The CFTC Division of Market Oversight issued the results of a rule enforcement review of OneChicago, LLC ("OneChicago"), stating that it found specific areas where OneChicago should improve its trade practice program. The DMO recommended, among other measures, that OneChicago: take steps to ensure that its compliance surveillance department is staffed adequately to meet OneChicago's self-regulatory responsibilities; and increase in a significant way the frequency and number of spot checks of the exchange of futures for physical and block transactions that it conducts annually. The DMO had no

The CFTC Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight ("DSIO") issued an extension of time-limited no-action relief to futures commission merchants ("FCMs") which will expire on June 30, 2014. On November 14, 2013, the CFTC adopted amendments to Rule 30.7 ("Treatment of Foreign Futures or Foreign Options Secured Amount") ("Customer Protection Rule"), which listed certain conditions under which an FCM can accept a single payment from a customer for deposit to the customer's CEA Section 4d(a)(2) segregation account and, as applicable, Part 30 secured account and cleared swaps account. In

On Tuesday, April 8, the Senate Committee on Agriculture will hold a business meeting in which it will, among other things, vote on the following CFTC nominations: Timothy G. Massad, of Connecticut, to be Chairman and a Commissioner of the CFTC; Sharon Y. Bowen, of New York, to be a Commissioner of the CFTC; and J. Christopher Giancarlo, of New Jersey, to be a Commissioner of the CFTC. Delta Strategy Group Comment : The Senate Agriculture Committee scheduled a business meeting for April 8 to vote on the nominations of the three CFTC Commissioner appointees. All are expected to be reported out

The Asset Management Group of SIFMA ("SIFMA AMG") submitted comments to the Financial Stability Board ("FSB") on the recently released FSB-IOSCO joint consultative document, Assessment Methodologies for Identifying Non-Bank Non-Insurer Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions (NBNI G-SIFIs) (January 8, 2014). The bottom line of the letter is that investment funds are not banks, and that the tremendous number of different investment funds makes it highly unlikely that any investment fund would be of systemic significance. Beyond that fundamental conclusion, SIFMA AMG suggested that

The SEC charged the co-owner of Visionary Trading LLC with manipulative trading of publicly traded stocks through an illegal practice known as "layering" or "spoofing," as well as registration violations. According to the SEC press release, layering is when a trader places orders with no intention of having them executed, but rather to trick others into buying or selling a stock at an artificial price driven by the orders that the trader later cancels. The SEC investigation found that Joseph Dondero, co-owner of New Jersey-based Visionary Trading, repeatedly used this strategy to induce other