Jim Grant’s observation on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission:
A less-than-suffocating financial oversight regime is looking looser by the day, as a Monday Barron’s report details the evisceration of Chicago’s enforcement division at the CFTC: “In recent months, the office has become a ghost town,” with a 20-strong team of enforcement attorneys pared to just one. That aggressive downsizing is particularly striking in light of the office’s prominent role in major CFTC enforcement actions since its 1975 establishment, including recent civil charges against Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and now-jailed FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried.
“Chicago is the spiritual home of the futures markets; it’s where it all began,” former CFTC staffer David Slovick lamented to Barron’s. “To wipe out the enforcement staff. . . sends a very bad signal to market participants about whether the government is watching what they’re doing and whether or not they have to abide by the law.”
Colin Twiggs is a former investment banker with almost 40 years of experience in financial markets. He co-founded Incredible Charts and writes the popular Trading Diary and Patient Investor newsletters.
Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.
Focusing on interest rates and financial market liquidity as primary drivers of the economic cycle, he warned of the 2008/2009 and 2020 bear markets well ahead of actual events.
He founded PVT Capital (AFSL No. 546090) in May 2023, which offers investment strategy and advice to wholesale clients.