On Tuesday, Mr Duffy,?executive chairman and president of the CME Group, went to Washington.?
Duffy appeared before the Senate Agriculture Committee in the morning and discussed?high-frequency trading (HFT) in the futures markets.?The committee had also planned to talk about automated trading in the derivatives (and futures) markets at the hearing.?
Prior to the engagement, the executive said on Monday via a CME press release, “Electronic trading has opened the markets in a fundamental way by increasing liquidity and tightening bid/ask spreads to the benefit of every global market participant.The market structure and multi-leveled protections in the futures markets strikes the right balance of regulating the market without inhibiting true price discovery. This balance of regulation and surveillance, liquidity and access, gives farmers and businesses, and money managers and traders, the confidence to rely on our markets to effectively manage risk.”
He added, “At CME Group we are always looking at ways to enhance and improve our markets.? We support a continued dialogue about how the industry and regulators can enhance and improve the global derivative marketplace, including consideration of issues related to high frequency trading.”?
Now in Tuesday’s remarks, Duffy brought up the now infamous “rigged” word when talking about HFT. He said, similar to a recent comment by the Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Jo White, via MarketWatch, “Let me say I strongly agree with regulators ? in both the futures and the equities markets ? that the financial markets are not rigged.?
He also added in his testimony that ?the futures markets today are more open and accessible than ever before.?
Here’s a link to his testimony.
Other attendees at the hearing included Vince McGonagle,?Director of the Division of Market Oversight,?Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and?Dr.?Andrei Kirilenko,?Professor of the Practice of Finance,?MIT Sloan School of Management.