 | | | | | | | | February 05, 2025 | | | |  | Jeff Bergstrom
Editor
John Lothian News | |
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| | | | Observations & Insight | | | Cboe Global Markets pulled off a coup in the options space by hiring Meaghan Dugan away from NYSE and naming her Cboe's head of U.S. options. At NYSE, Dugan served as head of options, overseeing both NYSE Amex and NYSE Arca Options. Before that, she spent 11 years at Bank of America, ultimately leading U.S. electronic options and global futures algorithms. Earlier in her career, she worked at Morgan Stanley, first as a lead market maker in automated market making in San Francisco, then with the MSET team providing trading algorithms and solutions to institutional clients.
Dugan was interviewed for The Open Outcry Traders History Project three years ago and you can see the interview on YouTube HERE. The open outcry interview story and video on the JohnLothianNews.com website can be found HERE. ~JJL
| | | | | | Lead Stories | | | Trump Just Made Options Trading Trickier Than Ever. What to Do Now.
Steven M. Sears - Barron's
Maximum power creates maximum volatility. That seems to be the key market takeaway of President Donald Trump's initial implementation of his Make America Great Again agenda on the international stage. His decision to levy 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada plunged markets into a deep decline on Monday. The market staged an intraday recovery after Mexico's and Canada's leaders agreed to Trump's demand to secure the border. Tariffs were suspended for 30 days, though it is unclear if, in the interim, other countries beside China will also be slapped with tariffs. The options market isn't waiting to find out. A MAGA volatility premium exists beneath the options market's surface.
/jlne.ws/3WMSuM4
Options Traders Bet the Rally in Big Tech Stocks Has More Room to Run; They snap up contracts that would pay out if stocks like Apple and Amazon surge in the next few weeks
Krystal Hur - The Wall Street Journal
Wall Street's AI trade soured last week, but investors are still firmly clutching the playbooks that worked so well over the past two years.
They are positioning for big technology shares to keep climbing by scooping up options contracts that would pay out if stocks such as Apple and Amazon.com race higher in the next few weeks.
/jlne.ws/3Qa87JG
Index Insights: January 2025
Cboe
There was a robust start to 2025 for equity indices following a December pullback that took a few percentage points off the broad averages, leaving investors with returns near 25% for the S&P 500 Index (SPX) and 10% for the Russell 2000SM Index (RUT). In January 2025, there were solid gains of more than 2.5% for both the S&P 500 Index and Russell 2000 Index, while implied volatility spent most of the month near 16 and the VIX Index finished the month at 16.43. The moderate climb in value and decreasing volatility led to gains across the board in premium-writing indices, including more than 2.5% increases in both the Russell 2000 PutWriteSM Index (PUTR) and RTYDCC Russell Call Write measures. Among fixed-income indices, the BXLB LQD Buy-Write Index led gains, up more than 1%.
/jlne.ws/4gp4vyd
India Traders Rewrite Playbook for Shift to More Volatile Rupee; Rupee has fallen nearly 3% since Malhotra took charge at RBI; Traders eye RBI's comments on interest rates, rupee, liquidity
Subhadip Sircar, Bhaskar Dutta, and Anup Roy - Bloomberg
The last two years of Shaktikanta Das' tenure as India's central bank chief were marked by a rock-steady rupee, dwindling liquidity and high interest rates. Sanjay Malhotra looks set to break from that template.
Malhotra's arrival in mid-December was followed by an almost 3% drop in the rupee as the governor showed a willingness to allow more moves that are in line with regional peers. Benchmark bond yields plummeted over 10 basis points in the past three weeks after a cash infusion and talk is growing that authorities will initiate their first interest-rate cut in almost five years on Friday.
/jlne.ws/4hLjxQ1
Oil mixed as Trump restores pressure on Iran, tariff drama caps prices
Georgina Mccartney - Reuters
Oil prices diverged at settlement on Tuesday amid tariff drama between Washington and Beijing, and after U.S. President Donald Trump restored his "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran, in a bid to drive Iranian oil exports to zero, per a U.S. official.
Trump signed the presidential memorandum ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ordering the U.S. Treasury secretary to impose "maximum economic pressure" on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms.
/jlne.ws/4gsyqWr
Are We Facing a New Era of Market Volatility?
Jeff Benjamin - Yahoo Finance
It might be tempting to write off the market pullbacks of the past two Mondays as unrelated and even somewhat isolated incidents that spiked briefly with extreme volatility. But the market might be sending investors and financial advisors a bigger message beyond day-to-day dips and recoveries.
Focusing on the broad market S&P 500 Index, valuations are lofty by almost any measure. Not at record levels, by historical standards, but high enough to give nervous investors cause for concern when news reports spark a reaction.
/jlne.ws/3Q6GxNF
| | | | | | Exchanges | | | Cboe Hires Meaghan Dugan as Head of U.S. Options, Marking Latest Expansion of its Global Derivatives Team
Cboe
Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (Cboe: CBOE), the world's leading derivatives and securities exchange network, today announced Meaghan Dugan has joined the company as Head of U.S. Options. This appointment marks the latest expansion of Cboe's Global Derivatives team, which has recently welcomed several new hires and key promotions to further strengthen its business development, market intelligence, and sales capabilities across the U.S., Europe and APAC in response to increasing global client demand.
/jlne.ws/3Q5h9b1
Cboe BZX Exchange proposes options trading on spot Ethereum ETFs
Jason Shubnell - The Block
Cboe BZX Exchange has proposed to amend Rule 19.3 to allow the exchange to list and trade options on spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds. This is a "competitive filing" based on a similar proposal submitted by NYSE American, which is currently pending with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filing specifically mentions the Bitwise Ethereum ETF, the Grayscale Ethereum Trust, the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust, "and any trust that holds ether."
/jlne.ws/3CQGEtw
Trader Alert 25-04: Holiday Reminder - Closed February 17, 2025
MEMX
MEMX Equities and MEMX Options will be closed Monday, February 17, 2025, in observance of the Presidents' Day holiday. Normal trading will resume on Tuesday, February 18, 2025.
/jlne.ws/40Cl7wI
| | | | | | Strategy | | | Country ETFs, Earnings and High-IV Options Trading Opportunities
Michael "Dr. Data" Rechenthin - tastylive
From Mexico ETF's decline to AMZN and SLV trade strategies. Which sectors show high IV as Google and SNAP prepare for earnings?
/jlne.ws/42KhVBY
Trump's tariff talks are fueling stock volatility. Investing pros share 4 trades to hedge the chaos.
Christine Ji - Business Insider
The S&P 500 shed nearly 2% upon opening due to looming tariffs before crawling back upon news of a temporary deal with Mexico to call off customs fees. By the end of the day, Canada was off the hook for the time being as well.
The events confirmed what many money managers have believed for the last few months: Trump's tariff talk is more bark than bite.
/jlne.ws/3Q5Dwxa
Investors Flock to Leveraged Ether ETF That Nosedived on Tariffs; The 2x Ether ETF drew in a record $246.5 million on Tuesday; A day earlier the fund had plunged after a sharp Ether selloff
Sidhartha Shukla - Bloomberg
Investors poured record sums into a leveraged exchange-traded fund for Ether that had plummeted on Monday after US President Donald Trump's initial tariff announcements.
The 2x Ether ETF, which uses futures contracts to deliver twice the token's daily performance, recorded $246.5 million in net inflows on Tuesday - by far the largest single-day intake since the fund's inception. Just a day earlier the ETF had fallen as much as 46% amid a market-wide downturn that proved particularly acute for Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency.
/jlne.ws/3EkJAPy
| | | | | | Miscellaneous | | | A Sunday Night Flash Crash in the 'Most Insane Casino Ever Created'
Michael P. Regan - Bloomberg
There's been a lot of talk about how cryptocurrencies are maturing into more of a mainstream asset class following the wildly successful launch of spot-Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds and other forays into the space from traditional finance firms.
Well, perhaps. Yet a major flash crash in Ether as leveraged positions were liquidated served as a stark reminder of how digital-asset markets still lack almost all of the guardrails installed on traditional markets over the years due to various misadventures that hurt investors. The second-largest token was down a bit as traditional markets opened for trading Monday morning in Asia, reacting to concerns about US tariffs against Canada and Mexico. Then in a matter of minutes its losses extended to about 27%, before quickly recovering.
/jlne.ws/3CGN7HB
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