The John Lothian Daily Update is a podcast turning the daily JLN hits and takes comments, our original content and the stories and quips in the top box of First Read into a daily podcast.

Daniel Carpenter is the head of sales at Meritsoft, a Cognizant company. John Lothian News interviewed Carpenter about the problems created by high-volume trading from banks, brokerages and other institutions, including how a company tracks the different fees it is paying or collecting from various trades.

After a long career in exchange-traded derivatives, Jack Bouroudjian, chairman of the Global Smart Commodity Group, is doing an about-face, turning to blockchain technology and tokenized settlement to facilitate trading.

The Small Exchange is known for its bite-size futures products aimed at retail customers, including the Small U.S. Dollar, Small Stocks 75 and Small Precious Metals contracts. Its latest product, which was launched on Monday, fits that bill, but Small Cannabis Equity Index futures also make their mark in another way — as the first cannabis-related futures to trade in the U.S.