WTI Touches Local High of $94.25; Brent hits almost $100

ICE Brent (Dec 26 futures) has touched $99.88 a barrel; roughly a $5 premium to WTI. 

Volumes on Brent - front month volume on Brent is 42K contracts; vs 22K on the second-month; 11K on third-month.

Volumes on WTI are higher - front month volume is 435K contracts; vs 250K, then 188K. Roughly a factor of 10.

Brent tends to trade at a premium to WTI.

This was not always the case. In 2010-2011 the US shale boom created a glut of crude oil (collected in Cushing) faster than the pipelines could move the crude out to the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally the US crude export ban prevented excess barrels leaving the country. The US export ban was lifted in Dec 2015.

Jane Street Gets Into Physical Natural Gas

While Jane Street has been dipping into commodity derivatives for some time now, it's foray into physical natural gas is more recent. Jane Street has hired in Houston for "gas origination" (sourcing gas to trade) as well as hired directly for trading. Texas is also home to one of Jane's massive data centres in Dallas.

FNZ raises $450m from existing shareholders

FNZ has raised new equity funding to the tune of $450m from its existing swathe of institutional shareholders including, in no particular order, CPP Investments of Canada, La Caisse, Motive Partners and Generation Investment Management.

FNZ brags over USD $2.5 trillion assets on platform (AoP).

It provides a platform to large banks, insurers and wealth/asset managers to run investment, pension and wealth management services.

Rising "Neocloud" Demand from Financials

Jane Street has signed a $13bn , five year AI cloud contract with "neocloud" provider Crusoe, a former crypto-mining company (2018-2024) which pivoted into AI data-center infrastructure. Crusoe supplies AI compute to Meta, Oracle and now Jane Street. Financially, they recently raised $3bn at a $30bn valuation. Jane Street also has cloud agreements with CoreWeave in which it also has a $1bn equity stake.

JP Morgan Reportedly Curbs Financing to Market Makers

This comes in the light of market makers like Jane Street attempting to encroach on market share from banks, and poaching talent to do so.

Examples include Jane Street's expansion into Fixed Income markets, offering quotes on US Treasuries, the traditional remit of banks, as well as talent poaching, with Citadel poaching JP Morgan's head of high-touch trading.

JP Morgan has been estimated to have provided around 5% of Jane Street's total leverage, which will now decline. It remains to be seen if other banks follow suit, putting pressure on profitability of market makers.

CME Group Embraces ERCOT Trading

The CME ("Where risk meetings opportunity") has initially listed 53 electricity futures and options on ERCOT, effective 31 August 2026.

These are purely financial contracts - with the futures financially settled, and options exercised into financial futures. 

Example contracts include:

ERCOT North 345KV Real-time Peak Monthly 1MW Futures (NRK) 

Europe Imports Record Russian LNG in H1 2026

Data from Kpler suggests Europe has imported 9.89 million tons of LNG from Russia's Yamal LNG field in H1 2026.