’s something happening here, which doesn’t, in my humble opinion, spell widespread or long lasting / deep recession – and then again, of course, wholesale commodity prices are no longer stratospheric either, although of course the energy impact is more than acute for all the poor folks, particularly in say Europe amongst other nations where Gisa-lust in their case was coupled with Russian gas to create a potential economic catastrophe which may yet lead to a spot of blood on the streets this winter.

On a separate note, formerly QE obsessed western central bankers are now modelling interest rate policy and these inflationary times based on Buzz Lightyear’s maxim “to infinity and beyond!”. However, there’s an outlier in the East and that presages tough times in at least the world’s most populous country: China this week, lowered their benchmark rates, yes, lowered their benchmark interest rates by 10 basis points. 

And on that mysterious and magnificent note, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Patrick L. Young creator of exchange, publisher of the Daily bourse business newsletter information service Exchange Invest. 

I wish you all a great week in blockchain, life and markets.

LINKS:

China’s Newbuilding Brokers Believe The Baltic Exchange Has Yet To Earn Its Motto
TradeWinds

Moscow Exchange To Open Bond Market For Non-Residents From “Friendly” Countries
Reuters

Russian Law Firm Seeks To Unfreeze Funds Tied Up With Euroclear
Reuters

Dubai Clear And Saudi’s Securities Clearing Center Company “Muqassa” Sign Memorandum To Promote Mutual Cooperation And Share Knowledge
Zawya

Philippine Bourse President Sees Record Number Of IPOs This Year
Bloomberg

‘Vic Falls, VFEX Can Be Magnet For Capital’
The Zimbabwe Mail

TP ICAP Group Plc Financial And Interim Management Report For The Six Months Ended 30 June 2022
TP ICAP

TP ICAP Beats Profit Estimates As Market Volatility Persists
Reuters

Trading On Egypt’s Commodity Exchange To Start In Q1 of 2023
Egypt Today

IDX, ICDX Compete to Become Carbon Trading Operators
D-Insights – Katadata

‘Fragmented, Inefficient, Complicated’ Carbon Market Needs Fixing
AFR

Malaysia’s Bourse To Launch Voluntary Carbon Market By Year-End
Reuters

Chinese Crypto Tycoon Wants $3 Billion for Huobi Stake Deal

BeInCrypto

Chinese Founder Of Crypto Exchange In Talks To Sell $3bn Majority Stake
International Investment

ABRDN Takes Stake In Digital Exchange
Archax

Abrdn Buys Stake In Digital Assets Exchange Archax
Nasdaq

Nuri Files For Insolvency
Crypto News

EQONEX Latest To Leave ‘Crowded’ Crypto Exchange Space
Blockworks

Binance Says It Is Winning Crypto Clients Thanks To Inflation
Reuters

Binance Among Crypto Exchanges Blocked As Uzbekistan Clamps Down
CoinDesk

Binance Receives Preliminary Approval To Operate In Kazakhstan
CoinDesk

Binance Distances From Wazirx As Indian Regulators Keep Chasing Crypto
Cointelegraph

India Seizes $46 Million From Crypto Exchange Vauld In Money-Laundering Probe
Yahoo

Singapore Court Grants Zipmex Three-Month Creditor Protection
Bloomberg

Why China’s Booming IPO Market Isn’t Exactly Good News For The Country’s Economy
Fortune

Will Angola’s First IPO Open Privatisation Floodgates?
African Business

Five Chinese State-Owned Companies To Delist From NYSE
Economic Times

SEBI’s ‘Fund Blocking’ Mechanism To Empower Investors
The Economic Times

NZX Technology Glitch Leaves Investors Searching For Company Announcements
Stuff NZ

Testing Glitch Takes Out NZX Announcement Feed
NZ Herald

ASX Scores A Blockchain Win At Last
AFR

SEC Investigating Melvin Capital Management
Fox Business

Warren Renews Push For SEC To Crack Down On Insider Stock Sales
Bloomberg

National Stock Exchange Okays Ashish Chauhan As New Chief
Telegraph India

Ashish Chauhan’s Appointment As NSE MD & CEO Approved By Shareholders
MSN

Cantor Chief Lutnick’s $50 Million Bonus Was Undeserved, Lawsuit Says
BNN Bloomberg

Giorgi Paresishvili Is Being Appointed As New Toshkent Chairman Of The Board
UzDaily

Here’s Who Wall Street Is Betting Could Be Carlyle’s Next CEO
Bloomberg

This week in the parish of bourses and market structure:       

JamStockEx powers ahead while ICE posts sound numbers once again while Xpansiv makes its second acquisition in a month.

LSEG reckons it’s on target to achieve whatever it thinks is a target for Refinitiv 

while we’re not sure anybody believes this

…and Coinbase appears to be cracking. 

My name is Patrick L. Young.

Welcome to the bourse business weekly digest.

It’s the Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast Episode 156.

Good day ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode 156, what a pleasant alpha male that was back in the day. This is a very brief reduction of highlights amongst the key headlines from the week in market structure. All the analysis of the many events and happenings of the past seven days can be found in Exchange Invest’s daily subscriber newsletter, the unique guide to the bourse business sent daily to your inbox.

More details at ExchangeInvest.com.

The alleged BTC-e operator Alexander Vinnik is now in US custody after being immediately extradited from Greece after proceedings concluded there last week while Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev dismiss the possibility of his firm Robinhood being acquired by Charles Schwab or the crypto exchange FTX or indeed anybody will do the acquiring, he said boldly. That led me in Exchange Invest wonder what if, say both Robinhood and FTX don’t survive? That might amount to #BlueSkyThinking. 

One market that looks as if it’s not going to survive is predicted, by the University of Wellington, New Zealand’s prediction market, the CFTC in an oblique judgment this week, their staff withdrew the no-action letter relating to the market which had become a favorite for political prediction market betting. 

Meanwhile, the London Stock Exchange boss out of his depth Dave Schwimmer and I agree on something we should teach about the City of London at school, teaching people about the financial world in schools could unleash a new generation of investors according to the chief executive of the London Stock Exchange noted This As Money this week. We cannot agree more with this excellent sentiment. Classical education is good, STEM highly useful, but the abject lack of real-world skills taught in schools is a hindrance to bringing children into adulthood in the modern age. 

The Moscow Exchange delayed access this week for non-residents from what might be termed friendly countries to Russia, presumably fear of a mass onslaught of selling being the reason why they cannot yet access the market. Meanwhile, a bit of an onslaught in Sri Lanka, the new president Ranil questioned whether the Colombo Stock Exchange was a valid platform for state-owned enterprises to be privatized upon – the reason being is the market rigged? 

As president Wickremesinghe himself said: “Either you all must change or we put up a new institution. I don’t want any more arguments on that. If you have to use the present Stock Exchange, we must all be satisfied that it is neutral and benefits all”

One market that is absolutely neutral and benefits all, right across the continent of Europe and beyond, the Sweden’s Junior Market. First North, we interviewed Erja Retzen as IPO video guest #54, where we discussed her platform From First North To Infinity and Beyond and indeed this week, the Financial Times gave a glowing tribute to Erja and her team’s magnificent work under the headline: Sweden’s Junior Market Becomes Europe’s Hottest For Growth Stocks. Congratulations NASDAQ or Erja Retzen and the entire team. 

In results this week, it was a frantic week for results, we’re gonna give you edited highlights this week because all the detail were in Exchange Invest daily, the newsletter no person can afford to be without in capital markets and market structure. For the sake of this podcast, here are the edited highlights but don’t forget you can sign up for a free 30-day trial to Exchange Invest. Just drop us a message, DM us on social media or contact us via Exchange Invest.com

ICE reported strong on Q2 2022, despite many voices beforehand, thinking that things were going to look weak. Volatile markets drove up trading volumes and that helped the overall profitability to grow during the course of the year, operating income +9% adjusted operating income +12%, an operating margin of 48% and net revenues +6% year on year. Pretty helpful for a behemoth and as ever some great words of wisdom, Jeff Sprecher himself in the results call discussing their expansion into the mortgage market. 

“It’s odd to me that you can buy a completely consumable good, you can buy toothpaste on an online platform and when you go to checkout, it’ll ask you if you want to buy now and pay later, knowing that an algorithm underwrote your credit against no collateral and yet, it takes almost two months for somebody to refinance a mortgage in a house that they live in, that has a foundation that’s in the ground that has an address that you can see from space that is part of Maslow’s hierarchy of need of safety and security and will be abandoned by that person, the last thing they do. And yet, an existing mortgage talking to their bank takes two months.”

Wise words from Jeff Sprecher there and a very good reason why the conventional banking and mortgage business is in chaos. 

Indeed, if that isn’t a perfect example of why fintech improves the world – and how the analogue world needs a kick in the soft underbelly towards well, we might call it Capital Market Revolution, I don’t know what is. As always, the Jeff Sprecher and Friends Quarterly Masterclass was unmissable alongside another set of very sound results from the entrepreneurial behemoth of ICE. 

Elsewhere, Thomson Reuters reported Q2 results and oh the irony of this, Thomson Reuters complained that their bottom line is being dragged down by the London Stock Exchange Groups being subjected to Refinitiv Stockholm Syndrome. If LSEG had a coherent board, this would be the ultimate moment of shame for the wide ranging vertical silos Xav built, which the ODD one has proceeded to place in a corporate coma. 

Nonetheless, the LSEG were making claims that their Refinitiv costs and savings are on track. Rumours the LSEG have replaced their agitprop team with operatives formerly assisting with Russian military PR for the Putin invasion of Ukraine could not be verified as we race to record this podcast. However, if you believe LSEG and you have any RFPs going for bridges, we have inventory to offer you. LSEG is also buying back stock they started already it’s a total purchase plan of £750 million of stock.

 And that leads us finally to Coinbase and the great disappointment of the week, a 63% drop in revenue amidst crypto winter biting home. A lot of bleating frankly from the other analyst call there and not a great deal that really gives us pause for confidence in the future of what might be Coinbase despite their announcing that recent deal with BlackRock over the possibility of crypto-related funds.

In the new markets this week ladies and gentlemen, it was a very busy week once again for new markets in the parish, all of the information were in Exchange Invest daily, the newsletter no person can afford to be without in capital markets and market structure. Looking at the edited highlights let’s pick one this week:

MEMX, their sell-side, by-side organized cabal that have a stock exchange platform of their own, they’ve gained SEC approval to trade options. Expect MEMX options to launch in 2023, which will be one of a myriad of platforms in the very very packed US equity options market business. 

Deals news this week, let’s pick a couple of highlights, buying back their stock, I already mentioned the London Stock Exchange. Hellenic Exchanges, they’re also buying back their shares and indeed last week we saw Zagreb in Croatia buying back some of their stock. Xpansiv led the deals this week -they’re acquiring Evolution Markets, and expanding their environmental market infrastructure. That of course is a very interesting way that they’re spending their recent funding from Blackstone, who invested $400 million earlier in July and it’s now driven a second deal, the first being Xpansiv Acquiring APX at the start of August. 

The Qatar Central Depository Company (QCSD) they’ve amended the percentage of foreign ownership and Doha Bank they’ve now become 100% of the capital. QCSD is owned by both the Qatar Central Bank and the Qatar Exchange of course. 

Now, ladies and gentlemen you may be struggling to get to grips with the world of fintech, financial markets et al. Daily, of course in your inbox, there’s the opportunity to read Exchange Invest. Just DM us or sign up via the ExchangeInvest.com website for a free trial at your leisure. 

At the same time, you might want some longer reading, I would recommend a “Victory or Death?” – Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and the FinTech World. My latest book, is an easy read understanding how the world of FinTech has advanced. Well, coming up for 23 years after I wrote the first best-selling book of FinTech “Capital Market Revolution!” in 1999. “Victory or Death” is published by DV Books and is distributed by Ingram worldwide. 

While you’re waiting for your copy of “Victory or Death” to arrive don’t forget, you can still check out ourLlivestreams. We’re on summer holidays at the moment, but we’re running some judicious repeats in the Tuesday 6pm London, 1pm New York time slot. You can catch all our back episodes on IPO-Vid by searching on YouTube, they’re also available on Facebook and LinkedIn. 

And don’t forget we had our last live guest Steven Sears discussing “Developing Your Options”. The co-founder of Options Solution dropped many pithy and wonderful insights. I think one of the absolute gems was “Bad investors think of ways to make money but good investors think of ways to not lose money”. 

The next show is coming up in September, but catch the repeats every Tuesday and of course, all the back archive of information is available. Check it out, for example on YouTube by searching for IPO-Vid. 

In crypto land this week, every US crypto exchange and Binance is being investigated by the SEC, according to a staffer in the office of Senator Lummis. That’s particularly significant because the platform from which we learned this nugget – was Forbes – which is 20% owned by Binance as they await (perhaps forlornly) a SPAC deal for the publishing platform. Nonetheless, when Forbes is announcing the fact that their semi-parent company Binance is under investigation, we have to take it seriously. 

Elsewhere, it’s something that was rather difficult to take seriously this week was, who actually owns WazirX. 

WazirX has been gripped by panic over the course of the past week. First of all, because of problems with the crypto platform. Second of all, because it has long been thought to be owned by Binance, whereas in reality Binance doesn’t seem to own it. It’s very difficult to understand what’s going on here but it seems to be another wacky tale in the history of Binance, which was never based in Malta, other than the base that apparently had in Malta, etc, etc. and a multitude of other curious quirks to the Binance history. Even by Binance standards, the whole idea of whether or not they actually own a particular asset, which is a major exchange that they have in the past, apparently been alleged to own sounds curious.

Coinbase was in the news, of course with those dreadful results at the same time, they had some good news they inked with BlackRock, a crypto trading partnership targeting institutional clients as I mentioned earlier. They were also asking the US Supreme Court to hold lawsuits connected to stock scams and Dogecoin while their ex-employee was accused of insider trading, he’s pleaded not guilty. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of concern about that Ishan Wahi case. Many different legal analysts raising concerning questions about the SEC action gainst the former Coinbase employee.

In product news this week, many US-listed Chinese firms may not actually meet the bar to be listed on the Hong Kong Exchange. That could cause a major issue for those who have been left in audit limbo because of the disagreement between the Chinese and the US authorities. 

The CME group has announced a Q4 2022 launch of European Overnight Index futures. August 29th CME Group will be launching Euro-denominated Bitcoin and Ether futures while the JSE in Johannesburg are considering carbon credit trading. People are already active in that field, of course, ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) announced this week they’re going to be hosting auctions of nature-based carbon removal credits for green trees. 

Over in Moscow Exchange they’ve started trading bonds with Chinese Yuan settlement at the same time as they’ve announced that they will no longer be trading in Japanese Yen and Central Bank Digital Currency news of the week Thailand pilot CBDC could commence later this year while Australia is exploring the case for a CBDC to be launched. 

Technology news this week, well, it was dominated once again by the aftermath of the ASX delaying the CHESS rollout for the 5th time and it’s the users who are paying noted by the Australian Financial Review. 

In this tragic fiasco where ASX and DAH look horribly mediocre, the good news is that we may have only another 18 months or so to go of this brand crucifying market confidence shattering negativity brought on by the ASX’s own stubborn management and abject incompetence or indeed, we might have 18 months to go until the next delay is announced, presumably.

Regulation news this week, the SEC is proposing rules to improve clearing agency governance and to mitigate conflict of interest. As ever, the voice of reason falls to Hester Pierce:

“This proposal is puzzling for a number of reasons. First, in 2016, when the Commission finalized rules establishing standards for a subset of clearing agencies, it expressly rejected the suggestion from several commenters that it impose a director independence requirement.”

Career path news this week, Mohamed Farid has been appointed as interim chairperson of the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) in Egypt. That sees him moving on from a very successful chairmanship of the EGX (Egyptian Exchange) over the course of the past 5 years. Ahmed Abdel Rahman the Vice-Chairman of the EGX was named acting chairman in the meantime. Also news in career path this week, Kevin Wolf, the CEO of Euronext FX and Euronext US is leaving the group to pursue external opportunities. All the very best to Kevin, I wish him well with his next endeavor. 

Meanwhile, in ‘Big World’, word reaches us that for the first time since 1847, a shark attack has been reported in British waters with an injured snorkeller being rescued by the Coast Guard. The lady has only relatively minor injuries and is expected to make a full recovery. 

Nevertheless, it’s worth reflecting: this as the first shark attack in British waters since the year that sold the first publication of the “why did the chicken cross the road?” joke, Samuel Colt sold his first pistol to the US government, Verdi’s Macbeth premiered at Teatro della Pergola, Florence, the first Carlsberg beer was brewed in Copenhagen and Emily / Anne Bronte published Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey respectively. 

A woman has bitten by a shark in UK waters for the first time in 175 years, it clearly leads to only one question: “When will the indignities of Brexit end for the UK?”

Meanwhile, in their latest “you can’t make this up” like pouring the Bank of England have issued a blog post Cryptoassets, the metaverse and systemic risk on their bank underground blog, this cautions that the metaverse could lead to systemic risks for the financial system. 

Gosh, thank goodness the old lady of Threadneedle Street remains such a watchful and wise steward of inflation of the British economy and of the Pound Sterling. 

And on that mysterious and magnificent note, ladies and gentlemen, this is Patrick L. Young creator of exchanges and markets, publisher of Exchange Invest the bourse business daily newsletter, wishing you from a noisy sunny, hot Valetta to have a great week in blockchain, life and markets.

LINKS:

Alleged BTC-e Operator Alexander Vinnik In US Custody After Immediate Extradition From Greece
Bitcoin.com News

Robinhood CEO: Schwab’s Not Buying Us, We’ll Do The Acquiring
Financial Advisor IQ

CFTC Staff Withdraws No-Action Letter To Victoria University Of Wellington, New Zealand Regarding A Not-For-Profit Market For Certain Event Contracts
CFTC

London Stock Exchange Boss: Teach About The City At School
This is Money

Moscow Exchange To Reduce Use Of Dollars As Collateral
Reuters

Sri Lanka’s New President Ranil Questions CSE As Platform For SOE Privatisations
Daily FT

Sweden’s Junior Market Becomes Europe’s Hottest For Growth Stocks
Financial Times

ICE Reports Strong Q2 2022
ICE

ICE Approves Q3 Dividend Of $0.38 Per Share
ICE

ICE CEO Jeff Sprecher On Q2 2022 Results – Earnings Call Transcript
Seeking Alpha

London Stock Exchange Says Refinitiv Costs And Savings On Track
Euronews

Commencement Of Share Buyback Programme
LSEG

LSEG Starts £750 Million Share Buyback After ‘Strong First Half’
Bloomberg

Coinbase Shares Drop On Billion-Dollar Loss In Q2 And Revenue Miss
CNBC

Coinbase Reports 63% Drop in Revenue Amid Industry Slump
NY Times

MEMX Gains SEC Approval to Trade Options
Yahoo Finance

Hellenic Exchanges Athens Stock Exchange : Purchases Of Own Shares
Market Screener

Xpansiv To Acquire Evolution Markets, Expanding The World’s Leading Environmental Market Infrastructure
BusinessWire

Qatar Central Depository Company (QCSD) Amends The Percentage Of Foreign Ownership In Doha Bank To Become 100% Of The Capital.
Qatar Stock Exchange

Every U.S. Crypto Exchange (And Binance) Is Being Investigated By The SEC, Says Senator Lummis Staffer
Forbes

Binance, Zanmai Labs, Sam Bank-Friedman… Who The Hell Owns WazirX?
Proactive Investors

Panic Grips WazirX Users After Binance’s CZ Asks Users To Move Funds
CoinDesk

Coinbase, BlackRock Ink Crypto Trading Partnership Targeting Institutional Clients
The Economic Times

Coinbase Asks US Supreme Court To Halt Lawsuits Connected To Scams And Dogecoin
CoinDesk

Ex-Coinbase Employee Accused Of Insider Trading Pleads Not Guilty
Blockworks

Concerning Questions Raised By SEC Action Against Former Coinbase Employee
JD Supra

Many US-Listed Chinese Firms May Not Meet HKEX’s Bar, Bank Finds CMB
South China Morning Post

CME Group Announces Q4 2022 Launch Of European Overnight Index Futures
CME

CME Group To Launch Euro-Denominated Bitcoin And Ether Futures On August 29
CME

JSE Considers Carbon Credits Trading
MyBroadband

ICE To Host Auctions Of Nature Based Carbon Removal Credits For GreenTrees
ICE

Moscow Exchange Starts Trading Bonds With Yuan Settlement
Wall Street Journal

Thailand CBDC Pilot Could Commence Later This Year
Coinspeaker

Australia To Explore Case For Central Bank Digital Currency
South China Morning Post 

ASX Delays CHESS Rollout For The Fifth Time, And It’s The Users Who Are Paying
AFR

SEC Proposes Rules To Improve Clearing Agency Governance And To Mitigate Conflicts Of Interest
SEC

Mohamed Farid Appointed As Interim Chairperson Of FRA
Daily News Egypt

Euronext FX CEO Leaves
The Full FX

This week in the parish of bourses and market structure:       

CME beats the street estimates in a results binge

CBOE writes down their ErisX purchase

…and ASX disappoints once again with their Digital Asset CHESS replacement fiasco. 

My name is Patrick L. Young.

Welcome to the bourse business weekly digest.

It’s the Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast Episode 155.

Good day ladies and gentlemen, this is a very brief reduction of highlights amongst the key headlines from the week in market structure. All the analysis of the many events of the past seven days can be found in Exchange Invest’s daily subscriber newsletter, the unique guide to the bourse business sent daily to your inbox.

More details at ExchangeInvest.com

New Zealand Exchange is establishing a Corporate Governance Institute and ex-chair James Miller says the purpose of the new body – will be to assist New Zealand Exchange by delivering recommendations in relation to the development of the NZX Corporate Governance Code and rule settings that apply to the Corporate Governance practices of issuers on the main board of NZX. 

Meanwhile, in the UK fabulous article, this week in The Daily Telegraph by Barney Reynolds a full throated cri de coeur as he seeks an outbreak of British government to give Britain a much better chance of post-Brexit advantage. “Our Markets Must Be Freed From The Stifling Remnants Of Brussels Red Tape” goes the headline. 

Meanwhile, not so much red tape, a thin red line, a red line of judgment is from the courts, Citadel Securities lost their lawsuit to block an IEX order type that is attempting to read their market of high-frequency trading. Speaking of IEX, from one to the other IEX, this is the Indian Energy Exchange as opposed to the ‘Flash Boys’. Their stock was surging last week as the Indian power ministry sought to remove a cap on the high price market segment. If formalized, the move will boost trading volumes and transaction fees for the power exchanges of which the market leader in India is, of course, the IEX. 

The Ukrainian power market, they’re eyeing electricity trading for exports on regional market coupling while over in the USA, big news on the settlement front – SIFMA, ICI and DTCC have published the T+1 implementation Playbook as the industry readies for accelerated settlement. This amounts to perhaps the most exciting project in the world of parish consultants right now with a huge number of them all eager to join the bandwagon of T+1. 

Not so much T+1 as headcount -23% as Robinhood, they lead off almost a quarter of their staff as retail investors have faded from the platform and at the same time the DFS (the Department for Financial Services in New York) announced a $30 million penalty on Robinhood’s crypto division for significant Anti-money laundering, Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection violations. 

Gosh, that’s the equivalent of 3 million payments for order flow pass-throughs levied by the NYDFS for these AML and Cybersecurity failures, that amounts to way more than the Sheriff of Nottingham ever got from the original Robinhood, even if we generously aligned for 1000 years of the inflation adjustment. 

In results this week, it was a frantic week for results in the parish more of them coming in even as we were recording this podcast and indeed thereafter. If you want all the details, of course, they come first in Exchange Invest daily, the newsletter no person can afford to be without in capital markets and market structure. For the sake of this podcast let’s just look at a few edited highlights.

CME announced remarkably strong revenue overall -albeit they sort of hid the information because they never tend to use a lot of comparatives in their IR speak. Nonetheless, not a bad set of results with operating income increasing 15.7% from the prior-year quarter to $750 million.

Disappointing numbers, however, from CBOE, but that was largely due to the fact that they’ve bitten the bullet first in crypto winter writing down the ErisX expansion. That means their crypto-centric platform has already been strongly written down against the purchase cost, which could look virtuous on one level. It’s also subtly putting pressure on public and private entities alike who are vastly more exposed to Bitcoin and friends in the cryptocurrency universe. Whereas for CBOES, essentially, their crypto business is a rounding error. As an acquisitive entity in recent years, the rapid write down by CBOE makes sense as it may help more and better price deals in the crypto space whereas, of course, the crypto players are all now under great pressure to justify their valuations. 

DFN (Dubai Financial Markets) had a spectacular net profit jumped up 134% while Boursa Kuwait wasn’t quite so impressive, but still, no slouch net profit topped 36.8% and good to see despite the ongoing turmoil which points to South Africa’s government, the fact that the Johannesburg Stock Exchange was able to deliver a strong double-digit increase in operating revenue of 10% and indeed, earnings per share up 29%, well done there to JSE. 

Last but not least, we should probably mention Robinhood because while announcing the layoff of 23% of their staff and also coping with that swindling $30 million fine nonetheless total net revenues +6% and actually altogether not a dreadful adjusted EBITDA of -$80 million.

In new markets this week, also a busy week for new markets in the parish but again all the information was in Exchange Invest daily, the newsletter no person can afford to be without in capital markets and market structure. For the sake of this podcast, we will mention it too.

They’re all in India, India’s Singapore Exchange Indian joint venture kicked off their derivatives trading link this week and in fact, it was a joy to see the Indian Prime Minister Mr. Modi making his visit previously, monsoon rains had postponed that for a couple of weeks. He launched the Indian International Bullion Exchange (IIBX) bringing transparency to gold and indeed, it’s possible to get very rapid clearance of your gold through the IIBX market if you are using that across the Indian subcontinent. Also, of course, that SGX link brings in their new exchange for the Indians, which is going to be trading the Nifty 50 Futures a lope for the time being. The Nifty 50 remains open on the Singapore Exchange as well. In upcoming news, India seems to be planning a carbon market and indeed Prime Minister Modi may be opening that carbon trade platform as soon as August 15th. 

In deals this week, no sooner had they opened than we have the Honest Columnist offering: “Is A Merger Of Two IFSC Stock Exchanges On The Horizon?” Good grief, Prime Minister Modi had barely gotten back to New Delhi before there was discussion and speculation that we were going to suddenly see mergers between all of the different exchanges that are going to happen within the IFSC (International Financial Services Centre) in GIFT City. 

Huge deal of the week, Xpansiv who recently raised a round of funding, announced that they are acquiring APX to scale their environmental commodity market infrastructure. That’s a great expansion by Xpansiv, who you may recall were represented in our IPO-Vid 055 by Henrik Hasselknippe discussing Holistic Renewable Energy & Carbon and indeed if you want to keep up with what’s happening in the world of events, don’t forget to pick up a copy of my book “Victory or Death?” Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and the FinTech World published by DV Books and distributed by Ingram worldwide and of course, our Livestream has been continuing, although it’s about to go on hiatus, but you can catch all the back issues IPO-Vid if you want to search for it on YouTube, and indeed also on Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Our last show before the summer break was an absolute must-view from Steven Sears of Option Solutions, discussing Developing Your Options amongst other pithy jams “Bad investors think of ways to make money, but good investors think of ways not to lose money”

The next show coming up after Labor Day, September 13th that’s going to be with good folks of Exberry but of course in the meantime, if you’re bored, or if you’re just missing IPO-Vid, don’t forget to drop by IPO-Vid on YouTube. 

In crypto land this week, big news Cathie Wood’s Ark funds have been dumping some Coinbase shares for the first time this year. They offloaded over 1.4 million Coinbase shares as the coin price was sinking once again. Finally, a yelp of pain for perhaps the most bullish cheerleader for COIN, as Cathie Wood was reducing her stock purchases having been a buyer just about everywhere from circa $400 all the way down to the current circus $60 over the course of a slight bounce during the course of the past week. 

Meanwhile, crypto exchange Binance says Ireland as part of its regional HQ plans as their road to Damascus or perhaps one might say road to Dublin conversion has made them love the concept of regulation after all. That, of course, came in the same week as their compliance officer was noting the fact that KYC has cost the exchange ‘billions in revenue’. Well, there’s the real world for you.

Product news this week, the Japan Exchange Group is announcing a new capitalism IPO initiative. That’s in keeping with the “new capitalism” plan of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The Hong Kong Exchange has got busy with Chinese firms seeking a status change and indeed Beijing listed companies may also be big news in Switzerland. SIX Swiss Exchange officially launched the Swiss GDR-Leg of the China-Switzerland Stock Connect alongside Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges this week with four companies listing on the first day. In the total of course don’t forget Alibaba, and some 270 other Chinese companies remain a step away from the US Stock Exchange delisting.

Technology news this week and we had London at the very start of the show, the very boring ASX market announcement 22-204MR delay to the ASX CHESS Replacement Project and Independent Review. That of course brought out all folks in the Australian media to pillory the hapless ASX. 

ASIC (the Australian regulator) even noted: “It is now time for a careful and independent review of ASX’s and Digital Asset’s (DA) work to date on the CHESS Replacement and the work needed to complete the project. It is critical that ASX and the market have a high degree of confidence and certainty in a new go-live date.”

Management continuity generally gets a good write up. However, in the case of ASX, a new CEO maintaining a vastly costly reputation decimating technology programme where first mover advantage will turn into lagging the parish by the time it gets completed if it ever does. That can be perceived as an exception to the ‘management continuity is good’ concept. 

It’s also a damning indictment of the process of choosing ASX CEOs. At least in a low latency world of the modern era, ASX CEOs can now self-immolate their credibility within weeks whereas predecessors took longer to reveal their unsuitability for high office.

 Catastrophism is a media excess these days but in this case, the ASX delivers a very valid opportunity for the mainstream media to be apocalyptic as is humanly feasible. 

Appointing an independent reviewer in Accenture amongst to guards watching for embers floating across the Tiber while you have a good old fiddle jam session. 

Ultimately, ASX was once self-feted as a technology company and indeed once upon a time was genuinely ahead of the curve but that was a generation and more ago, having been a first mover ahead of the curve. It’s now a busted flush with dwindling tech credibility.

Digital Asset likewise has an egg not merely on its face but presumably on most every other API too – albeit at least Digital Asset Holdings have a pilot programme running for HKEX called Synapse, which is due to be in production sometime this year, suggesting at least they have learned lessons along the way, even if ASX/DAH has been unable to stop money being spent without tangible results. 

As a first test of the new CEO Helen Lofthouse, this is a spectacular fail and I take absolutely no pleasure in this remark, I am truly gutted that once excellent exchange ASX (and indeed also within the SFE) has been reduced to incoherence more becoming a barely transistorized third world state in the analogue 1970s.

Regulation news this week, the British financial watchdog is toughening rules on high-risk product ads. That’s bad news for peer-to-peer on probably crowdfunding. At the same time, I would presume that the Bank of England won’t be doing any advertising for the time being, as their failure to manage inflation ought to certainly come under these high-risk rules for advertising. Of course, central banks are in the crosshairs of many in these high inflationary times and indeed this week we saw Italian bonds dealt a fresh blow by an S&P rating outlook change. That, of course, comes at the same time as the hustings are open for the latest Italian general election, which looks likely to return a government, that is, if not outright Euroskeptic certainly not as dementedly Europhile as those that Brussels has managed to install in recent years. At the same time, I’m not sure why there isn’t a rating of “coyote ugly” on bonds, because even the EU which has attempted to influence/pressurize ratings agencies over the years cannot paper over the gaping cracks in the Italian economy. 

Meanwhile, even the perma-Europhiles around Bloomberg News are warming up to my Germany is endorsing the UK’s approach to the 1970s meme, which I’ve been talking about for the last couple of years. 

As the Bloomberg report goes: “Germany gave us “schadenfreude” and now it’s experiencing the business end of the concept”

Its long-standing foreign policy Bloomberg continues of pandering to Russia has resulted in Russia holding the whole continent hostage with a natural-gas pipeline. Suffering most of all is Germany, which needs that sweet, sweet gas to power its factories. 

It has suggested European’s “southern” states share its pain, to which those states have responded by wondering where Germany’s sense of solidarity was a decade ago when it only response to their financial crisis was “stop whining” or in German (“hör auf zu jammern”). 

Then again, of course, I might add, it could even be the death of the European Union too…either way my argument for Brexit which can be distilled as “it’s best to be as far removed as is humanly possible from the sinking of the Titanic-sized object even if you have to row a tiny lifeboat with the ultimate gusto” is I feel more valid than it was even a few months back, when folks would have scoffed at the idea, the hot water would be switched off in Hanover. 

(As always, I hope I’m wrong and the European Union can right itself and indeed that Germany can find a way to progress after the Merkel disaster but my pragmatic risk management side wants head over heart dominating the PLY balance sheet). 

And on that mysterious and magnificent note ladies and yi77 of Exchange Invest – the daily watercooler of the bourse business.

I wish you all a great week in blockchain, life and markets from this what has been a high summer episode 155 with multiple noisy interruptions in the background of the Exchange Invest weekly podcast. We’ll be back next week.

LINKS

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