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Chairman's Letter - May 2019

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Written by

NIBA

Published

May 16, 2019

Reading time

2 min

May - National Burger Month Mint Juleps NIBA welcomes new members TriNet and Coquest Advisors, LLC, both in the Service Provider category. May has proven to be a busy month -- micro e-mini futures launched at the CME Group and appear to be well received. ICE Futures US announced it will begin trading Bakkt-developed bitcoin futures in mid-summer. During the month several notable market commented on the state and future of the industry, including with regard to cybersecurity and competition: - Louis Rosato, BlackRock Investment Operations Group at SIFMA in Boca Raton, FL, “optimal cybersecurity comes from combining human ingenuity with artificial intelligence, rather than focusing on one over the other.” - Christopher Giancarlo, CFTC Chairman before a U.S. Senate subcommittee in Washington, DC, “Cyber is the No. 1 risk to our markets and in some ways, the No. 1 risk to our own agency operations because of the amount of data.” - Dr. Richard Sandor, CEO and Chairman, American Futures Exchange at AFM in Chicago, IL on what criteria are essential to a well-functioning marketplace -- “competitive pricing and regulation.” - Dan Berkovitz, CFTC Commissioner at Energy Risk 2019 in Houston TX, “fewer competitors [in the markets] leads to increasing concentration and less dispersion of risk throughout the system. It also means fewer choices for commercial and users.” All these issues and more will be discussed at the Annual NIBA/DePaul University Joint Symposium July 11 at the downtown DePaul campus. Registration is open now. Questions/suggestions, contact: Event Chairman John Roe, jroe@btrtrading.com; Dr. Carl Luft, cluft@depaul.edu, or Steve Petillo, spetillo@straitsfinancial.com.

Melinda Schramm, Founder & Chairman NIBA melinda@futuresrep.com

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