111 Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast September 11th, 2021

Transcript:

This week in the parish of bourses and market structure:

TPI ICAP Go full Biden with their disappointing results being trumpeted as a success while Beijing has a new stock exchange within eight minutes of President Xi Jinping trumpeting its existence.

My name is Patrick L. Young.

Welcome to the bourse business weekly digest.

It’s the Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast Episode 111.

Good day ladies and gentlemen, this is a very brief reduction of highlights amongst the key headlines from the week in market structure. All the analysis of the week’s many events and happenings can be found in Exchange Invest’s daily subscriber newsletter, the unique guide to the bourse business sent daily to your inbox.

More details at ExchangeInvest.com.

The Members Exchange kicked the week off by urging regulators in the US to allow half penny stock prices. “Half a tick is better than half a basis point” as presumably the financialised remake of the 1960’s musical ”Half A Sixpence” based on an HG Wells story would go in the current day.

Meanwhile, there’s the battle to host the global sustainability company disclosure agency (there’s quite a mouthful) where the woke era of Trudeau fils is imperiled their bid to host this agency in Canada might be won by the rather more logical financial center option of London.

New to London, the European Union says they need months to decide about clearing access. As opposed to all those instant decisions which rattle up and down the Brussels chain of command in a New York minute as the bureaucracy pulses with vigorous decision-making zeal. Oh, hold on a second…

Meanwhile, following market consultation SGX’s regulatory arm in Singapore halved the minimum capitalization requirement for SPAC listings to a mere S$150 million (that’s about 112 million in US dollar terms) – the question is, of course, will this be too late for the SPAC boom which already appears to falter in the USA?

Meanwhile, the London Metals Exchange floor reopened but on day one business through the ring was dramatically lower – up to some 85% pre-COVID times they say.

It was a wildly busy week for results in the parish. All the deals were in Exchange Invest daily, the newsletter no person can afford to be without in capital markets and market structure. For the sake of this podcast, let’s look at some edited highlights:

The stock exchange preliminary estimated consolidated financials for Q2 shows EBITDA jumping 9% and net profit of 18%. If only we could see those sorts of numbers from the ongoing train wreck, which is TP ICAP, tragically there what we ended up with was actually a plunge into loss after tax. That plunge in the post tax loss leaves Nicolas Biden, I mean, Nicolas Breteau, celebrating another unprecedented success. In his mind only.

The funniest thing about TP ICAP is that even the C-suite plotters can’t manage to oust their own CEO despite talking about it for months.

Other great results this week came through from TISE (The International Stock Exchange) better known as the Channel Island Stock Exchange, once upon a time. Revenue up 16.3% in the first half of the year that equates to profits up 45.4% year on year.

It was a frantic week for new markets in the parish this week, and once again, all the details were in Exchange Invest. So if you’re not a subscriber, you’re missing out. Email us for details of a free subscription trial offer.

President Xi says China would set up a Beijing Stock Exchange for SMEs calling the plan primarily a restructuring of Beijing’s National Equities Exchange and Quotations market or NEEQ, which was also called the New Third Board. Of course, the setup of the entire market was achieved within literally eight minutes of the Xi speech and a complete management team seems to almost be information as we’ll hear later.

Over in South Africa, 4 Africa Exchange, they’re going to revive the Cape Town Stock Exchange. The Cape Town Stock Exchange was launched in 1901 in response to trading disruptions, owing to The Anglo-Boer War. It closed shortly after the war ended, over a century later for 4AX is going to revive itself with the name of its hometown of Cape Town.

Remarkably, in the time it took to read, that was pretty much how long it took the Beijing Stock Exchange to complete their business registration. They did it with a capital of 1 billion yuan ($155 million) having only been proposed publicly a couple of days earlier by the President.

Finally, amongst the many new markets, we saw last week, CBOE debuted their new European derivatives market in Amsterdam with their recently acquired Euro CCP clearinghouse doing the heavy lifting of the leverage.

In deals, quite a busy week there too. All the news was in Exchange Invest.

Urbana, they’ve increased its stake in the Canadian National Stock Exchange to 49.92%.

The Swiss group SIX bought out the Clearstream stake in REGIS-TR Trade Repository to leave them with 100% ownership of the venture which was originally a joint venture between BME’s Iberclear and Deutsche Boerse’s Clearstream founded in 2010.

Great news from ArawakX, South of the Caribbean, the good folks in the Bahamas. They had some fascinating news this week, they’re going to be integrating their clearing and settlement platform into the Bahamas Central Bank Digital Currency – the “Sand Dollar”, which is going to come into its payment network for crowdfunding and SME trading. That’s a really excellent development as their first crowdfunding campaigns are already proving popular.

Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, two points about “Victory or Death”, my latest book on the future of finance, FinTech, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency et al. If you haven’t got a copy, get one ordered ASAP and join the revolution. Available from the likes of Amazon.com. Of course, “Victory or Death” is published by DV Books and distributed by Ingram worldwide.

Meanwhile, the IPO-Vid Livestream restarts on Tuesday 14th of September and I will be presenting an AMA – “Ask Me Anything” about the book “Victory or Death”.

In product news this week, quite ICE-centric, ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) , they’re going to launch micro MSCI futures in the USA and micro MSCI Europe index futures on ICE Futures Singapore.

Exciting news as well you can get the data for most of that apparently free. If you are a member of ICE or you’ve got a suitably compliant broker. Equally, they also had an interesting launch this week in terms of data for sustainability.

In China, experts are calling for a bigger role for futures in the real economy. That sounds a little bit seismic to me.

Technology news, still dominated by something we had earlier last week coming in just as we were recording the podcast, the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange launching their derivatives market, leveraging NASDAQ technology to become the second futures exchange to launch in Abu Dhabi during the course of this year.

The ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Corporation) backed Intercontinental Exchange run ICE Futures Abu Dhabi (IFAD).

Regulation, it was fascinating this week to read the speech “The Risks Of Token Regulation” by the FCA’s Chairman Charles Randall who set out to, well, pontificate if not clean the Augean stables perceived as the crypto bearpit if not cesspit of the moment.

He noted:

“The digital world will continue to produce a lot of problematic content. But stables can produce winners too, so we must be careful not to scare the horses.”

Career news this week, Bhishma Dhungana, the chairman of SEBON (Securities Board of Nepal) has been suspended. That came in the wake of Saud, the Nepal Stock Exchange, CEO resigning in the last bulletin over an insider dealing scandal that embroiled the chairman of the regulatory board as well.

Meanwhile, the veteran reformer Xu Ming, an academic term regulator. He’s been chosen to head the new, exciting, SME-focused Beijing’s Stock Exchange.

Finally, a little word from the former head of ICE Futures Europe, David Peniket is joining the reg tech firm Qomply, as an advisor after his 18-year spell with Intercontinental Exchange, which of course ended with his retirement from that business as president of its European futures division a couple of years back.

Unless we launch ourselves back into the world of the Dubai Financial Market. This week, we were seeing increases in hours being announced by the Japan Stock Exchange roughly half an hour and also the DFM (Dubai Financial Market) who are extending their hours by no less than two hours from three to five. However, this was the week when they canceled minimum commissions.

Here’s a fun fact for you, the number of trades on the Dubai Financial Market jumped over 160% a day after the bourse canceled the minimum trading commission.

And on that mysterious and magnificent note ladies and gentlemen, my name is Patrick L. Young.

I wish you a great week in blockchain, life, and markets.

LINKS:

Members Exchange Urges Regulators To Allow Half-Penny Stock Prices
The Wall Street Journal

Battle To Host Global Sustainability Company Disclosures Body Heats Up
Nasdaq

EU Ruling On Euro Clearing To Take Months, Financial Chief Says
Reuters

Singapore To Let Blank Cheque Companies Raise Funds Starting On Sept 3, 2021
Yahoo Finance

SGX Introduces SPAC Listing Framework
SGX

Singapore Exchange Targets SPAC Hopefuls With Relaxed Rules
Reuters.com

London’s Iconic Metals Floor Is Reopening, But For How Long?
Yahoo Finance

Covid Alert As Metals Market Restarts ‘Open Outcry’ Trading
The Times

GPW Preliminary Estimated Consolidated Financials For Q2 2021
GPW