ICE announced that it has accelerated its plans to transition cleared OTC energy swaps and options to futures, which will take effect on October 15, 2012. Lofchie Comment: Craig Pirrong, an academic blogger whose blog is called "Streetwise Professor," posted a note on this "transition," pointing out that it is really a transition in name only, and that it is motivated by the CFTC's completely disparate regulatory treatment of futures (which are favored) and swaps (which are disfavored). Given that the two products are economically equivalent, exchanges (particularly non-U.S. exchanges) would

Effective September 15, 2012, ICE OTC will require Clearing and Reporting firms to report large trader positions. This reporting requirement will apply for all 775 cleared OTC products, including 258 products that were not previously reportable, and 28 newly listed cleared OTC products. The attached advisory indicates which positions are reportable to the CFTC directly and which are reportable to ICE alone. View advisory notice in full here (links externally to ICE website).

NFA announced that its Board unanimously ratified a proposal to amend NFA's Articles of Incorporation (Articles) to adopt the Special Committee's recommendations in their entirety, including Articles III (Purposes), VI (Members), VII (Board of Directors), VIII (Executive Committee), X (Nominating Committee), XI (Bylaws), XV (Financing), XVI (Miscellaneous), XVII (Adoption, Amendment and Repeal of Articles) and XVIII (Definitions) to integrate new member types into NFA's membership and governance structure. The rule changes are intended primarily to add references to the new types of CFTC

FINRA had previously proposed amendments to its Rule 4210 (margin requirements). The proposed amendments (a link is below) relate to the following issues: (1) revise the definitions and margin treatment of option spread strategies; (2) clarify the maintenance margin requirement for non-margin eligible equity securities; (3) clarify the maintenance margin requirements for non-equity securities; (4) eliminate the current exemption from the freeriding prohibition for designated accounts; (5) conform the definition of "exempt account"; and (6) eliminate the requirement to stress test portfolio

The SEC is adopting revisions to the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval System (EDGAR) Filer Manual and related rules to reflect updates to the EDGAR system. The revisions are primarily to support submission of Confidential Registration Statements; require Form ID authentication documents in PDF format; automate LTID generation for Large Trader registrations; support minor updates to Form D; remove superseded XBRL Taxonomies; remove the OMB expiration date from Form TA-1, TA-2, TA-W, 25-NSE; and request of unused funds. Note that the changed requirements are relevant to a broad