| | | | | | | February 19, 2025 | | | |  | Jeff Bergstrom
Editor
John Lothian News | |
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| | | | Observations & Insight | | | 
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| | | | | | Lead Stories | | | FX Volatility Leads Global Firms to Seek Shelter in Options, Longer Hedges
Carter Johnson - Bloomberg
Global companies battered by last year's currency swings are taking the profit hits to heart and revamping their hedging strategies in turn. More than three-quarters of senior finance leaders in the US and the UK surveyed in January by MillTechFX, a division of currency manager Millennium Global Investments Ltd., experienced losses stemming from unhedged currency exposures last year. That dent to the bottom line is leading firms to double down on options, which give them the right to buy or sell a currency - but don't oblige them - and extend the duration of their foreign exchange hedges.
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The Market's Fear Gauge Is Stable. New Tariff Talk Isn't as Scary.
Brian Swint - Barron's
The CBOE Volatility Index, also known as the VIX or market fear gauge, was remarkably steady early Wednesday.
It was at 15.54, up just 1.2% from yesterday. Any reading below 20 tends to suggest the market is calm.
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An Investing Riddle: Stocks Are in Turmoil but Stock Markets Aren't; While the S&P 500 has been unruffled by DeepSeek and the tariff war, stocks in the index have been volatile and uncorrelated
Jon Sindreu - The Wall Street Journal
The current stock market resembles a still lake with perilous currents swirling beneath the surface.
Judging by the S&P 500's 4.2% year-to-date gain, it is hard to glean that it has recently been hit by two big shocks: the rise of Chinese artificial intelligence and the Trump administration's tariff war. Investors don't seem concerned about uncertainty ahead either: The Cboe Volatility Index, or Vix, dubbed the market's "fear gauge," briefly hit 18.6 earlier this month, but has since fallen below 15. The historical average is 19.5.
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European results-day share volatility emboldens longer-term investors
Lucy Raitano - Reuters
Unusually high volatility in the shares of European companies around their earnings days has prompted a growing number of typically cautious longer-term investors to jump on big price swings.
Volatility in European shares on results days has reached a near-record high, Bank of America data shows, with the fourth-quarter earnings season only around half complete.
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Thailand to Curb Short Selling, High-Speed Trades Amid Selloff
Anuchit Nguyen - Bloomberg
Thailand's stock exchange will tighten curbs on short selling and high-frequency trading as it attempts to revive investor confidence in the world's worst performing equity market. Short selling and high-frequency trading will be limited to stocks forming the part of SET100 Index, Asadej Kongsiri, president of the Stock Exchange of Thailand, told a press briefing Wednesday. The course currently allows short selling of stocks in SET100 Index and other securities with some conditions, while there are currently no limits set on high-speed trades, according to Asadej.
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Volatility ETFs Are Down, but They Aren't Out of the Picture; The VIX, Wall Street's favorite fear gauge, has been muted this year. Here's what investors need to know about volatility ETFs.
Sumit Roy - ETF.com
Despite plenty of scary headlines about trade wars and Chinese AI competition, stock market investors haven't been that alarmed.
Wall Street's favorite fear gauge, the Cboe Volatility Index, is having a ho-hum year after briefly surging at the tail end of 2024. Since the start of 2025, the index has averaged 16.7, with a high of 19.5 and a low of 14.9.
The calmness in the VIX reflects the lack of volatility in the S&P 500. Sure, there were down days in early January that took the index to a two-month low, but nothing that significantly altered the outlook for the economy and corporate earning-at least in the eyes of investors.
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| | | | | | Exchanges | | | Nasdaq leads push to reform options regulatory fee; Proposed rule change would pare costs for traders, raise them for banks and defund smaller venues
Bernard Goyder and Emma Hilary Gould - Risk.net
US exchange Nasdaq is leading an effort to reform equity options fees. It's a move that could cut costs for traders and raise them for banks - but would also remove an important revenue source for smaller exchanges. Exchanges routinely charge users an options regulatory fee (ORF) to cover the cost of monitoring cross-exchange transactions. But the fee's application to trades 'done away' from a given exchange is a long-standing source of industry dissatisfaction.
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Shanghai International Energy Exchange has released its Announcement of Market Makers for Futures and Options
SHFE
Shanghai International Energy Exchange has released its Announcement of Market Makers for Futures and Options as follows: In accordance with the Market-Making Management Rules of the Shanghai International Energy Exchange, Shanghai International Energy Exchange announces market makers for futures and options as follows:
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What's in store for retail investors?
Eurex
Retail investors are playing an increasingly prominent role in the European derivatives markets, driven by technological advancements and broader financial education. Eurex continues to engage with this evolving landscape. Ahead of Derivatives Forum Frankfurt, we spoke with Randolf Roth, Member of the Executive Board at Eurex, to discuss key trends, the impact of innovation, and regulatory considerations for retail market participation.
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| | | | | | Regulation & Enforcement | | | Ethereum's Next Big Moment? SEC Seeks Feedback on ETH ETF Options Trading
Blackrock Ethereum ETF
Alejandro Arrieche - Cryptonews
Nearly a year after approving a spot Ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is still evaluating whether to allow options trading on these products.
A filing released yesterday revealed that the agency is now seeking public comments on a proposed rule change that would permit options trading for ETH spot ETFs from Bitwise, iShares, and Grayscale.
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| | | | | | Strategy | | | A hedge funder shares his precise strategy for finding high-upside meme coins, and lays out his bets for 2025
Laila Maidan - Business Insider
When you think of meme coins, you probably think of retail traders chasing hype for a quick profit. But in 2025, President Donald Trump gave meme coins a whole new level of visibility when he launched his own Trump coin, attracting global interest.
Joe McCann, a hedge fund founder whose portfolio includes meme coins, didn't jump on the Trump coin bandwagon. But he did make a small personal bet on LIBRA coin, a crypto briefly promoted by Argentine President Javier Milei after a friend told McCann about it. However, he immediately sold at a loss as it plunged, realizing it was a rug pull. His saving grace was that he only bet pocket change, and it wasn't something that would have gone into any of his funds.
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| | | | | | Education | | | The put-call ratio: Gauge the market's mood with an old-school volatility indicator
Are options traders pricing in fear or calm?
Bruce Blythe and Doug Ashburn - Britannica Money
The stock market has historically risen over time, but it also goes through significant cycles of bull and bear markets. And if you know the basics of trading options, you know that put and call options may be used to-among other things-speculate on the market's direction. Put options in particular can help to protect a long position in a stock or stock portfolio.
That's why a sudden surge in demand for put options relative to call options (and vice versa) could indicate something about the stock market's general mood or direction. So traders and investors who are looking to gauge market sentiment may monitor the put-call ratio. As the name implies, that's simply the number of put options traded on a given day (or another period) divided by the number of call options traded over the same period.
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| | | | | | Miscellaneous | | | Wall Street Analyst Ratings Are 'Mostly Useless,' Unless You Use Them in the Right Way
Al Root - Barron's
Wall Street ratings are a staple for investors, who use upgrades, downgrades, and price targets to identify promising investments-and help them sleep better at night knowing where their stocks stand with the establishment.
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At the 'Wall Street of Eggs,' Demand Is Surging; The Egg Clearinghouse connects large-volume buyers with sellers, providing a crucial service at a time avian flu is limiting supplies
Patrick Thomas - The Wall Street Journal
The nation's biggest egg marketplace doesn't own hens, farms or processing plants.
From an office building in New Hampshire, roughly a dozen people facilitate the trading of billions of eggs a year, a task that shapes what Americans pay per dozen at the supermarket or for omelets at diners.
The Egg Clearinghouse, or ECI, is little known outside the industry: It operates an online marketplace that allows participants to place bids on eggs listed for sale and see the results of trades. Only ECI members-farmers and egg buyers-are allowed to trade.
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| | | Jeff Bergstrom
Editor
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