The CFTC filed a civil enforcement action (the "Complaint") in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (the "Court") against two United Arab Emirates residents (the "Defendants") for "spoofing" in the gold and silver futures markets by placing bids and offers with the intent to cancel them before execution. The Complaint alleged that the Defendants, both individually and collaboratively, regularly placed larger aggregate orders for gold and silver futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange, Inc. opposite smaller orders and canceled the larger orders after the smaller

In a Streetwise Professor blog post titled " Blaming SRO Lapses on For-Profit Status: A Straw Man Dining on Red Herring," University of Houston finance professor Craig Pirrong challenged recent arguments that cite the Nav Sarao spoofing case as proof that an exchange's for-profit status (such as that of the CME Group) is incompatible with its role as a self-regulatory organization. According to Professor Pirrong, for-profit status "has little, if anything, to do with the incentives of an exchange to self-regulate." He explained that the status of the exchange is irrelevant, since incentives to

The Alternative Investment Management Association ("AIMA") issued a paper titled "Financing the Economy: The Role of Alternative Asset Managers in the Non-Bank Lending Environment." The paper found that hedge funds and other alternative asset managers are "playing an increasingly important role in financing the economy," with private debt funds, such as hedge funds, now managing roughly $440 billion in assets. According to the paper, the most popular borrowers of non-bank private debt are small and medium-sized enterprises that typically are too small to raise capital through the public

FINRA issued a regulatory notice requesting comments on its proposed exemption for proprietary trading firms from the trading activity fee ("TAF"). Regulatory Notice 15-13 explains that the SEC's proposed amendments to Exchange Act Rule 15b9-1 would require a proprietary trading firm relying on the current exemption to register with FINRA if the firm continued to engage in over-the-counter trading, or trading on an exchange of which it was not a member The notice explained that the require a proprietary trading firm relying on the current exemption to register with FINRA if the firm continued

FINRA released a podcast summarizing the latest notices, compliance resources and news from April 2015. The podcast highlighted two recent regulatory notices: (i) Notice 15-12, which announced the 2015 GASB support fee, and (ii) Notice 15-11, which reported on the Securities Industry Regulatory Counsel on Continuing Education's Spring 2015 Firm Element Advisory. The podcast also noted a recent investor alert about reverse convertibles that informs investors about the product's features and risks. The podcast reminded market participants that FINRA's annual conference will be held from May 27