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JLN Options
February 21, 2023  
 
Jeff Bergstrom
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John Lothian News
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Lead Stories
 
How This 23-Year-Old Trader Bets on Memes, Options and Bankruptcy News
Gunjan Banerji - WSJ
Vincent Delisi says he has traded since he graduated from college in 2021—right around the time meme stocks were all the rage.
Shares of companies like GameStop and AMC Entertainment were soaring, luring scores of Americans into the stock market.
/jlne.ws/3XRKkzG

VIX Rises to Highest Level Since Early January
Eric Wallerstein - WSJ
Volatility is bubbling higher. The Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX, rose toward 22.5 early Tuesday. That would be its highest closing level since the first few trading days of the year.
/jlne.ws/3xN9qVK

'Bitcoin Jesus' Is Said to Owe Genesis Millions. So, What Makes Him Tick? (Podcast); A unit of Genesis is accusing early Bitcoin investor Roger Ver of failing to settle some outstanding crypto options transactions.
Muhammad Farouk Abdulrahman - Bloomberg
Bitcoin "evangelist" Roger Ver has said in at least one interview that when he was a little boy that he wanted to be a garbage truck driver. That way, he could drive heavy machinery around his neighborhood and get to talk to everyone. Sure enough, Ver did end up talking to a lot of folks -- but just not while collecting their trash. Instead, he promoted Bitcoin as the future of money and finance in the early days of crypto, which earned him the title "Bitcoin Jesus."
/jlne.ws/3XPWmtq

ION Trading Hack: Traders Worldwide Missing Key Market Data
Ruth Carson and Stephen Stapczynski - Bloomberg
"Frustrating," "very annoying" and "left in the dark."
These and similar expressions have been used to describe the near month-long blackout on key global investor positioning reports that cover bets on everything from Treasuries to soybean futures — the casualty of a ransomware attack on financial firm ION Trading UK.
/jlne.ws/3SlSxLw

Derivatives market still hit by fallout from Ion Markets cyber attack; Incident has left exchanges and regulators unable to compile weekly reports of trading activity
Nikou Asgari - Financial Times
Business has yet to return to normal in global derivatives trading, three weeks after a cyber attack on Ion Markets, underlining the financial technology group's significant role in the plumbing of the $1tn market. Little-known Ion was targeted by attackers at the end of January, who disabled part of its derivatives systems and forced many trading desks to manually keep track of their data on spreadsheets.
/jlne.ws/3IcTi4U

The stock market is under pressure because 3 key sources of liquidity have dried up, Bank of America says
Matthew Fox - Business Insider
BofA equity strategist Savita Subramanian highlighted the end of quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve as the big liquidity source that is now being pulled back as the Fed reduces its more than $8 trillion balance sheet by nearly $100 billion per month.
"The two biggest buyers of treasuries - China and Fed - are done," Subramanian said. The implications are higher interest rates and scarce cash, which could put pressure on long duration assets like unprofitable growth stocks, the same stocks that have soared so far in 2023.
/jlne.ws/3SzPK1z

Beaten-up Adani stocks have now fallen below $100 billion in market value after coming under short-seller attack
Zinya Salfiti - Business Insider
The rout in Adani stocks continued to deepen Tuesday, even after Gautam Adani, the tycoon who spearheads the group, played down the losses as "temporary" volatility last week.
The Indian conglomerate's 10 listed companies — with businesses ranging from power, ports, transmission, gas, green energy, and food — now have a combined equity market value under $100 billion, Bloomberg reported.
/jlne.ws/3XWbsO6

 
 
Exchanges
 
ICE is reporting record volumes on environmental futures and options products
Finance Feeds
Intercontinental Exchange has reported record volume of 3.64 million contracts (+5% YoY) traded in its North American environmental markets, with a record 270 companies trading in 2022. ICE's North American environmental futures and options markets include California Carbon Allowances, California Carbon credits, RGGI Allowances (RGA), California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) Credits, and Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).
/jlne.ws/41dlAVM

HKEX To Introduce New Option Classes
HKEX
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) is pleased to announce today (Monday) the launch of three new stock option classes on Monday, 6 March 2023. HKEX's derivatives market had a robust 2022, with average daily volume rising 11 per cent to a record 1,302,889 contracts. The momentum has continued into 2023, with average daily volumes in January up 22 per cent from a year earlier.
/jlne.ws/417IjCr

 
 
Regulation & Enforcement
 
Deutsche Bank's Regulators Criticize Its Internal Probe; Regulators are said to be unhappy about scope, speed of probe; Project Teal probe lasted two years, led to several departures
Steven Arons - Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank AG's top supervisors are critical of how the lender handled an internal investigation into mis-selling of derivatives, raising questions about its findings. The European Central Bank and German regulator BaFin have told Germany's largest bank that the probe, known as Project Teal, took too long, wasn't broad enough, and was too slow to take remedial action, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The regulators could impose sanctions such as a fine or take other enforcement actions at some point as a result, one person said.
/jlne.ws/3YLQOBq

 
 
Technology
 
Trading Technologies and Eurex enter into commercial partnership to offer EnLight directly from TT platform; Banks, other large institutions to benefit from automated RFQ solution on trade execution screen
Trading Technologies International, Inc.
Trading Technologies International, Inc. (TT), a global provider of high-performance professional trading software, infrastructure and data solutions, and Eurex Frankfurt AG, the leading European derivatives exchange, today announced that they have entered into a commercial partnership in which TT will offer direct access to the Eurex EnLight selective request-for-quote (RFQ) solution from within the TT platform. The agreement will give institutions on TT's broad global distribution network the opportunity to streamline their RFQ and larger scale, complex trade execution activity on a single screen.
/jlne.ws/3XVCF3j

****** TT and Eurex team up again to make the trader experience better.~JJL

 
 
Strategy
 
VIX Returns to Old Vol Regime
Cboe (Video)
Tim Biggam @Delta_Desk on moves in the $VIX #futures term structure and activity in VIX #options in today's #Vol411
/jlne.ws/3XSGTsP

PUTW: The Other Way To Consider Profiting From Option Writing (NYSEARCA:PUTW)
Rob Isbitts - Seeking Alpha
Make no mistake about it: in modern investment markets, volatility is an asset. In other words, investors can use changes in stock market or bond market volatility to pursue price appreciation, cash flow from option premiums, or both. And, while covered call strategies like JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF (JEPI), now over $20B in assets, have captured the attention, there are other ways to pursue a steadier total return that starts with investing off the volatility of the S&P 500. PUTW is one of them. And, with PUTW outperforming JEPI noticeably to start 2023, I decided to get more familiar with this somewhat orphaned version of covered option writing, which has a mere $100mm in AUM. My conclusion: with volatility and the VIX apparently going through a dramatic change from some new influences, PUTW is worthy of being tracked alongside JEPI and others in this peer group.
/jlne.ws/3Si2LfZ

 
 
Miscellaneous
 
The dark side of stock market circuit breakers
Betsy Vereckey - Management
Circuit breakers are usually thought of as a necessary timeout for investors when markets go wild. They were first implemented in U.S. stock markets after the Black Monday stock crash of 1987 as a way to pause trading and restore stability during unprecedented times of volatility. "In the U.S., most people view circuit breakers as a necessary tool, especially when the market is in a state of chaos," saidHui Chen,a professor of finance at MIT Sloan.
/jlne.ws/3EkHWuu

Investment scam reports rise by 193% cent in five years; Financial watchdog notes growth of crypto fraud
Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan - Financial Times
Calls to the UK financial watchdog related to investment scams have nearly tripled over the past five years, as fraudsters use inflationary pressures to better target victims. The data reflects the wider growth of so-called authorised push payment fraud, in which consumers are tricked into sending money to scammers who pose as trusted figures. "Scammers are becoming more and more sophisticated, coming up with different tactics, such as impersonation texts or calls, and using the cost of living pressure as a way to tempt investors into false opportunities," said Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the Financial Conduct Authority.
/jlne.ws/3ErQ64u
 
 
 
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John Lothian News (JLN) is the news division of John J. Lothian & Company, Inc. (JJLCO). The online media and financial services firm is staffed by derivatives industry, journalism and technology professionals.
 
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