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The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained an emergency asset freeze to halt a fast-moving Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fraud that raised up to USD15 million from thousands of investors since August by falsely promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month.
The SEC filed charges against Dominic Lacroix and his company, PlexCorps. The Commission’s complaint, filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, alleges that Lacroix and PlexCorps marketed and sold securities called PlexCoin on the internet to investors in the US and elsewhere, claiming that investments in PlexCoin would yield a 1,354 per cent profit in less than 29
After more than 19 years at Schroders and an investment career spanning 32 years, Geoff Blanning (pictured), Head of Emerging Market Debt Absolute Return and Commodities Group, has decided to retire and will leave the company in April 2018.
Abdallah Guezour, currently Head of Emerging Market Debt Absolute Return, will become Head of the Emerging Market Debt Absolute Return & Commodities Group in January 2018. Abdallah joined Schroders in 2000 and has worked with Geoff for over 20 years.
To ensure continuity, Mark Lacey, who has been working closely with Geoff over the past three years as a fund
PAG, a Hong Kong-based independent alternative investment fund manager, has hired a new quantitative investment and research team, based in Geneva, to launch a new business applying quantitative techniques to fundamental investments.
The business, known as PAG Investment Solutions, is led by Edgar van Tuyll, formerly chief quantitative strategist at Pictet, where he and his team managed a USD1 billion portfolio. Van Tuyll comes to PAG with 22 years of experience in quantitative and global macro investing.
“Traditional investment management is at the core of our strategy,” says Albert Collette, Partner at PAG Investment Solutions. “Our goal has been
PEGAS, the pan-European gas trading platform operated by Powernext, achieved its second best monthly trading volume in November, with 194.5 TWh, up 34 per cent compared to the previous year (November 2016: 144.6 TWh).
It includes a volume record on the futures segment of the Italian PSV market area with 6.3 TWh (previous record: 6.0 TWh in August 2017).
Spot trading volume in November reached 74.3 TWh, up 19 per cent from the previous year (62.3 TWh). Over 22.1 TWh were traded on the Dutch market area TTF, which is 45 per cent higher than November 2016 (15.2 TWh).
The European Energy Exchange (EEX) achieved a total volume of 276.6 TWh on its power derivatives markets in November (November 2016: 423.2 TWh). The November volume comprised 163.8 TWh traded at EEX via Trade Registration with subsequent clearing.
Clearing and settlement of all exchange transactions was executed by European Commodity Clearing (ECC).
For the first time, more than 10 TWh were traded in power derivatives for the Central and Eastern European markets, formerly listed at the Prague-based Power Exchange Europe (PXE). Since the migration of the products onto the EEX platform in mid-June, liquidity in these markets has increased
Cboe Futures Exchange (CFE) plans to offer trading in bitcoin futures beginning at 5:00 pm CT on Sunday, 10 December, 2017, at the start of Global Trading Hours. Monday, 11 December, will be the first full day of trading, and trading will be free through December.
Cboe’s bitcoin futures will trade on CFE under the ticker symbol ‘XBT.’ XBTSM futures are cash-settled contracts based on Gemini’s auction price for bitcoin, denominated in US dollars. Gemini Trust Company, LLC (Gemini) is a digital asset exchange and custodian that allows customers to buy, sell, and store digital assets such as bitcoin. XBT futures
What’s the situation? Asset managers today are faced with having to deal with a plethora of liquidity regulations. Most of the liquidity-related concerns in respect of Comprehensive Capital Analysis Review (CCAR) prescribed by the Federal Reserve Board, Solvency II, MiFID II – due to go live on 3rd January 2018 – and liquidity coverage ratios under Basel III are essentially just rules from the regulator to adhere to.
This has required financial institutions to become more prescriptive in terms of improving their trade compliance frameworks and enhancing pre-trade analytics. But the goalposts are changing.
Regulations such as the Alternative Investment
The Cboe Futures Exchange (CFE) has filed a product certification with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to offer bitcoin futures trading. The product certification is subject to regulatory review.
The impending launch date of Cboe bitcoin futures, which will trade on CFE under the ticker symbol ‘XBT,’ will be announced shortly. XBTSM futures were made available for participant testing on November 13, 2017.
Existing CFE Trading Privilege Holders (TPHs) can trade XBT futures via their existing connections. XBT futures market data will be made available over Cboe’s market data feeds.
The second edition of the MJ Hudson Allenbridge Systematic Factor Market Review estimates that there are now USD1trillion of assets invested in systematic factor (smart beta) strategies.
It is estimated that strategies created by investment banks represent approximately USD300 billion of that amount, with the balance invested in strategies managed by asset managers.
The 2017 survey involved in-person meetings, supported by an online questionnaire. Twenty one asset managers and 11 investment banks participated. These participants alone currently offer approximately 2,200 systematic factor strategies to the market.
Participants in the survey, alone, run a total of 2,213 strategies, with
Trading volume in options on the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) reached a new all-time high on Friday, 1 December.
In VIX options at Cboe Options Exchange, a reported 3.1 million contracts traded on Friday, far surpassing the previous single-day record of 2.6 million contracts on Monday, September 25, 2017.
Five of the ten busiest single days ever for trading VIX options have occurred in 2017.
