First Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff The FIA is providing strong coverage of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee meeting, chaired by FIA CEO & President Walt Lukken. On August 26, FIA MarketVoice published “From perpetuals to compute futures: four takeaways from the CFTC’s innovation meeting” by Kirsten Hyde, which had the […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff The CNN story titled “Young adults under 21 traded $5 billion on Kalshi this year, amid prediction market frenzy” is timely. Yesterday I interviewed two executives from Novig, Adam Warrington and Sammy Stone, about the responsible trading standards it has written into its rule book […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff The New York Stock Exchange has officially opened its NYSE Texas headquarters at the Old Parkland campus in Dallas, establishing a dedicated regional hub in the Lone Star State. Representing over 120 listed securities with a combined market capitalization of $2 trillion, the new location […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff In a story titled “DERIVSOURCE: FIA’s Walt Lukken on the Race to Reshape Markets in 2026,” Traders Magazine’s Anna Lyudvig interviewed FIA CEO Walt Lukken on the derivatives industry’s priorities for the second half of 2026, led by the U.S. Treasury clearing mandate that takes […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Terry Duffy, chairman and CEO of CME Group, writing in Crain’s Chicago Business, argues that Chicago is again pioneering a new asset class as CME prepares to launch compute futures, giving hyperscalers, AI developers and data center operators a way to hedge the cost of […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Euronext CEO Stephane Boujnah, who will step down in May 2027 after more than a decade running Europe’s biggest stock exchange operator, has grown the company through relentless dealmaking. He acquired the Athens, Dublin, Oslo and Milan exchanges, and lifted annual listings revenue from 71 […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff I wrote a commentary about the interactions between CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, CME Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy, Cboe CEO Craig Donohue, and Kalshi Co-founder Luana Lopes Lara at the CFTC’s first Innovation Advisory Committee meeting. The story is titled “Welcome to the Beltway Bucket […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff President Donald Trump has ended another war, embellishing his credentials for his long-sought Nobel Peace Prize. Yesterday in a meeting at the White House, he declared, “We ended the war on crypto once and for all.” CFTC Chairman Michael Selig commented: Thanks to your leadership, […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Prediction market platform Kalshi has filed with the CFTC to launch perpetual futures tied to a major U.S. stock index and copper, aiming to bring the crypto-born, non-expiring contract model into mainstream asset classes. The move builds on the rapid momentum of Kalshi’s CFTC-approved Bitcoin […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Leave it to municipal regulators to take one of the purest joys of British summertime—standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a sunlit London sidewalk nursing an after-work pint—and rebrand it as the menacing public nuisance of “high-volume vertical drinking.” In a delightfully absurd dispatch for The Wall Street […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff At first glance, this does not compute, so the CFTC needs to hear from you. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is seeking public comment on the burgeoning market for artificial-intelligence compute futures contracts, having submitted a formal request for review to the White House’s Office […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff In a crowded, hyper-competitive prediction market space, the recently-launched contract market Novig staked its spot on the high road by adopting a comprehensive responsible trading framework, becoming the first platform to codify a broad set of such standards directly into the rulebook of a CFTC-regulated […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Correction: The CFTC has invoked its emergency authority under Section 8a(9) of the Commodity Exchange Act six times, not twice: four times between 1976 and 1980 and twice in support of Kalshi during a 30-day period in 2026. My column yesterday was based on a […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff FIA president and CEO Walt Lukken announced that Adeshini Naidoo will join FIA as head of European policy on September 14, leading engagement with European policymakers, regulators and market participants on issues shaping the global derivatives markets. Naidoo will draw on her previous experience at […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff I confess I spent too long yesterday combing through CFTC Chairman Michael Selig’s August 6 essay in The Economist and writing a critique of it. The critique is a bit long; just ask Sarah, who had to edit it. So here is a synopsis of […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Kalshi Co-Founder Tarek Mansour was profiled in Sunday’s New York Times. Jordyn Holman of The New York Times reports that Mansour, the Kalshi CEO, rejects conventional management, describing himself as “incapable of managing” and arguing that executives are not responsible for the performance of great […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Ransom-seeking hackers targeted dozens of major US financial institutions, private-equity firms, and other businesses using fraudulent websites and phone calls designed to steal employee passwords and multifactor authentication codes. Reuters reporters Raphael Satter, AJ Vicens and Anirban Sen identified attempted intrusions aimed at Blackstone, Bridgewater […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Yesterday I argued to my companion that the Supreme Court’s embrace of the unitary executive theory is imposing an institutional externality, or systemic cost, on US capital markets by weakening the perceived independence of financial regulators. Then a Bloomberg columnist wrote about this. In “The […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff John Lothian News is launching “AI Discovery,” a six-month, 13-episode video series sponsored by NinjaTrader examining how artificial intelligence is transforming financial markets and the daily work of industry professionals. The series is modeled on JLN’s “Options Discovery” and “Futures Discovery” programs, combining accessible, peer-hosted […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Evoking my best Don Rickles: Get ready, you financial hockey pucks, because the CME Group, FutureSports, and the NHL are teaming up to turn on-ice action into cold, hard cash opportunities for the upcoming 2026–2027 season. This groundbreaking exclusive deal brings real-time, play-by-play hockey stats […]
Read articleFirst Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff Cboe Global Markets has completed the sale of Cboe Australia to TMX Group Limited, officially transferring the securities venue, now rebranded as TMX Australia Exchange, as part of Cboe’s strategy to realign capital and refocus resources on its core business strengths. Initially announced in April […]
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