Let's Get Physical - Trading The Cal Emissions Market on the CME

From February 27th 2017 -

The CME is offering up the chance to go long the California Emissions Market through futures and options. The product name is CA ETS (California Emissions Trading Scheme).

One future represents physical delivery of a thousand Co2 California Carbon Allowances.

Each allowance is an entitlement to emit one metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent gas. Settlement takes place on a T+2 basis on the California Market Tracking System (MTS).

One future, one thousand metric tons of Co2.

Options are European, and settle into a single future (or one thousand allowances).

Ten Years Later - Troll added to Dated Brent

Platt's Brent assessment (already diluted by Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk crudes) will have a new crude added to its Dated Brent assessment - Norway's Troll crude - which will start deliveries in 2018. This is due to the expected fall in supply in the North Sea - resulting in thin volumes and potential market manipulation. The last modification to the benchmark came in 2007 when Ekofisk was added. Statoil operates the Troll A, B and C platforms.

No more Tequila - Mexico acts on Trump Slump

The volatility mollification strategy has been dubbed the biggest change in Mexican central banking since the "Tequila Crisis", in which a devaluation of the peso led to a banking crisis.

For those unfamiliar with the "Tequila Crisis" the devaluation occurred in December 1994, which caused half the country's foreign exchange reserves to leave the country.

The peso's fall has been largely due to threats to impose trade barriers on Mexican goods headed to the United States by the Trump administration, which has also sparked currency volatility. It has been dubbed by the media as the "Trump Slump".

Mexico's foreign exchange commission announced the volatility was "not consistent with the country's economic fundamentals".

Mexico has responded to the fall by hiking interest rates over the course of a year. In January 2017, the central bank also reportedly sold around a billion USD to support the peso.

Repeal and Replace the Dodd Frank Act Message from Trump is a Boon for Banking Stocks (especially Goldmann Sachs)

"Dodd Frank is a disaster" said President Trump, on the law Obama signed into law in 2010, named partly after Connecticut native, and Democrat, Chris Dodd, and Barney Frank, a Harvard Law School alumnus and also a Democrat.

Swap Execution Facilities (or SEFs) came about as a direct result of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The market response has been positive.

Goldman stock rose 4.2% (NYSE:GS) and Bank of America 2.5% (NYSE:BAC). This is despite the stocks having very similar betas of 1.5 and 1.47 respectively.

Gary Cohn, formerly Chief Operating Officer of Goldman Sachs, former options dealer and now chief economic advisor to Donald Trump, waxed lyrical to the Wall Street Journal regarding the move.