036 Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast

Transcript    Only a week ago at the start of the sequence gathering data for this podcast, I was reporting MOEX results and an E-FX acquisition on a quiet day. A quiet day Ladies and gentlemen, if anyone can remember what that was, it seemed at that time as if people were holding back news ahead of justifying their expenses for a trip to the sunny southern parts of the USA.    Ho hum how things have turned out in the parish.    True Euronext have launched a stock scheme for all staff.    The Nasdaq deep data pivot continues.   But indeed, what a difference a week makes!    Market structure works with aplomb. On another series of crazy days, The Small Exchange gets a DCM status and now we end the week with closing floors, flight bans and exchange staffers across the parish working from home. It's been a tectonic week in markets and indeed a tectonic plate moving energy markets that partly reflects the stock markets’ panic, this may yet presage a very different world indeed.      Welcome back. It's the bourse business weekly digest with me Patrick L. Young. Welcome to the Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast. Things have got so crazy recently    I've taken to appending parish notes to the beginning of the regular daily subscriber missives this week. Each is a variation of the same core vital message. “It's been a remarkable day of trading, a remarkable, record breaking day of trading and volumes and open interest; another robust performance by the technology and operations dervishes of the parish: Keep up the good work one and all in the parish of markets.”    This has been a remarkable ongoing test of our technology.    And so to our top story, as COVID-19 dominates the headlines across the world. The virus has achieved something even the advancing technology from two decades of “Capital Market Revolution!” could not. The CME Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor has been closed. It's a temporary precaution of course. At the same time as the LME have been looking at alternate arrangements. And indeed, the New York Stock Exchange has been taking various steps to keep coronavirus away from the trading floor at a time when indeed their offices have been closed in other parts due to staff testing positive   Indeed, it has been a week of mass cancellations of meetings. Just last week, lots of people were looking forward to their lovely weekend in the sun at Boca Raton, the rats mouth, in Florida, but rather the FIA had to cancel when the bankers suddenly pulled out en masse. And indeed there are travel bans by organizations such as the conservative Swiss Exchange SiX and thus FIX EMEA has been called off. And indeed, perhaps the most ironic of them all, the US Council For Foreign Relations canceled a meeting in New York on ‘doing business in a time of coronavirus due to, well, fears of COVID-19.’    Looking ahead to next week St Me’s Day, the Festival of St. Patrick looks like being one for the solitary drinker. Looks like a smaller crowd for the traditional Irish delicacies across the world.   And indeed, there have been further rate cuts. Following on from the Federal Reserve last week, of half a point. The Bank of England, the old lady of Threadneedle street cut rates this week in accorda...