Archive for the ‘MF Global’ Category
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
A point that is often missed in the coverage of MF Global is that this is a crime in progress and not merely a bad thing that happened that has to be cleared up. Every day that customers are not made whole the crime becomes worse and damage to the industry accrues.
Doug Bry and Ernest Jaffarian understand this. It is why they ran to represent Commodity Trading Advisors and Commodity Pool Operators (CTA/CPO) on the board of the National Futures Association. It is also why they wrote a 14-page memo to the NFA board detailing the damage done by the MF Global debacle and calling on the NFA to act to restore confidence in the industry of the end users who were most damaged by the MF Global affair. (more…)
Tags: CTA/CPO, Customer protection, MF Global, mfgi, NFA
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Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
A day after a source close to the MF Global investigation told the Wall Street Journal that client money may have vaporized, another unnamed source close to the investigation tells the New York Times that investigators know where the money went.
Actually the MF Global Inc. trustee’s report released earlier this month pinpointed where much of the money was stuck and the main question that needed to be asked is why is everyone still quoting the $1.2 billion figure when it simply doesn’t add up. I guess a simple math question is not as sexy as citing unnamed sources.
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Tags: CFTC, regulation
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Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
A disturbing point regarding the MF Global debacle that we have made here on several occasions is that the further we get away from the bankruptcy event, the less clear things become. Some are now suggesting that this could be on purpose. It is hard to argue with that.
Case in point is a Wall Street Journal article from Jan. 30 that ominously states in its headline: “Money from MF Global Feared Gone.” Worse yet the story states that the money “could have vaporized.”
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Tags: MF Global, sipc
Posted in MF Global | 3 Comments »
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
Better late than never is how the Commodity Customer Coalitions (CCC) responded to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s brief, filed on Wednesday Jan. 18, clearly stating that former MF Global Inc. customers have priority over all other claimants. (more…)
Tags: ccc, CFTC, MF Global, mfgi
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Monday, December 19th, 2011
As we now are weeks in the debacle following the bankruptcy of MF Global on Oct. 31, the latest casualty has just been announced. Already individual traders, commodity trading advisers and introducing brokers have felt sting, but now charitable foundations are beginning to as well. According to Reuters, CME Group, which has given $22 million to Chicago-area schools and charities over the past five years, has stopped making grants through its main foundation, citing the collapse of MF Global. (more…)
Tags: CME Group, MF Global, mfgi
Posted in General, MF Global | No Comments »
Monday, December 5th, 2011
A frustrating aspect of the MF Global debacle is that as we get further away from the bankruptcy, the situation appears to be becoming less clear.
From our perspective and the perspective of our readers, the machinations of MF Global and its discredited leader Jon Corzine are less important than the ongoing effort to return customer money and addressing the structural breakdown in Futures regulation as it pertains to segregated funds.
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Tags: CFTC, Float
Posted in MF Global | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 28th, 2011
Tags: MF Global, sipc
Posted in General, MF Global, Markets | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 25th, 2011
The MF Global bankruptcy and liquidation procedure is getting stranger by the day. As those involved in figuring it out looked to take a Thanksgiving break — though MFGI customers still are looking to be made whole — an odd series of seemingly contradictory news items came out.
The good news is that the trustee located and began to bring in $1.3 billion in customer segregated funds. This may have prompted CME Group to increase the guarantee it made to the trustee to $550 million from $250 million. This is not an allocation but a “good faith” attempt by CME Group to expedite allocation of customer funds by the trustee. This followed the shocking news that nearly three weeks after the bankruptcy filing the trustee stated that the shortfall in customer funds could be twice as much as previously believed. (more…)
Tags: CFTC, Gary Gensler
Posted in MF Global, Regulatory/actions | 2 Comments »
During the past 40 years — Futures marks its 40th birthday this month, which we plan on celebrating with special articles all year long — the industry has gone through dramatic changes. The days of using these markets only to hedge grains and livestock are long gone, and along the way, currencies, bonds and stocks — traded by hedgers and speculators alike — joined the commodities trading club. Options and ETFs also would join, and soon the entire world got into the business. Exchanges popped up in Europe and South America, Asia futures trading expanded beyond Japan. And the Germans launched an electronic exchange, pushing the floor-centric U.S. exchanges to jump on board. Today trading is a 24/7 business. Derivatives are traded by all levels of speculators, fund managers, investment banks and corporations. Even OPEC uses the market, as do central banks. 