E-mini S&P, often abbreviated to "E-mini" and designated by the commodity ticker symbol ES, is a stock market index futures contract traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The notional value of one contract is 50 times the value of the S&P 500 stock index; thus, for example, on June 20, 2018, the S&P 500 cash index closed at 2,767.32, making each E-mini contract a $138,366 bet.
Foreign exchange fraud is any trading scheme used to defraud traders by convincing them that they can expect to gain a high profit by trading in the foreign exchange market. Currency trading became a common form of fraud in early 2008, according to Michael Dunn of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) is a United States clearing house based in Chicago. It specializes in equity derivatives clearing, providing central counterparty (CCP) clearing and settlement services to 16 exchanges. Started by Wayne Luthringshausen and carried on by Michael Cahill. Its instruments include options, financial and commodity futures, security futures, and securities lending transactions.
A commodity broker is a firm or an individual who executes orders to buy or sell commodity contracts on behalf of the clients and charges them a commission. A firm or individual who trades for his own account is called a trader. Commodity contracts include futures, options, and similar financial derivatives. Clients who trade commodity contracts are either hedgers using the derivatives markets to manage risk, or speculators who are willing to assume that risk from hedgers in hopes of a profit.
CME Group Inc. is a financial services company. Headquartered in Chicago, the company operates financial derivatives exchanges including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Board of Trade, New York Mercantile Exchange, and The Commodity Exchange. The company also owns 27% of S&P Dow Jones Indices. It is the world's largest operator of financial derivatives exchanges. Its exchanges are platforms for trading in agricultural products, currencies, energy, interest rates, metals, futures contracts, options, stock indexes, and cryptocurrencies futures.
High-frequency trading (HFT) is a type of algorithmic trading in finance characterized by high speeds, high turnover rates, and high order-to-trade ratios that leverages high-frequency financial data and electronic trading tools. While there is no single definition of HFT, among its key attributes are highly sophisticated algorithms, co-location, and very short-term investment horizons in trading securities. HFT uses proprietary trading strategies carried out by computers to move in and out of positions in seconds or fractions of a second.
MF Global, formerly known as Man Financial, was a major global financial derivatives broker, or commodities brokerage firm that went bankrupt in 2011. MF Global provided exchange-traded derivatives, such as futures and options as well as over-the-counter products such as contracts for difference (CFDs), foreign exchange and spread betting. MF Global Inc., its broker-dealer subsidiary, was a primary dealer in United States Treasury securities. A series of perceived liquidity problems and large fines and penalties dogged MF Global starting in 2008, and led to its bankruptcy in 2011.
The May 6, 2010, flash crash, also known as the crash of 2:45 or simply the flash crash, was a United States trillion-dollar flash crash which started at 2:32 p.m. EDT and lasted for approximately 36 minutes.
Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States in terms of trading volume. The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. In May 2020, Coinbase announced it would shut its San Francisco, California, headquarters and change operations to remote-first, part of a wave of several major tech companies closing headquarters in San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Spoofing is a disruptive algorithmic trading activity employed by traders to outpace other market participants and to manipulate markets. Spoofers feign interest in trading futures, stocks, and other products in financial markets creating an illusion of the demand and supply of the traded asset. In an order driven market, spoofers post a relatively large number of limit orders on one side of the limit order book to make other market participants believe that there is pressure to sell or to buy the asset.
Kraken is a United States–based cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011. It was one of the first bitcoin exchanges to be listed on Bloomberg Terminal and was valued at US$10.8 billion in mid-2022. The company has been the subject of several regulatory investigations since 2018, and has agreed to cumulative fines of over $30 million.
Gemini Trust Company, LLC (Gemini) is an American cryptocurrency exchange and custodian bank. It was founded in 2014 by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Optiver Holding B.V. is a proprietary trading firm and market maker for various exchange-listed financial instruments. Its name derives from the Dutch optieverhandelaar, or "option trader". The company is privately owned. Optiver trades listed derivatives, cash equities, exchange-traded funds, bonds, and foreign exchange.
Bakkt Holdings, Inc., headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, provides a software as a service (SaaS) and API platform for owning and trading cryptocurrency and redeeming loyalty points. Bakkt was founded by and is 65.7% owned by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which also owns the New York Stock Exchange. Bakkt earns revenue from commissions for payments and purchases and sales of cryptocurrency.
BitMEX is a cryptocurrency exchange and derivative trading platform. It is owned and operated by HDR Global Trading Limited, which is registered in the Seychelles.
bitFlyer is a private company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and founded in 2014. It operates one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges with 2.5 million users and develops other crypto-related technology.
Uniswap is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that uses a set of smart contracts to execute trades. It is an open source project and falls into the category of a DeFi product because it uses smart contracts to facilitate trades. The protocol facilitates automated transactions between cryptocurrency tokens on the Ethereum blockchain through the use of smart contracts. As of October 2020, Uniswap was estimated to be the largest decentralized exchange and the fourth-largest cryptocurrency exchange overall by daily trading volume.
DRW Holdings, LLC, typically referred to as DRW, is a proprietary trading firm based in Chicago. The firm was founded in 1992 by Don Wilson, an options trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and was named after his initials: DRW. The firm trades various financial instruments, including fixed income, options and derivatives, energy and agriculture, and cryptocurrency. DRW has offices in Amsterdam, Austin, Greenwich, Tel Aviv, Chicago, New York City, Houston, London, Montreal, and Singapore. DRW is one of the largest trading firms in the world.
Terra is a blockchain protocol and payment platform used for algorithmic stablecoins. The project was created in 2018 by Terraform Labs, a startup co-founded by Do Kwon and Daniel Shin. It is most known for its Terra stablecoin and the associated Luna reserve asset cryptocurrency.
Brett Harrison is an American businessman and software developer. He is the founder and CEO of derivatives brokerage and trading technology firm Architect Financial Technologies.
