Banks, Brokers & Managed Funds
John Vaile Saw the Potential of Financial Futures and Helped Make Them A Success
John Vaile had an aunt who invested in the stock market who bought Vaile some stock when he was 10 years old and that experience caused him to want to be a stockbroker. As a result, Vaile became a student of the market.
He went to a couple of different colleges in Illinois, then ended up in a program at Wharton for students who did not graduate from college.
Vaile was working for Morgan Stanley and living in Lake Geneva, WI, surrounded by friends in the futures markets and he wanted to get involved with what was happening. He said he badgered Morgan Stanley to get involved. They gave him permission, but he said he could see how long it would take for them to truly become involved and he did not have the patience for that.
Is the era of the traditional FCM model coming to an end?
No, at Abaxx Exchange we don’t believe the era of the traditional FCM model is coming to an end, nor should it be. However, the recent Risk.net article “Brokers slam CME over ‘conflict of interest’ in FCM plan’ made us realize that not everyone may feel the same way, and we need to make our case for the raditional FCM model.
Some exchange groups ranging from the largest that date back more than a century to the digital asset focused upstarts have asserted that risk mutualization processes — currently favored and handled by FCMs — can and should be disintermediated.
Mark Smith’s Path To Electronic Trading: From Banking to Blockchain
Mark Smith started his career at broker-dealer Edward Jones, became an entrepreneur and then after his second firm was purchased by Citi, he found himself working for the bank, which he found an eye-opening experience.
TT’s Todd Talks Talos, Crypto, What Comes Next and Energizing a Motivated Team
Trading Technologies CEO Keith Todd made a deal with Talos, a provider of institutional digital asset trading technology, and John Lothian News wanted to know more about it and what it meant for TT and its customers.
So JLN sat down with Todd in TT’s offices in London on the Monday of IDX week to shoot a video interview with Todd as TT was preparing to make the announcement.
Tom Kadlec Retirement Party in Pictures
ADMIS President Tom Kadlec is retiring at the end of June and on June 15 the firm held a retirement party for him on the rooftop deck of the CBOT Building, attended by ADM and ADMIS personnel and others from around the derivatives industry. Kadlec was presented with a...
Craig Iseli Talks SpiderRock History and Growth in JLN OIC 2022 Interview
JLN interviewed Craig Iseli of SpiderRock at the 2022 Options Conference in San Antonio, Texas. We asked Iseli how SpiderRock started and what his role is. Iseli started running the business side of the firm and his business partner George Papa ran the trading side. Today, Iseli is the chief operating officer and Papa is the CEO.
Remembrances of Hal Hansen
Hal Hansen, the longtime Cargill Investors Services president and a former chairman of the NFA board of directors, has passed away at the age of 85. Hansen was a Cargill executive for 40 years before retiring to Naples, Fla. I first met him in 1984 when he was a...
XFA’s Bill Looney Talks Pandemic Changes in Markets to JLN at OIC 2022
Bill Looney of broker XFA was interviewed by JLN at the 2022 Options Conference in San Antonio, Texas about how the firm responded to the pandemic and changes in the markets since March 2020.
He spoke about how XFA, which caters to the floor markets, had a robust S&P 500 business at the CME that was shut down when the CME closed the trading floor because of the pandemic. However, when the CME reopened the trading floor, they didn’t reopen the S&P 500 trading pit and XFA was not sure how its clients would respond.
Blue Ocean Technologies CEO Brian Hyndman Sees Clear Sailing for ATS in Overnight Trading
Brian Hyndman was recently promoted to CEO of Blue Ocean Technologies, which has developed from a broker-dealer that matched buyers and sellers by phone during the overnight market hours to an ATS that allows Asian investors to trade U.S. stocks electronically during overnight market hours. Hyndman was recently interviewed by John Lothian News about Blue Ocean and his new role.
Hyndman, a longtime Nasdaq executive, joined Blue Ocean to help raise capital to grow the company. He was eventually asked to join Blue Ocean and run it. Before Hyndman joined, the company’s vision was to trade just ETFs; he extended it out to all NMS (National Market System) stocks. Today, Blue Ocean offers trading on more than 12,000 NMS stocks on its platform.
Robbert Booij of ABN AMRO Clearing Reflects on Ukraine Impact, UK Consultation, ESG in FIA Boca 2022 Interview
Robbert Booij, CEO of the European region for ABN AMRO Clearing Bank N.V., told JLN at FIA Boca 2022 that the firm’s lack of proprietary trading and focus on clearing clients’ trading, along with their real time risk management model, allowed them to focus on the tremendous volatility brought on by Russia’s Ukraine invasion and to escape without any direct exposure.
Lukken Happy to Be Back at Boca; Hails Conference a Success
Walt Lukken was not the last interview JLN conducted during Boca, but he was the second to last. The JLN team interviewed the FIA president & CEO on the back patio of the Mizner Conference Center on the last day of the conference minutes before he offered his closing words.
All that was left of the conference was the golf and the closing cocktail party later, which, like the rest of the conference, would be moved indoors. We interviewed Lukken tucked under the arched portico of the conference center, as our regular interview space was being disassembled to ready the area for the next event.
John McPartland – The History of Financial Futures – JLN
Longtime Banker Played Key Role During Early Days of IMM Currency Deliveries John McPartland joined Continental Bank in 1973 after leaving the Air Force. He worked two years in the internal audit department where he learned about secured financing. He was honing his...
FIA Asia-V: Call for Greater Operational Efficiency Unanimous, But ‘We Need a Few Heroes’
The COVID-19 pandemic and the period of intense volatility that followed its initial onslaught highlighted gaps in the infrastructure that supports global exchange-cleared derivatives systems. But those glitches have been at play for a while and need to be addressed, panelists at FIA’s Asia-V said.
In a panel on operational efficiencies during day two of the conference, Don Byron, FIA’s head of global industry operations and execution, pointed to the group’s November 2021 “Blueprint” plan to modernize trading processes.
FIA Expo 2021 Video: ‘Everyone is Threatened’ by Disintermediation
Robert Fitzsimmons, executive vice president at Wedbush Securities, spoke with John Lothian News at FIA Expo 2021 about his observations, insights and opinions on everything from the conference itself to the state of cryptocurrency today. As executive vice president, Fitzsimmons manages futures, fixed income groups, and securities lending.
Among the talking points from the conference, one topic of concern was the notion of disintermediation, which essentially cuts out the middle men — removing banks, brokers, or other third parties — allowing individuals to invest directly.
FIA Expo: CFTC’s Dawn Stump Urges Return to Basics When Regulating Crypto, Carbon Markets
In a keynote address at the FIA Expo on Wednesday, CFTC Commissioner Dawn Stump urged the industry, and regulators, to go back to the basics in their discussions of who should oversee digital assets and how they should be overseen before “engaging in a jurisdictional power-grab.”
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The High Price of Bad Business: Corporate America’s Biggest Settlements
First Read Hits & Takes John Lothian & JLN Staff The OCC says be wary of crypto - the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that is, not The Options Clearing Corporation. The SEC says public companies should disclose their crypto exposure, assuming they...
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The Spread
ALL OPTIONS CEO ALLARD JAKOBS TALKS ABOUT RUNNING A SUCCESSFUL TRADING FIRM, WHAT HE LOOKS FOR FROM NEW TRADERS, AND MORE IN THIS FULL INTERVIEW WITH JLN’S ALEX TENG
In this Options Discovery interview, Allard Jakobs, the CEO of All Options, sits down with JLN’s Alex Teng.
Wall Street’s Booming ETF Market Is On Brink of Record Launches
Observations & Insight Trabue Bland, SVP, Futures Markets at ICE, has written a paper titled "Why financial participants matter to the commodity markets." The chapter topics of the paper include "How derivatives work" and "Participation in the derivatives...
