Institutional
Institutional
Institutional covers the professional side of futures: the Treasury cash-futures basis trade and why regulators watch it, how futures commission merchants and clearing members sit between traders and the clearing house, how central counterparties manage a member default, what happened in the London Metal Exchange nickel market in March 2022, how commodity trading houses combine physical and paper positions, and how corporations account for hedges. None of it is secret. It is spread across CFTC and Fed papers, exchange rulebooks, court records and annual reports. These pieces pull it together at professional depth, with the sources named.
Start here
The Treasury Basis Trade: How Hedge Funds Arbitrage Cash Bonds, Futures and Repo
How the Treasury cash-futures basis trade works: implied repo, financing, leverage, who sits on each side in CFTC data, what happened in March 2020, and the SEC clearing mandate.
Read this first →More in Institutional
How Futures Commission Merchants Work: Clearing, Capital Rules, and an Industry of 75 Firms
What an FCM does between you and the clearing house: FCMs vs introducing brokers, clearing members, CFTC capital rules with a worked example, and dated CFTC data on industry concentration.
Read the explainer →Central Counterparty Risk Management: Margin, Default Waterfalls, and the 2018 Nasdaq Clearing Default
How clearing houses manage default risk under the CPMI-IOSCO principles: margin models, cover 2, default waterfalls, auctions, skin in the game, and lessons from the 2018 Einar Aas default.
Read the explainer →The LME Nickel Crisis of 2022: The Short Squeeze, the Suspension, and the Cancelled Trades
What happened in LME nickel in March 2022: the short squeeze, margin calls, the suspension and cancelled trades, what the Oliver Wyman, FCA and Bank of England reviews found, and the court rulings.
Read the explainer →How Commodity Trading Houses Work: Physical Trading, Futures Hedging, Trade Finance and Enforcement
How Vitol, Glencore and Trafigura make money from physical commodities: hedged cargoes, basis, trade finance, VaR limits, and what the 2020-2024 bribery and manipulation cases revealed.
Read the explainer →Block Trades and EFRPs: How Large Futures Trades Are Done Away From the Screen Under CME Rules 526 and 538
How CME block trades and EFRPs work: eligibility, minimum sizes, fair-price and reporting rules, pre-hedging limits, EFP pricing with a worked example, and the disciplinary cases.
Read the explainer →How Asset Managers Use Futures: Equitising Cash, Overlays, Portable Alpha, Duration and the 2022 LDI Lesson
How pension funds, mutual funds and insurers use futures to equitise cash, shift allocations, separate alpha from beta and manage duration, with worked examples and the 2022 UK LDI episode.
Read the explainer →Corporate Hedging Programs: How Airlines, Utilities, Miners and Food Producers Hedge, and When It Hurt
How companies run commodity hedging programs, from policy limits and instruments to proxy hedges, with Southwest, Air Canada, Atmos, Barrick and Hershey disclosures and the academic evidence.
Read the explainer →Hedge Accounting Explained: ASC 815, IFRS 9, and Why Accounting Shapes How Companies Hedge
How cash flow and fair value hedge accounting work under ASC 815 and IFRS 9, with a futures hedge booked through OCI and reclassified, effectiveness tests, and what changes in 2027.
Read the explainer →Spoofing and Manipulation in Futures: the Law, the Sarao and JPMorgan Cases, and CFTC Data
What spoofing is under the Dodd-Frank anti-spoofing law, how it works in an order book, what the Sarao and JPMorgan cases showed, and what CFTC enforcement data says.
Read the explainer →The Hunt Brothers and Silver, 1980: the Corner, COMEX Silver Rule 7, Silver Thursday and the Verdict
How the Hunts and their allies amassed silver futures and bullion in 1979, how COMEX Silver Rule 7 and margin hikes broke the run, the margin calls of Silver Thursday, and the 1988 verdict.
Read the explainer →How Futures Exchanges Make Money: CME Group and ICE From Their 2025 10-Ks
Where CME Group and ICE revenue comes from: per-contract clearing and transaction fees, market data, and interest on collateral, with 2025 volumes and revenue per contract worked out.
Read the explainer →