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DealFlow Follows Wall Street Into Prediction Markets with Predict 2026 Conference

DealFlow Follows Wall Street Into Prediction Markets with Predict 2026 Conference

by | Aug 14, 2026

Steven Dresner sees a fragmented institutional future as DealFlow shifts its information business toward a live, networking-first forum

ELMHURST, IL (JLN) – August 14, 2026: DealFlow Events is bringing its live-event model to prediction markets, with Predict 2026 in New York on October 6 and 7, after watching the market’s traditional financial services gatekeepers move in. For Steven Dresner, the company’s CEO, that was the clearest market structure signal available: major investment banks, large law firms, and the corporate sponsors that support DealFlow’s other programs were forming teams to explore the business.

“We followed the money,” Dresner said in a July interview with John Lothian News. “We are a tools provider on Wall Street, and what I have found to be very helpful in navigating new markets is to just stay in tune with what our clients are doing.”

Correction: CFTC Invokes Emergency Powers Twice in 30 Days in Support of Kalshi, Six Times in Total

Correction: CFTC Invokes Emergency Powers Twice in 30 Days in Support of Kalshi, Six Times in Total

by | Aug 12, 2026

WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN), August 12, 2026: A correction is necessary. I wrote that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had never invoked its emergency authority under Section 8a(9) of the Commodity Exchange Act before July 14, 2026. That was wrong.

The CFTC has exercised that authority six times since its creation: four times between 1976 and 1980 and twice during the past 30 days. The accurate and still remarkable point is that the commission allowed its emergency power to remain dormant for 46 years before Chairman Michael Selig revived it twice, both times in support of Kalshi.

Why the CFTC Used Its “Nuclear Option” to Protect Kalshi

Why the CFTC Used Its “Nuclear Option” to Protect Kalshi

by | Aug 12, 2026

CFTC Invokes Emergency Powers Twice in Last 30 Days in Support of Kalshi

Publisher’s Note: A correction to this story was subsequently published reflecting that the CFTC has used its emergency authority a total of six times, including twice recently for Kalshi. Our apologies for the error. 

WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN) – August 12, 2026: How many times has the CFTC invoked its emergency authority before July 14, 2026? Zero. That’s right, not during the Hunt Brothers’ silver market corner, or during the Maine Potato default, or during 9/11 or the financial crisis, or any other time.

Section 8a(9) of the Commodity Exchange Act is the CFTC’s nuclear option. It allows the commission, upon finding an emergency, to order a registered exchange to take whatever action the CFTC considers necessary to maintain or restore orderly trading. The merits of that emergency determination are generally insulated from judicial review.

And there is the legal strategy of CFTC Chairman Michael Selig: use the nuclear option to assert CFTC preemption over the states, avoiding any ambiguity about conflicting Federal court decisions on the CFTC’s authority, which I wrote about yesterday. 

The Chairman’s Op-Ed Skips the Parts He’d Have to Litigate: Markets Price Uncertainty. Selig’s Essay Ignores.

The Chairman’s Op-Ed Skips the Parts He’d Have to Litigate: Markets Price Uncertainty. Selig’s Essay Ignores.

by | Aug 11, 2026

The CFTC chairman makes a defensible case for innovation but undermines it by editing out unresolved questions.

WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN) — August 11, 2026: CFTC Chairman Michael Selig chose The Economist to publish “The New Era of Finance Needs Innovation More Than Consensus.” That matters because The Economist serves a sophisticated international readership accustomed to ambiguity, competing legal interpretations and the complexities of global markets. Its readers expect contested claims to be identified, evidence to be supported and serious counterarguments to be confronted rather than written out of existence.

An Old Answer to a New Wager

An Old Answer to a New Wager

by | Aug 7, 2026

A 1745 British law against wagering on maritime disasters offers the CFTC a precedent for banning wildfire event contracts.

WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN) — August 7, 2026: Nine Democratic senators, led by California’s Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, wrote to CFTC Chairman Michael Selig this week demanding that the commission rein in prediction markets offering event contracts on wildfires. Their letter cites more than $1.2 million in bets on Polymarket’s offshore platform surrounding the Palisades and the Eaton fires that killed 31 people in Los Angeles in January 2025, and it relays a blunt warning from state and local fire officials: contracts that pay out on destruction invite someone to supply the destruction.

The History of Single-Stock Futures: From Ban to Revival

The History of Single-Stock Futures: From Ban to Revival

by | Aug 6, 2026

WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN) – August 6, 2026: Months ago, I heard that FIA was examining renewed industry interest in reviving single-stock futures, which debuted in the US in 2002 and last traded on OneChicago in 2020. I decided to explore their history in a video project, particularly because 25 years had passed since the Commodity Futures Modernization Act legalized SSFs. The project also traces their earlier prohibition under the 1981 Shad-Johnson Accord and the Futures Trading Act of 1982.

FIA President and CEO Walt Lukken, who helped negotiate the CFMA while serving as a Senate aide, has called single-stock futures his “white whale.” For me, they were more like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster: a much-hyped quarry that never quite materialized.

Trading Technologies Says Its Systems Are Ready for 24/7 Markets

Trading Technologies Says Its Systems Are Ready for 24/7 Markets

by | Aug 5, 2026

TT executives see clearing automation, margin analytics and AI reshaping post-trade operations

LONDON (JLN) – August 5, 2026: Trading Technologies is technologically prepared for the derivatives industry’s shift toward round-the-clock trading, though expanding operational support across weekends will require a more gradual transition, two company executives said.

“Twenty-four-seven is obviously coming,” Maxime Jeanniard du Dot, executive vice president at Trading Technologies, said in an interview at the FIA International Derivatives Expo. TT already supports European power markets that operate on extended schedules, giving the company experience with the technology required for continuous trading, he said.

Ex-NYSE Executive Warns SEC Overhaul Risks Wasting Millions Without Deeper Reforms

Ex-NYSE Executive Warns SEC Overhaul Risks Wasting Millions Without Deeper Reforms

by | Aug 3, 2026

Steven Poser says rescinding Rule 611 will simplify routing but won’t solve modern execution hurdles without updated guidelines for institutional block trades.

ELMHURST, IL (JLN) – August 3, 2026 — Rescinding Wall Street’s long-standing order protection rule will streamline market routing and potentially force a shakeout among hyper-fragmented stock exchanges. Still, it risks becoming an expensive, low-impact administrative exercise unless regulators overhaul how they evaluate institutional executions.

Speaking in an interview with John Lothian News, Steven Poser, former director of research at the New York Stock Exchange and now managing partner at Wall Street Experts LLC, a boutique consulting firm advising on primary listing venue selection, U.S. equity market structure, order type optimization, and expert witness testimony, noted that his transition out of the exchange world gives him the latitude to offer candid market structural critiques.

IG Group keeps trying to predict prediction markets

IG Group keeps trying to predict prediction markets

by | Jul 31, 2026

ELMHURST, IL (JLN) — July 31, 2026: IG Group has been trying to predict the prediction market business for nearly two decades. Its record looks like that of a trader who gets in early, loses conviction, sells, buys back, sells again, and then discovers that the market has gone limit-up without him or her.

Now IG is getting back in, this time with both feet, several licenses and up to $1.3 billion.

The story begins with HedgeStreet, the wonderfully named California exchange founded in 2004 to offer small, easily understood derivatives to retail traders. The products were called “Hedgelets,” which sounds like either a financial instrument or something served with mustard at a British garden party.

The Call Is Coming from Inside the White House: Senate Democrats’ Forum Lays Out the National Security and Retail-Investor Case Against the CLARITY Act

The Call Is Coming from Inside the White House: Senate Democrats’ Forum Lays Out the National Security and Retail-Investor Case Against the CLARITY Act

by | Jul 29, 2026

WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN) — July 29, 2026: On Capitol Hill on Monday, Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) convened a Senate Democratic forum broadcast on YouTube on what they’re calling the “cryptocorruption” flowing out of the Trump White House and into the pending CLARITY Act, the digital-asset market-structure bill now working its way toward the Senate floor. They were joined by Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and they took testimony from five witnesses: actor-turned-crypto-investigator Ben McKenzie Schenkkan; North Carolina scam victim Lori Flowers; former SEC Internet Enforcement chief John Reed Stark; Democracy Defenders Action ethics counsel Virginia Canter; and Transparency International U.S. deputy executive director Scott Greytak.

CME’s Innovator’s Dilemma: Read the Book, or Become the Case Study

CME’s Innovator’s Dilemma: Read the Book, or Become the Case Study

by | Jul 27, 2026

Perpetual futures are the classic low-end disruptor. The only question is whether CME builds the exchange that eats its own margins — or waits for a consortium to build it first.

WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN) — July 27, 2026: CME Group is living in a Clayton Christensen case study and doesn’t even have to buy the book to see how it ends. The lesson is already in its own stock chart, its margin profile, and the shadow cast by perpetual futures. The only question is whether CME wants to be the incumbent in the book…or the disruptor in the sequel.

AI tools and longer trading hours could help European markets narrow the gap with the US

AI tools and longer trading hours could help European markets narrow the gap with the US

by | Jul 24, 2026

LONDON (JLN) – July 24, 2026: European derivatives markets need deeper liquidity to attract US investors seeking greater exposure to the region, according to Oliver Deutschmann, managing director, head of equity derivatives EMEA at Liquidnet.

“What’s really missing to attract more business is simply liquidity,” Deutschmann said. US clients are interested in Europe but question whether markets such as Euro Stoxx futures can absorb large orders without significant price movement, he said.

Duffy Goes Down Swinging — But Don’t Let Perpetuals Become the Next E-mini

Duffy Goes Down Swinging — But Don’t Let Perpetuals Become the Next E-mini

by | Jul 23, 2026

Duffy Goes Down Swinging — But Don’t Let Perpetuals Become the Next E-mini

ELMHURST, IL (JLN) — July 23, 2026: Give Terry Duffy this much: the man does not do lame duck. On one of his final CME Group earnings calls as chief executive, the outgoing chairman and CEO came out swinging, pulling no punches on the industry’s most active newswire topics in the derivatives business, from prediction markets and sports “event” contracts drifting into what he flatly calls gambling, to the rush toward perpetual futures, to the CFTC’s willingness to bless it all. Duffy has always been at his best when he has something to defend and someone to argue with, and with the exit door in sight, he is using the last of his platform to plant flags for the CME Group he built.

On perpetuals, though, I think he is fighting the last war.

EEX Weighs Extended Trading Hours as Geopolitics Roil Power Markets

EEX Weighs Extended Trading Hours as Geopolitics Roil Power Markets

by | Jul 22, 2026

Europe’s largest power exchange readies portfolio margining rollout and longer sessions to match round-the-clock commodity risk
LONDON (JLN) — July 22, 2026: European Energy Exchange is preparing to extend its trading day into the early European morning and late evening hours as geopolitical shocks increasingly move commodity prices outside conventional session windows, according to Tobias Paulun, chief executive officer at European Commodity Clearing AG, a wholly owned subsidiary of EEX AG, in an interview at the FIA International Derivatives Expo.

John Lothian

John Lothian

Executive Chairman & CEO

JohnLothian@JohnLothian.com MarketsWiki Profile

John J. Lothian is the founder and co-owner of MarketsWiki, MarketsWikiEducation and MarketsReformWiki and the publisher of John Lothian News.