MarketVoice News
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Regulators highlight momentum behind EU centralised supervision
Regulators and policymakers at FIA Boca signalled growing momentum behind plans to centralise supervision of key EU market infrastructures, with an expanded role for ESMA at the core. Framed as a potential “game-changer,” the reforms aim to tackle fragmentation, boost competitiveness and deepen capital markets. While support is building, panellists acknowledged political sensitivities and emphasised the need for a balanced approach that preserves national expertise alongside stronger EU-level oversight.
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Viewpoint: Extraordinary becomes ordinary
March 3 of this year saw the highest volumes of any day on record, according to data gathered by FIA Tech. But the markets seemed to digest these volumes with a yawn compared to past peak days. How did our industry process nearly double the volumes of past crises as if it were a normal trading day? The answer: technology, standards and metrics.
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Tokenisation: Wall Street’s digital transformation is real and coming soon to a bank near you
Tokenisation that relies on blockchain technology will continue to transform Wall Street in the second half of the year, according to executives at global banks, buyside firms and infrastructure providers during a panel discussion at the FIA Global Cleared Markets Conference in Boca Raton.
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Prediction markets stir debate as exchanges push for clear rules
Prediction markets are rapidly gaining traction in financial markets, but the sector’s future may hinge on how regulators ultimately define them. The heads of several of the world’s largest exchanges debated the issue during a panel at the FIA Global Cleared Markets Conference in Boca Raton on 10 March, where the fast growth of event-based trading has collided with lingering questions about whether such contracts are financial products or simply gambling.
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Analysis: Geopolitics, prediction markets and tokenization seen as top three drivers of derivatives market change in 2026
Change is constant in the derivatives market, but the drivers of change are not. This year's research into market participant opinions revealed that the top three drivers are geopolitical conflict, prediction markets and tokenization. Just as telling, the regulatory agenda, which had been a top concern in the past, dropped to fifth place on this year's list. The findings are based on an assessment of industry sentiment conducted by Crisil Coalition Greenwich in partnership with FIA.
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Retail-focused precious metals derivatives trading surges, outpacing institutional growth
Retail investors fuelled a sharp rise in trading activity across precious metals derivatives in 2025, while institutional benchmark futures contracts saw comparatively muted growth.
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Global ETD trading fell in 2025 as India crackdown hits options volume
Global trading in exchange-traded derivatives fell in 2025, largely due to a sharp pullback in equity options trading in India following regulators' moves to curb speculative retail activity. Even as global volumes fell, open interest – a measure of outstanding positions – told a different story, underscoring continued demand for derivatives as tools for hedging and price discovery.
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Viewpoint: FIA in Brussels – In-person meetings, outsized impact
Over the course of two-plus days, we met with policymakers at the European Commission, several EU Member States’ representations, key members of the European Parliament and their staff, and leaders at the European Securities and Markets Authority and European Central Bank. We reiterated the story of the global cleared derivatives industry, how we agree with the push to simplify the regulatory burden on our members and discussed centralised supervision.
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Viewpoint: Five mega trends for 2026
To help frame many of the discussions at this year's Asset Management Derivatives Conference, I shared five trends that matter to both the buyside and sellside.
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All roads lead to DLT: ECB advances Pontes and Appia
Europe’s push to enable settlement of DLT-based transactions in central bank money is moving from experimentation to implementation, with the European Central Bank launching a twin-track programme – Pontes and Appia – to bring tokenised settlement closer to reality. Speakers at FIA’s Brussels Forum earlier this month said the shift marks a significant step beyond recent exploratory trials, signalling growing confidence that distributed ledger technology can address long-standing inefficiencies in Europe’s collateral and settlement landscape.
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