NIBA - Celebrating 35 Years

NIBA Journal

Insights, analysis, and updates from the National Introducing Brokers Association

Member Announcements
2 min read

NIBA/DePaul Internship Joint Endeavor

The NIBA Internship Program is underway! The idea for this internship program was proposed and found strong support among NIBAs Advisory Group. Qualified students will be matched with members looking for candidates trained in a broad array of critical sectors, including Finance, Statistics, Media, Marketing, and Law. To highlight one of our recent internship success stories, Muz Quadri, who completed his MS in Finance in June, combined an internship opportunity with Rice Dairy LLC while completing his final semester at DePaul. Rice Dairy LLC expressed that “Muz was very well prepared for his internship and a delight to work with. He utilized many of his well-developed academic skills by contributing to a number of comprehensive research and development projects, including co-authoring an article that was published in May.” The goal of our program is to foster meaningful development - for both the interns and the member. NIBA and DePaul are...

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Member Announcements
1 min read

Announcement from NIBA BoD

As part of our 25th Anniversary celebration The NIBA Board of Directors are pleased to announce that all NFA registered IBs and CTAs will receive a complimentary one-year 25th Anniversary membership to the NIBA. The NIBA has been a resource to the trading and brokerage community for a quarter of a century and as a way of giving back and gearing up for the next 25 years we are excited to extend this offer to the community. NIBA President Mike Burke will be emailing each firm individually with details on how to take advantage of this special offer ahead of our annual Chicago conference. Thank you for your support of the last 25 years. If you haven't already be sure to visit the timeline on the NIBAs website to take a trip down memory lane and see the progression of this association and the accomplishments it has achieved over the...

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Member Announcements
3 min read

Chairman's Letter - August 2017

“Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life” - Alvin Toffler (1928-2016) Alvin Toffler was an American writer and futurist best known for his works on modern technologies and the communication revolution. The above quote appeared in Future Shock, first published in 1970. Changes which will have a profound effect on our professional lives have happened this summer. On August 3, the U.S. Senate unanimously voted to confirm Chris Giancarlo as Chairman of the CFTC. Commissioner Giancarlo spoken many times about reviewing current regulation. His KISS initiative is an example. He has also discussed rewriting swaps trading rules to better reflect the Dodd-Frank Act saying that the rules are “highly over engineered, disproportionately modeled on U.S. futures markets and biased against both human discretion and technological innovation.” Under his leadership, the Commission has recently extended temporary relief for certain position aggregation requirements until August, 2019. This change...

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Member Announcements
5 min read

Interest in Cattle Futures has Never Been Higher

AT A GLANCE Massive herd expansion helps fuel surge in trading Analyst: Feedlots are in as good a position as they’ve been in years Beef producers are building the U.S. cattle herd at one of the fastest paces on record, as higher cattle prices and stronger exports fuel healthy profit margins. The expansion comes just a few years after the U.S. herd shrank to a six-decade low amid severe drought in the Southern U.S. Plains and near-record corn prices. The market resurgence is reflected in CME Group’s benchmark Live Cattle futures contract, for which the number of open positions, or open interest, has reached all-time highs. CME’s 10 highest-ever daily open interest figures for Live Cattle futures (the contract was launched in 1964) have been posted since late April, topped by 431,718 contracts at the close of trading May 2. Live cattle open interest averaged 407,800 contracts during June 2017,...

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3 min read

Ascent Introduces Intelligence-as-a-Service

What is Intelligence as a Service? Intelligence-as-a-Service (“IntaaS”) is the combination of automated domain expertise with traditional internet software. Imagine if your CRM came pre-filled with customer information, your taxes were pre-loaded and completed in your tax software, or your digital compliance system was pre-filled with all your data: this is the promise of IntaaS. Software-as-a-Service reduced the marginal cost of delivering services. IntaaS reduces the cost of both creating and delivering a unit of intelligence to customers. What we Do In systems where the inputs are standard and the output is identical (think self-driving cars), deep learning works extraordinarily well. Even in those systems, miniscule failure rates are extraordinarily risky. In systems where the inputs are dynamic and the outputs are targeted (n=1), deep learning must be supplemented by domain expertise and domain-specific technology (think regulation and law). This is what we have done at Ascent. By combining our...

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Member Announcements
1 min read

NIBA/DePaul Thank You!

This year's Annual Summer Symposium co-hosted by NIBA and DePaul University was a huge success.  We would like to thank each and every one of you who attended and supported this event. We would also like to thank John Lothian who delivered an excellent key note speech to kick things off as well as the rest of our moderators and panelists.  Special thanks to DePaul University who has been a tremendous partner and great resource for the association, its members and the industry at large.  Below are a few pictures from the Symposium and check back soon for video of the event.

By NIBARead article
5 min read

Housekeeping, Reminders and Updates - July 2017

Written by: Mark E. Ruddy, Esq. Jessica I. Brown, CAMS Commodity Trading Advisors (“CTAs”) Third-Party Record Keeping Relief CTAs now have the ability to request relief from certain Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) Regulation 4.33 and 4.7(c)(2) record-keeping requirements. CFTC Exemptive Letter No 17-24 provided CTAs relief from the requirement that books and records must be kept at the registrant’s main office. Letter 17-24, issued by the Division of Swap Dealers and Intermediary Oversight (“DSIO”), allows CTAs to submit a request for relief so that the firm may use a third-party record keeper to comply with Regulations 4.33 and 4.7(c)(2). The request for relief is not self-executing and must be submitted to the National Futures Association (“NFA”) and CFTC through the NFA’s exemption system. The NFA issued Notice to Members I-17-11, which provides detailed instructions for submitting the request for relief as per CFTC Letter No 17-24. CTA and Commodity...

By NIBARead article
7 min read

Dodd-Frank Wants Other Markets to Be More Like Futures Markets – And That’s A Good Thing!

Written By: Leslie Sutphen, President, Financial Markets Consulting, LLC There has been much talk about repealing most of the Dodd-Frank act now that we have a change of party in the Presidency. To many in the futures industry, this seems like a good thing; however, in determining whether the Volcker Rule and Title VII of Dodd Frank should be repealed, it is important to remember why Dodd-Frank was passed to begin with. The act was designed to address very real issues with lack of regulation, lack of transparency, and poor risk management practices that brought about the Financial Crisis of 2007 to 2008. Wholesale repeal of the Act would result in a return to the very risky conditions that developed with the massive deregulation that occurred from the late 1970s through the early 2000s. The financial crisis was caused by a proliferation of sub-prime lending and the bundling of risky...

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