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CBOE's S&P 500 Index Options (SPX) Volume Beats All-Time Daily High: - Nearly 2.19 Million SPX Contracts Change Hands On Thursday
Total Trading Volume At CBOE Marks Second Most Active Day Ever - ETF Options Set New Daily Record
May 21, 2010--The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) today reported that trading volume in S&P 500® Index options (SPX) contracts on Thursday, May 20 established a new daily record with 2,187,004 contracts traded.
Thursday's SPX record surpasses the previous daily volume record of 2,170,870 contracts traded on October 6, 2008. Additionally, on Wednesday, May 19, SPX volume totaled 2,146,625 contracts, the third-highest volume day in the contract's history.
Thursday marked CBOE's second-most-active trading day overall as Exchange volume totaled 10,191,893 contracts. On May 6, CBOE registered its highest volume day ever with 10,571,568 contracts traded.
ETF options at CBOE also recorded a new single-day volume record on Thursday, as 3,528,232 contracts changed hands, surpassing the May 6 record of 3,422,162 ETF options traded.
ScotiaMocatta Pulls IPO Prospectus for Copper Backed ETF
May 21, 2010--Last year we wrote about plans to launch physical metal backed Electronic Traded Commodity Funds led by Canada’s ScotiaMocatta, a unit of Bank of Nova Scotia, Copper Fund. As Andy Home in a Reuters article said, the fund was to be the first of its kind, offering an ETF backed with physical copper.
The template has worked extraordinarily well in the precious metals sector, so much so that the SPDR Gold Trust fund is the world’s sixth-largest holder of physical gold. ETFs have facilitated and accentuated retail investor interest in gold, becoming a major fundamental driver in their own right. The same was hoped and expected for copper, and if it worked for copper the argument went why not aluminum or nickel? All metals play a role as a store of value in times of volatility, admittedly precious metals more than any but copper has enjoyed dramatic price appreciation because it is considered a bell-weather for the global recovery, as a measure of emerging market demand. Well therein lies the problem, ScotiaMocatta’s Copper ETF has been pulled prior to launch, and for the second time.
Statement on the Passage of Financial Market Regulatory Reform
May 21, 2010--“With the senate's historic vote last evening to pass sweeping measures to rein in Wall Street excesses, there will be a new wind blowing. Not since the Great Depression have we needed this kind of fundamental change in market oversight, and our Senate leadership has provided it.
I am confident the conference will move forward quickly to get a bill in front of the president for his signature, a bill that will pull back from the deregulatory excesses of the past decade and move us toward more consumer-oriented regulation--oversight and enforcement that protects the people of this country from paying unfair prices for basic goods and services--this is an absolutely necessary first step in getting our country back to financial health and safety.”
iShares files with the SEC
May 20, 2010--iShares has filed a registration statement with the SEC for
iShares MSCI Poland Investable Market Index Fund ETF
view filing
State Street Global Advisors Lists SPDR® Barclays Capital International Corporate Bond ETF on NYSE Arca
May 20, 2010--May 20, 2010 –- NYSE Euronext (NYX) announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, NYSE Arca, today began trading theSPDR® Barclays Capital International Corporate Bond ETF(Ticker: IBND). The ETF is sponsored by State Street Global Advisors.
The fund seeks to provide investment results that, before fees and expenses, correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the Barclays Capital Global Aggregate ex-USD >$1B: Corporate Bond Index, which is designed to be a broad based measure of the global investment-grade, fixed rate, fixed income corporate markets outside the United States.
CFTC official admits data still collected by fax
May 20, 2010--Trades may be carried out faster than the blink of an eye but the watchdog charged with overseeing the US futures markets has admitted that it still receives market-related data by fax that is then entered in to its systems by hand.
Scott O’Malia, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, admitted that the agency had been in a “perpetual game of technological catch-up” when it came to keeping track of derivatives markets.
His comments came the same day that CFTC chairman Gary Gensler told a Senate banking committee hearing into the May 6 “flash crash” on Wall Street that the CFTC was investigating the role of algorithmic trading in futures markets – one of the biggest technology developments of recent times.
Senate approves sweeping Wall Street reform bill
May 21, 2010--The Senate approved a sweeping Wall Street reform bill on Thursday night, capping months of wrangling over the biggest overhaul of financial regulation since the 1930s.
By a vote of 59-39, the Senate awarded a victory to President Barack Obama, a champion of tighter rules for banks and capital markets after a 2007-2009 financial crisis that slammed the economy and led to massive taxpayer bailouts.
The Senate bill must now be merged with a measure approved in December by the House of Representatives. Only then could a final package go to Obama to be signed into law, something that analysts said may happen next month.
SEC Suspects ETFs Fueled May 6 Drop
May 20, 2010--ETFs were affected more than any other type of security on May 6, when the Dow within 20 minutes cratered nearly 1,000 points and then suddenly recovered most of the 9.2% drop. And efforts to control losses may have exacerbated the free fall, a report by federal regulators says.
The Dow's intraday loss was its biggest nose-dive since the crash of 1987, when it fell 22.6%. It pared its May 6 loss to 3.2% by the close.
S. 3217: Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010
May 20, 2010--An original bill to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end "too big to fail", to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.
view full text of S. 3217: Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010
U.S. International Reserve Position
May 20, 2010--The Treasury Department today released U.S. reserve assets data for the latest week. As indicated in this table, U.S. reserve assets totaled $125,324 million as of the end of that week, compared to $127,039 million as of the end of the prior week.
The Treasury Department today released U.S. reserve assets data for the latest week. As indicated in this table, U.S. reserve assets totaled $123,898 million as of the end of that week, compared to $125,324 million as of the end of the prior week.
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May 14, 2010 |
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A. Official reserve assets (in US millions unless otherwise specified) 1 |
Euro |
Yen |
Total |
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(1) Foreign currency reserves (in convertible foreign currencies) |
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123,898 |
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(a) Securities |
8,816 |
14,134 |
22,950 |
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of which: issuer headquartered in reporting country but located abroad |
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0 |
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(b) total currency and deposits with: |
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(i) other national central banks, BIS and IMF |
12,922 |
6,926 |
19,849 |
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ii) banks headquartered in the reporting country |
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0 |
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of which: located abroad |
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0 |
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(iii) banks headquartered outside the reporting country |
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0 |
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of which: located in the reporting country |
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0 |
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(2) IMF reserve position 2 |
11,151 |
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(3) SDRs 2 |
54,340 |
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(4) gold (including gold deposits and, if appropriate, gold swapped) 3 |
11,041 |
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--volume in millions of fine troy ounces |
261.499 |
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(5) other reserve assets (specify) |
4,567 |
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--financial derivatives |
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--loans to nonbank nonresidents |
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--other (foreign currency assets invested through reverse repurchase agreements) |
4,567 |
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B. Other foreign currency assets (specify) |
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--securities not included in official reserve assets |
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--deposits not included in official reserve assets |
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--loans not included in official reserve assets |
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--financial derivatives not included in official reserve assets |
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--gold not included in official reserve assets |
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--other |
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NYSE Technologies Adds Knight Capital Group as SFTI Destination
May 20, 2010--NYSE Technologies, the commercial technology unit of NYSE Euronext, today announced that it has established Knight Capital Group as a destination on the Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure (SFTI) network. As one of the industry’s fastest, most resilient electronic message transmission networks, SFTI provides customers with superior reliability and access to the financial markets and market participants through a single point of access. SFTI customers can now access Knight’s electronic trading products and services from the same connections they currently use to access NYSE Euronext markets, other exchanges and brokers.
“Knight provides a valuable new destination and resource for our customers and we’re proud to include them on the SFTI network,” said Ken Barnes, Vice President, NYSE Technologies. “With each exchange and broker dealer destination we add to SFTI and our FIX Marketplace, we’re building a platform that offers a combination of speed and reach coupled with a unique capital markets focus seldom found in the industry. Customers are increasingly turning to SFTI to satisfy their connectivity requirements across the capital markets through SFTI’s 10Gb ports, which simplify manageability and reduce latency.”
Knight is a leading source of U.S. equity liquidity by share volume in Listed, NASDAQ, Bulletin Board and ETF securities among securities firms, according to AutEx, and has growing volume in foreign exchange, fixed income, futures and options. The SFTI network now includes Knight’s electronic market-making, Knight Link access to equity liquidity, Knight Direct multi-asset class EMS and agency-only algorithms, the Knight Match dark pool, the HotSpot FX ECN and Knight BondPoint’s fixed income ECN. “Knight is pleased to open our products to the wide breadth of NYSE Technologies clients over the reliable and resilient SFTI network,” said Meaghan Mullins, Managing Director, Knight. “We are committed to providing as many points as possible for market participants to access Knight’s liquidity, and our establishment as a destination on the SFTI network furthers our goal.”
NYSE Technologies’ SFTI network is the highly resilient, ultra low-latency communications backbone created for the financial industry in 2002. It provides connectivity to multiple exchanges, market centers and content service providers, including all of the National Market System venues in the U.S. SFTI also connects to over 1,300 market participants and offers third-party technology products through its unique hosted solutions platform. Designed to be the industry’s most secure and resilient network, SFTI is specifically built for electronic trading and market data traffic thus enabling firms to reduce their time-to-market, improve their performance and significantly lower the cost of their trading infrastructure.
NASDAQ OMX Applauds SEC Leadership in Stock-by-Stock Circuit Breaker Initiative
May 20, 2010--The NASDAQ OMX Group (Nasdaq:NDAQ) today applauded the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its leadership in connection with the submission of stock-by-stock circuit breaker proposals by the equity markets.
Those proposals provide uniform market-wide standards for pausing trading in individual securities in the S&P 500® Index that experience a rapid price movement. Furthermore, we commend the SEC and CFTC for publishing their preliminary findings concerning market events of May 6. NASDAQ OMX supports adoption of market-wide practices and supports the SEC and the CFTC with their ongoing review.
NASDAQ OMX is committed to continuing working with other U.S. markets and the SEC to examine and respond to the causes of the May 6 market event.
CFTC Reestablishes Technology Advisory Committee
May 20, 2010--The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) yesterday approved the reestablishment of a Technology Advisory Committee (TAC), which is charged with keeping the Commission abreast of new technologies that will assist the independent federal agency to better oversee the derivatives markets. Commissioner Scott D. O’Malia, the newest Commissioner, confirmed last October, was selected to serve as Chairman of TAC for its two-year term.
“The market events of May 6th clearly highlight that technology drives the structure and function of the markets. Trades now take place in milliseconds and will soon take place even faster. We must develop a deep understanding of technological innovation and what it means for the markets we oversee. Therefore, I am pleased that the Commission has agreed to my request to reinstate this Committee,” stated O’Malia, who has pushed for the creation of the Committee since his appointment.
The Commission’s original TAC ceased operation when its, chapter expired in 2005. Since that time, technology has become increasingly important to participants in the derivatives markets—by providing participants with market information, trade modeling, trade execution, risk management and back office support.
KBW Announces Change to KBW Regional Banking Index (KRX)
May 19, 2010--Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc., a full-service investment bank that specializes in the financial services sector, and a wholly owned subsidiary of KBW, Inc., announces an upcoming change to the KBW Regional Banking Index.
Effective prior to the opening of business on Monday, May 24, 2010, FirstMerit Corporation /quotes/comstock/15*!fmer/quotes/nls/fmer (FMER 19.25, +0.25, +1.33%) , will undergo an increase in shares to account for its recent equity issuance.
The KBW indices that have tradable exchange traded funds are: KBW Bank Index (Index Symbol: BKX(SM), ETF Symbol KBE(SM)); KBW Capital Markets Index (Index Symbol: KSX(SM), ETF Symbol KCE(SM)); KBW Insurance Index (Index Symbol: KIX(SM), ETF Symbol KIE(SM)); KBW Mortgage Finance Index (Index Symbol: MFX(SM), ETF Symbol: KME(SM)), and KBW Regional Banking Index (Index Symbol: KRX(SM), ETF Symbol: KRE(SM), KRS(SM), KRU(SM)).
ETF Securities Passes $1.5 Billion in US ETF Assets Under Management
ETFS Physical Platinum Shares (PPLT) AUM now stands at $598.3M (as of May 4th, 2010)
ETFS Physical Swiss Gold Shares (SGOL) AUM now stands at $402.0M (as of May 4th, 2010)
May 19, 2010--ETF Securities USA LLC (ETFS) announced today that the total assets under management of its four products; ETFS Physical Swiss Gold Shares (SGOL), ETFS Physical Silver Shares (SIVR), ETFS Physical Platinum Shares (PPLT) and ETFS Physical Palladium Shares (PALL) now exceeds $1.5 Billion as of May 4th, 2010.
ETF Securities is the first US ETF Sponsor to provide investors with access to a full suite of precious metal ETFs. Investors can now trade physically-backed Gold, Silver, Platinum and Palladium ETFs from the same provider. The four precious metal ETFs have the following key features:
Track spot price of underlying metal less associated management fees(1)
100% physically backed by underlying bullion – minimal counterparty risk
Gold vaulted in Switzerland
Silver, Platinum & Palladium vaulted in London and Switzerland
a href="http://www.etfsecurities.com/us/news/etfs_news_100519.asp" TARGET="_top">read more
