US private credit firm First Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Messaging matters, and Gary Gensler and Simon Johnson’s podcast has been noticed by the SEC, as Chairman Paul Atkins launches “Material Matters With SEC Chairman Paul Atkins.” While the “Power and Consequences” podcast takes a look at big macro issues, Atkins’s […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff US regulators are probing a series of suspiciously well‑timed oil futures trades placed just before President Donald Trump’s recent shifts in policy on the war in Iran, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is examining spikes in trading […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Gary Gensler earns an out-of-office leadership award today for speaking out about a timely subject, the one everyone is talking about. In an exclusive Barron’s interview by Nick Devor, former CFTC and SEC Chair Gensler said today’s booming sports-focused prediction markets have gone far beyond […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff There is a new word to know: Bugmageddon. Anthropic’s powerful new AI model Mythos is finding software vulnerabilities at an unprecedented scale — including a 27-year-old bug in the OpenBSD operating system — and cybersecurity professionals, White House officials, and banking executives are scrambling to […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Every week, the CFTC sends me its weekly swaps report. I wondered why it does not mention event contract swaps. I twice sent an email to the CFTC and received no reply. It made me wonder, what is the definition of a swap? So I […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Yesterday, I was the guest speaker for a virtual NFA staff conversation and was interviewed by NFA Head of External Affairs & Communications Christie Hillsman von Ohlen. The discussion covered my entrance to the industry, the various roles I have held, MarketsWiki Education World of […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff U.S. futures commission merchants (FCMs) face record capital requirements, reaching $49.1 billion in January 2026, according to Joshua Walker of Risk.net. Requirements rose 4.1% month over month and 20.7% year over year, marking the fastest growth since 2021 and the largest increase since at least […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff That was too close. “The Day Trump’s Iran Threat Gripped the World,” by Wall Street Journal staff, opens with a president wielding Armageddon as a bargaining chip, turning an ordinary Tuesday morning into a 12‑hour countdown to possible civilizational annihilation. At 8:06 a.m., Donald Trump […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff The “AI is taking our jobs” news today is not so happy. The Wall Street Journal reports that workers displaced by artificial intelligence could face lasting economic setbacks, according to a new Goldman Sachs study summarized by Te-Ping Chen. Analyzing four decades of federal data […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff I spent some time this holiday weekend working on a scorecard for “Prediction Markets vs. States — Open Cases and Timeline.” I am not the only one who has been busy tracking this data. Alexander Kim, an associate at Katten, has built a personal interactive […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff The Trump administration has sued Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois to block their efforts to regulate prediction markets, arguing that attempts to treat “event contracts” as gambling intrude on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s exclusive authority over national swaps markets, Jonathan Stempel of Reuters reported. The […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Today we published two videos: one from Boca and one from my post-Boca sojourn to Sarasota, FL. From Boca, we have an interview with Jeanine Hightower-Sellitto, senior vice president, GM of DraftKings Predictions. I have known Jeanine since her days at ISE, so it was […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Yesterday, Gary Compton retired from Cboe Global Markets, where he had worked for about the last 27 years. Compton was a vice president of corporate communications and someone with whom we at JLN regularly communicated about Cboe-related issues and projects. For years, he worked with […]
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