CME Locks Up Nymex

CME completed its acquisition of the Nymex over the weekend. It will be interesting to see how this impacts the futures markets. We should perhaps ask them to eliminate so many redundant fees. A single fee for users would be more appropriate in a competitive marketplace.

Approved: NYMEX and CME to Merge

This gets me very excited. The U.S. Justice Department approved -- without conditions -- the merger plans of the NYMEX and the CME Group. I hope that they will do they customers a service and merge the fee structures as well. Between them, traders are paying 4 different fees for data. I wouldn't mind a little higher fee, but come on, guys! Let's combine it all into just one fee for data instead of all these hold-overs from an earlier era when there were several exchanges.

Overall, the futures market has been very well served by these exchanges, which have worked exceptionally well. Costs have been kept reasonable, and service has been excellent. The CFTC is one of the few Federal agencies that have served its community well without high costs or onerous regulation.