In its annual Fact Book, the MSRB reported that trading of municipal securities went up substantially in 2018. The 2018 Fact Book consists of monthly, quarterly and yearly aggregate market information from 2014 to 2018, covering various types of municipal issues, trades and interest rate resets.

The CFTC Division of Market Oversight ("DMO") named Mel Gunewardena Chief Market Intelligence Officer for the agency. He was also named Deputy Director of the CFTC Market Intelligence Branch. Prior to joining the CFTC, Mr. Gunewardena was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and State Street, and a former Co-Managing Partner of G Capital Fund Management LLC.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California (the "Court") granted the SEC's motion for preliminary injunction against Blockvest, LLC ("Blockvest"), a non-operational blockchain-based assets exchange, and its founder to prevent them from allegedly engaging in a fraudulent securities offering. The Court previously denied the SEC's request for a preliminary injunction against Blockvest and its founder, citing disputed issues of material fact over whether the Staff could show that investors bought into the Blockvest initial coin offering ("ICO") with an expectation of making

The SEC proposed a new rule and related amendments that would allow issuers to communicate with certain potential investors to determine whether such investors might be interested in a "contemplated registered securities offering." Under the proposed rule, such communications would be exempt from restrictions imposed by Securities Act Section 5. The proposal is intended to give more flexibility to issuers regarding their communications with institutional investors. According to the SEC, the proposal would expand the "test-the-waters" accommodation to all issuers, including investment company

Four Commissioners of the CFTC urged U.S. banking regulators to amend the calculation of the supplementary leverage ratio in order to recognize client-posted initial margin in cleared derivatives. The Commissioners' comments came in response to a rule proposal by the banking regulators to update the calculation of derivative contract exposure amounts under the regulatory capital rules, previously covered here. In a comment letter, CFTC Commissioners Dan Berkovitz, Rostin Behnam and Brian Quintenz said that the banking regulators (the Federal Reserve Board, the FDIC and the Office of the