| | | | | | | June 06, 2025 | | | |  | Jeff Bergstrom
Editor
John Lothian News | |
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|  | | | | Observations & Insight | | | Former JLN Options Discovery Editor host Asma Awass has graduated from the University of Illinois Chicago, with a degree in finance and business analytics, she announced on LinkedIn. She will be joining Conagra Brands as a finance development associate on the Finance Modernization team, starting June 9. Congratulations to Asma on her graduation and full-time job, and thanks for your contributions to Options Discovery and JLN. ~JJL
| | | | Lead Stories | | | How Behavior, Not Tools, Drives the Retail Options Boom
Anna Lyudvig - Traders Magazine
Retail traders have become a disruptive force in the U.S. options market, pushing volumes to record highs and reshaping the dynamics of short-dated volatility. While technology has made trading easier, some argue it hasn't necessarily made traders smarter. According to David Chau, founder of SPX Management, and longtime observer of retail behavior, the real transformation has come not from "access-but from psychology". "People are looking for fast money," Chau said. "Zero-DTE options make it feel like that money is right there, ready to be grabbed. But the way those contracts are priced, they work against most traders. For a lot of people, it becomes gambling," he told Traders Magazine.
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Options traders pile into bearish bets on Tesla at fastest pace on record as Musk-Trump feud escalates; The surge in activity comes as Tesla shares erased more than $150 billion in market value on Thursday
Joseph Adinolfi - MarketWatch
Options traders piled into bearish bets on Tesla Inc. stock on Thursday at the fastest pace on record as a feud between President Donald Trump and Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk escalated, causing the electric-vehicle maker to tally its biggest daily drop in market capitalization on record.
Roughly 4.01 million put contracts in Tesla changed hands on Thursday, surpassing the previous peak from late 2022, Dow Jones Market Data showed. Thursday's number was more than four times the 20-day average.
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VIX Falls to Lowest Level Since Before Trump's 'Liberation Day'
Krystal Hur - The Wall Street Journal
Wall Street's so-called "fear gauge" slipped Friday, with investors cheering the May jobs report.
The Cboe Volatility index, which measures short-term expectations for where the S&P 500 is headed, fell about 8% to 16.92 on Friday. That puts it on pace for its lowest close since February, before President Trump's sweeping tariffs sent stocks tumbling.
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Crypto Liquidation Crosses $1B, Bitcoin Price Braces for Options Expiry, Jobs Data
Varinder Singh - The Crypto Times
Bitcoin price fell 5% to a low of $100,372 due to macro headwinds, liquidation of leveraged trades, and the Elon Musk-Donald Trump feud. Traders now await crypto options expiry and nonfarm payrolls data release on Friday to determine market direction.
Moreover, top altcoins ETH, XRP, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE, and SUI tumbled following BTC price crash, extending BTC's fall to over 10% from its all-time high. At the time of writing, BTC price rebounded slightly above $102,400 as investors bought the dip.
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LME Acts to Shield Aluminum Market From Huge Mercuria Bet
Jack Farchy and Mark Burton - Bloomberg
The London Metal Exchange has compelled Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. to lend out its huge position in aluminum to other traders to reduce risks to the market, according to people familiar with the matter. The LME took action after Mercuria's position in the June contract was consistently far bigger than the aluminum inventories in the exchange's warehouse system - most of which are also already owned by Mercuria, the people said. That means that if Mercuria were to hold the position to expiry, those on the other side of the market might struggle to find sufficient aluminum to deliver against their short positions.
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Circle Internet shares soar 168% on NYSE debut; Stablecoin operator rides wave of enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies as Trump pledges to slash regulation
Philip Stafford in London and George Steer - Financial Times
Shares in Circle Internet climbed 168 per cent on its debut in New York on Thursday, offering a boost to the US market for initial public offerings and marking what the stablecoin operator called "a major step in acceptance" for its business. The US group listed at $31 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $1.1bn, increasing both the number of shares on offer and their price in response to strong investor demand. Trading in the stock was halted for volatility three times as the shares surged as high as $103.75. Circle's shares ultimately closed at $83.23 giving the group a fully diluted market capitalisation of almost $22bn.
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Stablecoins' step toward mainstream could shake up parts of US Treasury market
Hannah Lang and Davide Barbuscia - Reuters
As stablecoins take a step toward becoming mainstream, some segments of the U.S. Treasury market, notably securities with short-term maturities, could be vulnerable to volatility as they become more closely tied to the world of cryptocurrency. Congress is poised to pass legislation establishing a regulatory framework for stablecoins, expected to help legitimize the dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies which are commonly used by crypto traders to move funds between tokens.
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Goldman Sachs reins in risk appetite as Donald Trump's tariffs roil markets; Chief operating officer John Waldron anticipates period of 'slowflation' with rising prices outpacing growth
Martin Arnold and Brooke Masters - Financial Times
Goldman Sachs has reined in risk-taking due to market volatility triggered by Donald Trump's trade war and fears that rising US debt will erode investor appetite for dollar-denominated assets, a senior bank executive has said. John Waldron, president and chief operating officer of the bank, told a Goldman podcast released on Thursday that the investment bank had "moderated our risk positioning" since the US president announced an across-the-board tariff increase on its trading partners on April 2, adding, "that's a sensible thing for us to do".
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| | | | Exchanges | | | Miami International Holdings Acquisition of The International Stock Exchange Becomes Effective
MIAX
Miami International Holdings, Inc. (MIH) today announced that its acquisition of The International Stock Exchange Group Limited (TISE) via its wholly-owned subsidiary, MIH East Holdings, Limited, has become effective by means of a Court-sanctioned scheme of arrangement under Part VIII of the Companies Law of Guernsey. The cash consideration of ÃGBP22.50 per TISE ordinary share values TISE at approximately ÃGBP70.4 million ($91.5 millionù).
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Deutsche Bank Explores Stablecoins and Tokenized Deposits
Arno Schuetze and Anna Irrera - Bloomberg
Deutsche Bank AG is examining stablecoins and different forms of tokenized deposits, as large financial institutions grow more confident expanding in the digital-asset sector.
Germany's largest lender is evaluating stablecoin options, which could include issuing its own token or joining an industrywide initiative, Sabih Behzad, Deutsche Bank's head of digital assets and currencies transformation, said in an interview. The bank is also assessing whether to develop its own tokenized deposit solution for use in payments, he added.
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U.S. Cash Equities May Highlights
Cboe
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CME Group Login Password Requirement
CME Group
Security practices continue to be critically important across financial services. CME Group has consistently leveraged security best practices including password standards. Effective Saturday, June 14, the minimum password length for new CME Group Login accounts will increase to 12 characters. This change will also be applied to any new passwords created for existing accounts. CME Group Login provides access to CME Group applications, services and premium digital content.
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EEX Press Release - EEX Group Monthly Volumes - May 2025
EEX Group
The EEX Group Global Power markets continued to see growing trading volumes, with 1,023.5 TWh, a +8% Year-on-Year growth. The volume growth was both driven by the European Power Spot markets, totaling 74.6 TWh (+4% YoY), as well as the European Power Derivatives markets, reaching a total of 680.0 TWh (+8% YoY). New record volumes were reached on the British intraday market at 4.6 TWh, as well as on the Dutch intraday market at 1.9 TWh.
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| | | | Regulation & Enforcement | | | The SEC Pinned Its Hack on a Few Hapless Day Traders. The Full Story Is Far More Troubling; When a notorious gang of Ukrainian cybercriminals hit a crucial database, the regulator quickly downplayed the breach. One of the hackers says the system is still a soft target.
Liam Vaughan - Bloomberg
Chapter 1: Redemption
For the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Jan. 15, 2019, was a day of redemption. The agency filed one of its highest-profile enforcement cases in years, capping the work of two dozen staff across five divisions.
The case, recounted in a 43-page complaint, read like an airport potboiler: Ukrainian cybercriminals had infiltrated a vast computer network containing soon-to-be-published earnings reports for some of America's biggest companies, then sold the information to a shadowy web of traders. As well as being one of the investigating authorities, the SEC was the victim. Hackers had found a way into the agency's Edgar database, perhaps the world's biggest repository of corporate filings. These cybercriminals were already wanted by the SEC for prior offenses. They were like fugitives robbing the police evidence room while the precinct was out looking for them.
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| | | | Technology | | | Trading Technologies' TT platform wins award for Best Derivatives Trading System in Markets Media's 2025 Global Markets Choice Awards
Trading Technologies
Trading Technologies International, Inc. (TT), a global capital markets technology platform services provider, today announced that its TT platform won the award for Best Derivatives Trading System in Markets Media Group's 2025 Global Markets Choice Awards. The awards were presented last night at an event in New York. Alun Green, TT's EVP Managing Director, Futures & Options, said: "As we continue to build on our significant expansion into new asset classes and services across the trade life cycle, it remains a high honor to receive recognition for excellence in support of derivatives trading, which will always be an important focus for TT. Thanks to Markets Media for continually celebrating the best the industry has to offer."
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| | | | Moves | | | Hedge Fund Taula Beat Out Two Rivals and Goldman Sachs to Poach Top Trader
William Shaw and Nishant Kumar - Bloomberg
A one-year-old hedge fund beat two of its top rivals to hire a veteran Morgan Stanley trader shortly before he was due to start co-running the volatility trading desk at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Mehdi Belhachmi is slated to join Diego Megia's Taula Capital Management in the coming months as a portfolio manager, according to people familiar with the matter. His hiring came as a surprise to Goldman, which had been expecting him to join in August to help lead volatility trading alongside Jules Gruner, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing non-public information.
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| | | | Strategy | | | Goldman Sachs has scaled back its risk-taking in response to heightened market volatility driven by Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs and growing concerns over rising US government debt, according to John Waldron, the bank's president and chief operating officer, the Financial Times reported. In a story titled "Goldman Sachs reins in risk appetite as Donald Trump's tariffs roil markets," Waldron explained that since the April announcement of new tariffs, Goldman has moderated its risk positioning, prioritized liquidity, and adopted a more cautious stance in capital markets and client trading, reflecting Wall Street's broader unease about ongoing policy uncertainty and its potential impact on investor appetite for US assets.
Despite the turbulence, Waldron expects a period of "slowflation"-modest economic growth of 1 to 1.5% alongside inflation of around 3%-rather than a full-blown recession or stagflation. While recent volatility boosted trading revenues for Goldman and other banks, uncertainty has dampened investment banking activity and led some clients to reduce their US asset allocations. Waldron, echoing warnings from other financial leaders, emphasized the need to address large and unsustainable deficits, noting that continued policy disruption could prompt more significant shifts away from US markets. ~JJL
| | | | Miscellaneous | | | Hedge funder Ken Griffin doesn't get why Trump wants to take China's jobs: 'Why are we aspiring to be the nation of the lowest- cost workforce in the world?'
Irina Ivanova - Fortune
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin says President Donald Trump's tariff policy on China is misguided as the jobs it would "reshore" are mostly those making low-value items. "There's no money in there for anybody, and there's certainly no money for doing those jobs," Griffin said at a forum in New York. Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel Securities who backed Donald Trump in 2024 election, is taking issue with the president's tariff policy. Griffin tore into Trump's tariffs during an appearance Thursday at the Forbes Iconoclast Summit in New York, describing tariffs as "protectionist policy" that "comes at a great price to the U.S. consumer."
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| | | | John Lothian News (JLN) is the news division of John J. Lothian & Company, Inc. (JJLCO). The online media and financial services firm is staffed by derivatives industry, journalism and technology professionals. | | | | | | | John Lothian News Editorial Staff: | | | John Lothian
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