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Marijuana Banking Bill Approved By Congressional Committee
March 28, 2019--A congressional committee voted on Thursday to approve legislation aimed at increasing marijuana businesses' access to banks.
Following multiple days of lengthy debate and consideration of several amendments, the House Financial Services Committee voted 45 to 15 to advance the legislation to the full body.
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Source: Forbes
CFTC.gov Swaps Report Update
March 27, 2019--CFTC's Weekly Swaps Report has been updated, and is now available.
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Source: CFTC.gov
US efforts to cut trade deficit show biggest win in almost a year
March 27, 2019--The U.S. trade deficit fell much more expected in January to $51.15 billion, from a forecast $57 billion.
The decline of 14.6 percent represented the sharpest drop since March 2018 and comes amid continued negotiations with China this week.
The trade deficit between the U.S. and its global partners dropped sharply in January to $51.15 billion as exports rebounded from a slowdown at the end of 2018, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.
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Source: CNBC
CFTC Staff Issues Research Report on Impact of Automated Orders in Futures Markets
March 27, 2019--The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) Market Intelligence Branch in the Division of Market Oversight (DMO) issued a report today that analyzed the entering of orders manually and automatically in commodity futures markets in the United States to determine how technological change is affecting futures trading.
DMO staff used internal CFTC transactional data for 30 futures contracts during the period January 2013-December 2018, and examined what effects, if any, the manual and automated order placement mechanisms had on these markets.
The research produced the following findings:
The percentage of automatically placed orders has increased for all commodity futures markets;
Automated orders are smaller in size than manual orders and their resting times are shorter than the resting times of orders placed manually;
view the CFTC Impact of Automated Orders in Futures Markets report
Source: CFTC.gov
Dow Inc. to Replace DowDuPont in DJIA
March 26, 2019--Move was spurred by DowDuPont's plan to spin off Dow as a separate company effective.
Dow Inc. will take DowDuPont Inc.'s place in the Dow Jones Industrial Average before the start of trading April 2, S&P Dow Jones Indices said Tuesday.
The move marks the latest shuffle for the 30-stock index, which many investors closely watch as a gauge of blue-chip companies' share performance.
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Source: Wall Street Journal
IMF Working Paper-Fintech in Latin America and the Caribbean: Stocktaking
March 26, 2019--Summary:
In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), financial technology has been growing rapidly and is on the agenda of many policy makers. Fintech provides opportunities to deepen financial development, competition, innovation, and inclusion in the region but also creates new and only partially understood risks to consumers and the financial system.
This paper documents the evolution of fintech in LAC. In particular, the paper focuses on financial development, fintech landscape for domestic and cross border payments and alternative financing, cybersecurity, financial integrity and stability risks, regulatory responses, and considerations for central bank digital currencies.view the IMF Working Paper-Fintech in Latin America and the Caribbean: Stocktaking
Source: IMF
IMF Working Paper-NAFTA to USMCA: What is Gained?
March 26, 2019--Summary:
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was signed on November 30, 2018 and aims to replace and modernize the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This paper uses a global, multisector, computable-general-equilibrium model to provide an analytical assessment of five key provisions in the new agreement, including tighter rules of origin in the automotive, textiles and apparel sectors, more liberalized agricultural trade, and other trade facilitation measures.
The results show that together these provisions would adversely affect trade in the automotive, textiles and apparel sectors, while generating modest aggregate gains in terms of welfare, mostly driven by improved goods market access, with a negligible effect on real GDP. The welfare benefits from USMCA would be greatly enhanced with the elimination of U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada and Mexico and the elimination of the Canadian and Mexican import surtaxes imposed after the U.S. tariffs were put in place.
view the More Tumult For The Turkey ETF view more Half of Older Americans Have Nothing in Retirement Savings view more U.S. GAO-Retirement Security: Most Households Approaching Retirement Have Low Savings, an Update view the U.S. GAO Retirement Security: Most Households Approaching Retirement Have Low Savings, an Update
Source: IMF
March 26, 2019--Volatility is often the name of the game with the iShares MSCI Turkey ETF and that has been the case in recent trading sessions.
After plunging last week amid speculation the lira is facing another crisis, TUR, the lone U.S.-listed exchange traded fund dedicated to Turkish equities, was trading higher by more than 4.6 percent late Monday on volume that was almost double the daily average.
Source: Benzinga.com
March 26, 2019--The bad news is that almost half of Americans approaching retirement have nothing saved in a 401(k) or other individual account. The good news is that the new estimate, from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, is slightly better than a few years earlier.
Of those 55 and older, 48 percent had nothing put away in a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan or an individual retirement account, according to a GAO estimate for 2016 that was released Tuesday. That's an improvement from the 52 percent without retirement money in 2013.
Source: bloombergquint.com
March 26, 2019--Our 2015 report on retirement security included estimates on the percentage of households aged 55 and over without retirement savings or a defined benefit plan (traditional employment-based pension plans that offer benefits based on factors like salary and years of service).
We updated these estimates using data from the most recent Survey of Consumer Finances, which was released in September 2017.
We found that the percent of households headed by someone aged 55 and over that had no retirement savings decreased from about 52 percent in 2013 to about 48 percent in 2016.
Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
