Ludwik Chodzko-Zajko IG

Slim but notable chance of a rate cut by the Fed this evening (1900 UK time). You can watch IGTV live over the announcement, both here on Community and within the dealing platform.

Evening all, The shares desk have confirmed there is limited borrow available in the market this evening - current borrow charge is 100% per annum, so pretty steep. Availability & cost will likely vary over the coming days. You'll need to call in should you wish to open a short position ( buying or selling to close can be done via the platform). In other news - Honest burger also sell the BYND patty. Few of us on desk had one this evening - probably not allowed to comment on how it was so I won't...

To price undated commodities we need 2 liquid futures. With bonds, virtually 100% of the liquidity is in the front month contract. We don’t offer any other undated bonds, but in the past the back month of the Bund has had enough liquidity to make offering an undated product viable. This is no longer the case - therefore we can no longer price the undated reliably. The undated contract will remain online so long as clients have open positions and we have no plans to force people out. We'll continue to offer the dated forward contracts (which you can see in the screenshot below). Any questions please ask. All the best, Ludwik

Evening @TrendFollower Still absolutely zero borrow available in the market. Indicative borrow charges (from one of our LPs) are hitting 600% per annum this evening, still no-one lending. Suspect we'll see decent volatility in this for a good while. Have a good WE.

Afternoon all, Large dividends we intend to post tonight: · FTSE – 23.75 - 1630 BST · DOW – 14.75 - 2100 BST Breakdown from BBG attached. You can see other Index dividend adjustments on our weekly blog post here. These are posted in advance and whilst we try and be as accurate as we can, we only post them given the best available information we have at the time. As you all know this is a cash neutral adjustment, but heads up in case you're interested. All the best (and for those in the UK enjoy the weather!). Ludwik

Afternoon all, just an FYI: From 9pm (UK time) on 26 April 2019, we will no longer offer markets on Bitcoin Gold (BTG) and Bitcoin SV (BSV). This is in line with a number of major cryptocurrency exchanges, who have recently announced that they’ll be delisting the coins in the coming weeks – making them difficult to price accurately. Please ensure that you log in and close any positions on these markets before 26 April. Any positions still open at 9pm UK time on 26 April will be closed basis our prevailing bid/ask price. Brief explanation - the exchanges & vault providers we use are gradually discontinuing their support for these tokens, making it increasingly difficult for us both to price the tokens accurately and to hedge our exposure to client trades. We've allowed closing trades only on both BTG & SV for some time, and intend to disable the markets completely as of this Friday. We have no plans to restrict/ discontinue trading on any other cryptocurrencies at this time. I doubt many of you on the community will be affected, but any questions please get in touch.

Afternoon all, Interesting divergence in European bonds for all you LTCM fans. Fantastic read for those of you that haven't read it/ don't know what I'm rambling about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Genius_Failed

Afternoon all, Trend of boring FOMC meetings likely ending tomorrow, expect significant USD and index moves through the rate decision. 25 bps rise expected but by no means certain, Trump already on the warpath. Certainly not one for the faint of heart, expect significant volatility throughout. Be aware that our guaranteed stop distances will widen well in advance of 1900 GMT. https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html

Afternoon all, below is from JPM - (3rd party, not advise, usual caveats apply): Jeff Simmons view on EURUSD given midterm outcomes ** Republicans keep Senate and lose House - Assuming we get an as-expected outcome, it is unlikely we get too much activity in the markets, although the USD could sell off a bit at the margin simply on the back of any possibility of the GOP keeping both chambers being removed from the equation. I would not expect such a selloff to exceed 50bp, and very likely it would be a good bit less than this barring any micro-overshoot in thin Far East trading conditions. Republicans to manage to hold on to the House & keep Senate - we would likely see a fairly sharp reaction higher in the USD, perhaps 1-1.5%, as the “Trump Trade” is revisited. Needless to say, such a move would be nothing like what we saw in late 2016, but I would expect 1.1300 to be seriously challenged in eur/usd and most likely broken. Betting markets have this House outcome as roughly a 35% probability, so the odds are not so remote as to not have at least a small element of risk premium for this outcome in the markets already Overall View - We remain tactical usd bears for the time being, with an obvious sense of caution and right-sizing around this event. The levels and overall positioning remain sufficiently convincing though to hold some exposure. In the Euro, 1.1440/60 remains important, and in my mind a close above this area is required to get the idea of an imminent break of 1.13 out of the current narrative.

Decent list of recent polling visible here: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/ These seem to show us getting close to the 8-9% mark needed for a "blue wave" (Dems taking both houses), but reliability of US/mid term polling is still notoriously poor. Socgen impact sheet (shamelessly stolen from ZH) below.

Evening all, Pretty much all trading publications (e.g FX street) using this graphic (because it looks cool...). It's a cliche to be wary of polls ATM, but I'm leaning towards Democrats taking the lower house (Representatives), particularly due to their share of the popular vote in 2016. Will try to canvas some of our LPs and post if I see/ hear anything interesting. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/?ex_cid=midterms-header

Afternoon all, We've at long last pushed these out to our HTML5 trading platform. This has been released for all UK Spread Betting and Pro-CFD users. This has also been released to Australia, Dubai, Singapore and South Africa and we expect to roll this out to all of Europe by the end of the week. Feel free to post any feedback – good or bad – and I'll send it in the direction of the options desk. Thanks,

Missed all the citrus producing areas (just), from my very basic research looks like they're all concentrated in the "pan" rather than the "handle". Hurricane season still has 6 weeks to go so one to watch (same applies to sugar, RBOB and WTI - refineries in Louisiana / Texas).

Category 4 (2nd most severe) storm now: https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/hurricane-michael-path-evacuation-florida-storm-surge-weather-forecast-today-2018-live-updates/

Oldie but Goldie, hurricane / storm Michael now looks set to hit Florida with strength. Futures have been on a downtrend of late. Reference for those out the loop: