Firms should allow sufficient time for putting the technology and processes in place to comply with the new rules, which could be fairly complicated to implement given the need to "match" prices on particular purchases and sales that often will not bear any particular relationship to one another. Markups will be required to be disclosed on certain transactions for which there is deemed to be an offset, but not on similar trades that cannot be matched to a trade on the other side of the…

From a legal standpoint, the most interesting aspect of the case was the holding that, under the "" (who remembers this "orange grove case" from law school?), the general partnership interests were "securities," since the investors were expecting not to take part in the management of the business, but to rely on the efforts of the sponsors of the joint venture.

Here are four other factors that greatly affect the financial industry in general, and CFTC-regulated entities in particular: (i) the costs of regulation, (ii) the pace of regulatory change, (iii) declines in liquidity and cross-border markets caused by regulation, and (iv) uncertainty about the imminence and outcome of regulatory enforcement actions based on ambiguous trading requirements. Those might not be the most impactful factors, but they certainly are worth Commissioner Bowen's…