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Odd Lots Podcast Episode Summary
The CME's Terry Duffy on the Big Risks He's Seeing Now
Podcast Overview Title: Odd Lots Hosts: Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway Description: A deep dive into interesting topics in finance, markets, and economics. New episodes every Monday and Thursday.
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Episode Details Episode Title: The CME's Terry Duffy on the Big Risks He's Seeing Now Episode Description: An insightful interview with Terry Duffy, Chairman and CEO of CME Group. The discussion covers significant risks in the market, liquidity issues in Treasury futures, the impact of the debt ceiling, interest rate hedging trends post-banking crisis, and the CME’s future, including its crypto offerings and a unique debate about onion futures.
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Key Discussions
- Overview of Current Market Risks
- Banking Crisis:
- Duffy argues against labeling the situation a "banking crisis," noting it primarily affects smaller banks.
- Raises concerns about banks mismanaging interest rate risks, particularly citing Silicon Valley Bank's missteps.
- Interest Rate Dynamics:
- Rapid interest rate increases (from near-zero to over 5%) contributed to the struggles of banks that failed to hedge appropriately.
- Emphasizes the need for better risk management principles in banking.
- Trading Volume and Interest Rate Products
- Potential Changes in Trading Volume:
- Duffy suggests a shift in risk management practices, which may lead to increased trading volume in interest rate products.
- Mentions historical parallels with agricultural lending, where banks required hedging programs to secure loans.
- Liquidity in Treasury Markets
- Concerns About Treasury Liquidity:
- Duffy acknowledges pockets of illiquidity in Treasury futures, especially during volatile market conditions.
- Emphasizes that liquidity concerns often arise from market volatility and not just a lack of activity.
- The Debt Ceiling Debate
- Implications of a Potential Default:
- Duffy warns that missing coupon payments could have catastrophic repercussions for the U.S. economy and global financial markets.
- Highlights the need for political leaders to act responsibly in the lead-up to potential debt ceiling negotiations.
- CME's Role and Future in Chicago
- CME's Commitment to Chicago:
- Duffy reassures that CME is well-positioned in Chicago, having sold off real estate liabilities and secured advantageous leases.
- Discusses his views on the new administration's proposals regarding increased taxes and their potential impact on business.
- The Future of Crypto at CME
- CME's Crypto Offerings:
- Duffy shares that CME continues to expand its suite of crypto products while ensuring regulatory compliance.
- Mentions the importance of educating participants about the risks associated with cryptocurrencies.
- Onion Futures Debate
- Historical Context:
- Duffy humorously references the historical banning of onion futures due to market manipulation, suggesting a light-hearted curiosity about the topic.
- Technological Adaptation and AI
- AI's Impact on the Workforce:
- Duffy discusses the balance of pain and gain in adopting new technologies like AI and how it can potentially create jobs rather than eliminate them.
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Conclusion Terry Duffy shares crucial insights into the current state of the financial markets, emphasizing the importance of risk management, particularly in the banking sector. The CME's proactive approach to addressing market risks and adapting to technological changes underscores its pivotal role in the finance industry, particularly as it navigates the complexities of interest rates, Treasury liquidity, and the evolving landscape of cryptocurrency.
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Key Takeaways
- Risk management is essential for banks to prevent crises similar to SVB.
- The CME is committed to maintaining liquidity in Treasury futures markets.
- Potential debt ceiling issues could lead to significant market volatility.
- CME continues to innovate in the crypto space while educating market participants.
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Additional Resources
- Listen to the full episode: [Odd Lots on Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com)
- Follow Odd Lots on social media: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/podcasts)
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Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00You're being sold an AI future where you're obsolete or irrelevant. That vision is wrong. At Palantir, they're building AI that helps workers and unlocks their full potential. American workers are our nation's greatest strength. AI shouldn't eliminate them. It should elevate them. Palantir is here to tell their stories. From factories to hospitals, AI is freeing people from drudgery, letting them do what humans do best. Create. Solve. Build. Palantir, making Americans irreplaceable.
1:01Acrobat Studio. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat.
1:18Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. Joe, I can't remember. Did you live in Chicago at one point? I lived in Joliet, Illinois from age 2 to 12. Oh, my gosh. 2 to 11, yeah. That's so funny. So I lived in Chicago for middle school, so I think like 10. We probably were here some of the same years. Yeah, we probably overlapped. It's a great city. I love coming here. And from a finance perspective, it is also an important city. It's an interesting and important city, absolutely. And so obviously, yes, when I think of Chicago, I think of trading and commodities in particular.
1:54Yeah. And I feel like there's a lot of trading and financial infrastructure located in Chicago that has a great line of sight over what's happening in the rest of the system and the rest of the country. And so since we are here in Chicago at the ISDA AGM, we would be remiss if we didn't try to understand the perspective of the Chicago sort of trading market and what's going on in finance right now. Let's do it. All right. So I am very pleased to say that we have the perfect guest for this episode. We are going to be speaking with Terry Duffy, chairman and CEO of CME Group. Terry, thank you so much for coming on All Thoughts.
2:31I'm Tracy. Joe, thank you very much for having me. Welcome to Chicago. Thank you. Appreciate it. Welcome back, Joe. Yeah. It's been about 20 years since I've actually been here. So it's weird because I'm walking around. I see some buildings that I recognize and other things like this area where we are right now are completely new. Why don't we start with some of the things that have been happening in markets recently because there is no shortage of headlines. You have the debt ceiling ongoing. You have the banking crisis. You have the Fed raising rates, although maybe it's on pause for a while now.
3:01Let's start with the banking crisis. What's going on there? What do you see from the CME perspective? Because, of course, you deal with interest rate derivatives and hedges. So this is sort of ground zero for some of the asset liability mismatches that we've seen in banking? Yeah. So I don't know if I want to call it a banking crisis because a banking crisis is traditionally systemic throughout the whole organization. This is something that's affecting mostly the second and third tier banks. So the other only one that has gone away in recent times is Credit Suisse, which was a major bank. But again, Credit Suisse has been advertised as having issues for many years.
3:40So I don't think that was a giant surprise to a lot of participants in the banking world. As far as the third tier banks, especially, let's zoom in on a couple, I guess. One of the couple of things that I've said about, especially Silicon Valley, SVB, is it's really amazing to me that the banks who are in the interest rate business, in lending business, I'm in the interest rate trading business, hedge risk management business of interest rates, and they're in the business of making loans to participants and deposits for their clients, that they should have a better understanding of the rate market just in general.
4:20I mean, the Fed has telegraphed here in the United States that we're going to have a prolonged tightening series of events, and we did so. We went from essentially zero to just over 5 % in the last year or so. And still they hedged long duration on their books with their client money to get a yield. And in return, the rates continue to go up and we know what happened. That was an unhedged position. So you would have to ask yourself, you know, where is the risk management associated with some of these banks that are taking money from participants on deposit, their fiduciaries, they should have a better understanding of the business that they're in.
5:00And so I was quite surprised by that. I don't like to see the banks continue to dwindle. We went from roughly 30 ,000 banks back in 1950 to less than 4 ,300 today. So that's not a good trend for the financial sector. So I don't like to see that activity. So I would hope that people would continue to manage their risk in a smart way. And I'm not saying that from a self-interest proposal. most second and third tier banks because of some accounting rules can't even use futures, but they can use swaps. And I'd like to see them just use the swaps. I said in a meeting earlier today that I'm a big believer in the ecosystem because if the ecosystem continues to grow, then CME will do just fine in that ecosystem.
5:46So, you know, I'm a little surprised by some of this activity with the banks and it's frightening. The regular participants, And listen, they're looking just to keep their money in a safe place. And when you lose the faith of the banks, it's a very troubling event. So the bigger ones get bigger, the smaller ones go away. And in return, you could say that the consumers pay for that. Do you see anything changing in terms of trading volume of some of these interest rate products now? Can you see banks starting to react more to this risk? Here, I think what could happen is back in the 70s, even before I was in the marketplace, a lot of the agricultural communities when farmland was really suffering, actually just south and west of where you spent some of your early years, Joe, south of Joliet, some great farmland in mid to southern Illinois was in trouble.
6:42And, you know, eventually when farmers wanted to borrow money from the banks, the banks said to them that they need to have a hedging program in place in order to get loans from the banks. Now, not all, but some. So I think that was something that, you know, helped bolster their industry. And in return, you know, risk management became more of a popular tool for the agricultural community like it was with financial services. So what does that mean for the banks and the second and third tier banks? You know, I think that they can continue to do the swaps, as I said, and in return, companies like mine can benefit because most of the banks who do the swaps with the second and third tier banks historically do the layoff in derivatives on CME Group.
7:26So for us, it's, again, it works for us either way. But did you see, and I get that your point is not to advertise or promote CME specifically or necessarily out of self-interest. But when we had, and I guess it started with SVB and people are like, oh, why did they not take better care of their duration risk? Can you, like if we looked at a chart, could we see or something in the data that other entities woke up to this? I mean, I'm also thinking of some of the deposit moves where it does seem like there was this sort of nonlinear steps. Suddenly people want to be in money market, mutual funds, et cetera.
7:58Was there some notable reaction among banks after the SVB collapse in terms of their hedging activity? I wouldn't be able to see it, as I said, because most of those banks would do swaps and I don't see the swap activity. I would only see the layoff from the larger dealers. So their activity is always pretty active, Joe. And I wouldn't see that coming in. Since we're just throwing out risks in the market, let's do the debt ceiling and treasury market. And we can get into debt ceiling specifics. But even before this latest showdown, I heard complaints from dealers about liquidity in treasuries and often in treasury futures, which you wouldn't necessarily expect.
8:41What's going on there? And is there anything that the CME can do to improve liquidity in that market? Well, here, I think we continually run the largest futures exchange in the world, especially when it comes to rates and the treasury complex. The liquidity in our markets has been outstanding, especially through this entire tightening process. When people talk about liquidity, there's always going to be pockets of illiquidity, Tracy. It's just the nature of any market in the world, including some of the largest. There becomes a situation where the market has a precipitous move because of an unknown event that happened to pop up that caught everybody off base, where you're going to have pockets of illiquidity.
9:26That's called volatility. So I think sometimes people mistake illiquidity with volatility, and that's just what makes markets move at times. So I don't believe that everything we've done has been proper for the marketplace. We continue to keep our engagement with our clients to see if there's something that they would like us to do differently. And again, I just think it's just a combination of illiquid times because of events that are happening in the world. This is like illiquidity is another word for a price move that I didn't like. Pretty much. You said that, not me. But that's sometimes what happens, Tracy.
10:04Yes. You know, the last year we've seen extraordinary high rate volatility in general. And maybe it's come down a little bit. But of course, I'm just curious. Like, obviously, it seems like volatility across any market is probably going to increase demand from any of the products that are traded on your exchange. You know, how much, like, are you able to quantify how much this sort of like high rate vol regime has helped CME's business? And if we were to go to some just sort of like normal, I don't know, 2017, some year that we all kind of forget for some reason, like, what does that mean for a business like the CME?
10:44Well, I guess what you're trying to ask the question, not trying, what you are asking a question is, well, how much does volatility play into the CME's average daily volume? Is that a fair way to assess it? Yeah. Unironically, I always appreciate when the guest rephrases the question in a better way. They usually understand what I'm trying to ask better than even I did. So Joe, no, I mean, it's a great question. And I get it a lot, especially from the investor community. But I tell people, and this has been the historical fact, volatility is a component of what we do. It's not what we do. So risk management is critically important.
11:24Margins are very thin across the board. You need to manage your risk in order to survive in today's world. It's a very competitive world. So people that have interest rate risk or people who have energy risks, whatever the risk may be associated with the asset classes that I trade, volatility is only a component of it because volatility never announces itself. You have to remember that just because the VIX goes up or down doesn't mean volatility is announcing itself. Volatility shows up when the Fed makes a decision that no one saw coming. That's unannounced volatility, right? So you have to be prepared because if you're trying to manage your risk after the event has been announced or disclosed, whatever it may be, you're not going to be able to do so, Joe.
12:08So I think that's when people say volatility. CME is based on volatility. It's not. It's a component. Risk management is critically important. through all times of the cycle, no matter what. What does volatility actually mean for your own risk management? Because I imagine there are times you wake up and suddenly you have to start collecting more margin on something. And as an exchange, that must be a challenge in the current environment. It is a challenge and it is a critical component to what we do. Since we don't participate in markets, Tracy, we manage the risk for others, which makes it a lot easier to do so on margins and other things since we're not involved economically as far as that.
12:50So we're agnostic to the market, wherever it goes up or down. Our focus is strictly on managing that, and we have parameters on our margin capabilities of what we will move them, and we go with what we have SPAN, and now we have a new system called SPAN2, which is systems that, first of all, SPAN was licensed to multiple exchanges around the world for their risk management protocols in order to set margins. And we continue to run that and now are just introducing a more advanced system coming up at the end of this year. So, listen, we look at it and we don't deviate from the formula. We don't speculate on the margins thinking, well, this is a good customer, so maybe we'll let that margin go a little bit.
13:34So we don't do that. We go right by the letter of the law when it comes to margins. I think sometimes people say that an example being during the Ukraine war I talked about earlier today on a panel with Scott O'Malley, when you looked at what's going on with the price of energy and then ultimately the price of wheat was really affected because of the breadbasket in the Baltic there. We raised margins significantly because the price, you know, you're talking about, you know, roughly a third of the European nations are counting on that wheat for their survival. most of the African nations are counting on that wheat as a staple for their survival.
14:11And all of a sudden that's getting trapped or not being allowed to come out of that region. You know, the market really took off on that. And we trade both soft and hard wheat. So we trade the baker's wheat and we also trade the feed wheat. So those are things that we have to be very, very careful of because we don't want to get into a situation where we don't have enough margin on deposit or breaches of margin where, Tracy, I'm not able to pay you because Joe didn't have the money to pay me to pay you. So we're very careful about that.
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16:06step of the supplier lifecycle, helping you deepen merchant relationships. Start fast, grow strategically, and scale at your pace with a modular toolkit you can flexibly deploy. Discover how at MasterCard.com slash commercial acceptance. Since we're talking about your market structure, we talked about this earlier at the ISDA meeting with CFTC Chair Benham. But last year around this time, there was a considerable fight, debate over this idea put forward by FTX about changing how futures are regulated and traded in the United States to allow direct access to the exchange. Setting aside what happened with FTX, do you see eventually any merit or possibility that the US will go in something that direction where there is more direct access to the futures exchanges as opposed to having to go through a broker?
17:05Well, I don't know the ultimate answer to that, but I do know that if there's going to be a path forward like that, then everybody needs to be involved to make sure that we all understand the process. Because the last thing we want to have happen is people who are hedging risks associated with the food in this country don't understand the risk management of it. So it all sounds great when we talk about crypto because who cares, right? But when you're talking about if you're going to eat or not or what the price of that product is, all of a sudden we care. When we talk about not allowing energy companies to manage their risk or not understanding how their risk is managed, then all of a sudden we care.
17:44Because ultimately when the markets become inefficient, that cost is not borne by the trader or the exchange. That is borne by the consumer. The consumer absorbs those costs associated with inefficiencies in the marketplace. So I think whatever it is going to be going forward, whether it's a direct model or something else, needs to make sure everybody understands. We bring all sectors along and we write rules associated with to make sure that people understand the rules of the road. I mean, that definitely makes sense. But just to push on this a little bit further, like if we were to go in that direction in this country, like how would the CME adapt to such a model?
18:27Or what does that mean? What would that mean potentially for the CME? Yeah, you're asking me to speculate, Joe, on what the CME would do, and I won't do that. We're just not going to speculate on a what-if scenario. I'm prepared for any outcomes that may or may not arise. and that's just good prudent risk management on our part to make sure we're ready for those. But again, we're not going to comment on what our strategy would or would not be. I have a bunch of crypto questions that I want to get into. What about the debt ceiling? You guys kind of glanced over that. We'll go back. You talked about it and you blew it off.
19:00Wait, wait, wait. I want to ask one other thing just on commodities because I had dinner with a bunch of commodities traders last week and I said I was going to interview you. What should I ask? Oh, boy. Yeah. They had a bunch of unprintable stuff to ask. But the one - Those are my good friends. One question that I thought was really good is one of them asked, why aren't you more active in LME style commodities management? You know, the LME has had a series of scandals at this point. A lot of traders have lost trust in that business. Isn't this a giant market opportunity for the CME? Again, I think we look at markets, and I said this earlier, I'm not rooting for anybody to have problems like LME has had.
19:45I don't believe in growing my business at someone else's despair because that despair costs participants money. And that's not healthy for markets in general, right? So I don't like that. We are competing with LME. I don't mind good old-fashioned competition. We are competing with them in aluminum and some other products. But the product you're referring to is nickel. Nickel is a much smaller market. It also has a host of warehouses that are associated with that market that you would have to replicate. It's not just let's list nickel and not have the facilities to make certain that the deliveries on the nickel are facilitated properly so someone doesn't get delivery of a box of rocks, which actually happened, versus nickel.
20:31So again, I think from our standpoint, I don't like seeing what's going on with LME, but at the same time, we're going to continue to be competitive in areas that we think we can do well at. And I've already said that right now we're in a strong position on some of these metals products that we're competing in. Nickel is something that I have said that I am not looking to list at this moment. You never say never, but at this moment I'm not looking to list it. I think it's got a lot of issues in and of itself, so we'll have to see how that market progresses. But again, it's a much smaller market than some of the other ones they have.
21:06Actually, I was going to go into the debt ceiling, but now I'm curious. It's like, what is it about nickel specifically when you say, oh, it definitely has issues. Well, it has issues because I don't know if it's the warehouse system. I don't know if it's the cash market associated with it. There's a whole host of things that maybe we need to modernize in cash markets to make the derivative much more efficient as well. Sometimes we're trying to have the derivative make the cash more efficient. You need to have a strong cash market if, in fact, you're going to have a strong derivative market. We're going to have to do an episode on commodities collateral management soon.
21:39And I think I have the perfect guest for that. I am looking forward to that. All right. Let's go to the debt ceiling. How big of a deal would it be if the U.S. were to miss a coupon payment, in your opinion? Well, here, I don't. Again, speculation. You're the one who said, bring it back to the debt ceiling. So now I'm just going to. The only reason I said that is because you said I wrote down markets, debt ceiling, Fed, FTX. And you hopscotch over two of them. We're getting to them. We're not going in a linear order here. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My bad. Most people go in order they say they're going to go in, but that's okay.
22:11Joe and Tracy Bloomberg. Sorry. So I got it. So I'm teasing you. So anyway, so on the debt ceiling here, I think talking about a potential default and what it would mean, I think you'd have to be hard-pressed because I think that could be catastrophic, to say the least. Because it's not just the U.S., which is a huge, obviously, participants in the United States that could, if we had a default, because it's not just the Treasuries. It could be a default or a slowing of payment on Social Security. It could be slowing of payment on veterans affairs, which they need that money to survive. These are veterans that fought for our country.
22:49I mean, there's a whole host of things that payments need to go out to do. So not just the treasury market. So you also look at probably 60 other countries that are holding U.S. debt. And I'm not referring to just China because the easiest thing to say is China. Sometimes I think China wouldn't even care if the U.S. defaulted because that would only maybe bolster their long-term view about where they put themselves in the financial system. And again, their view is in hundreds of years. Ours is in nanoseconds. So you've got to remember the difference between how they think about it. What I am very concerned about, and I hope our government understands, is there's a lot of smaller nations, especially European nations, who own U.S.
23:28debt that if it ever defaulted, that could put them into a world of hurt. So not just the U.S. So that's a big concern here. I don't believe we'll see a default in the United States. I think we'll see a lot of frightening aspects to it. I mean, you got to remember, it took us 15 rounds to elect a Speaker of the House from its own party. It was just a few months ago, too. I know, it feels so long ago. And I think that was a bit of a proxy to show what's going on right now. People kept extracting what they believed they wanted in order to give the vote to now Speaker McCarthy. So when you're looking at that, you have to say to yourself, what are people looking at to extract on cost-cutting measures from an administration that's got not just this one, but prior administrations that has the United States of America$31.5 trillion in debt.
24:20How do we start to address it? And then some of these fringe participants of either party might say, this is a great opportunity or a horrible opportunity, let's borrow more. The point is, they don't have the votes right now for a debt ceiling. And so there'll be multiple rounds of this. You saw just two weeks ago, the House passed a bill by five votes to raise the debt ceiling by$1.5 trillion. But in return, the cuts they asked for over 10 years were pretty dramatic. and obviously the president and the senate wouldn't even discuss that particular piece of legislation so they met yesterday they're going to continue they're going to meet again friday and we'll have to see where it goes secretary yellen says we have enough to pay our bills to june 1st i think people believe that's a bit of a fudge and really that we'll probably get into august before we're really going to have uh some major concerns and uh Listen, I saw the debt ceiling go in 2011 down to the 11th hour, literally 11th hour with President Obama and then Speaker John Boehner.
25:19And we're talking about some pretty rational people back then in 2011. You would have to say, what are we dealing with today? And so could it go longer? What does it look like? I think you could see some delays on some of these payments, but not a default. So you could see delays on some of the coupons that are expiring this summer or maybe even the fall. So you could see some delays on the payments. You could see some delays on Social Security and other benefits. But if that's the case, what does that do to the marketplace? So I can tie this all back in to we could be in for, you know, again, when I talk about volatility and it doesn't introduce itself, here's a situation where you better pay attention because this could introduce itself in a very ugly way.
26:00And that is something that people need to pay attention to. Because if, in fact, we have someone make the reference that the payment that you were supposed to get on Tuesday will be here the following Tuesday, people will take that as it's never coming. And the markets will take that as it's never coming. Not that that's the case, but that's how markets anticipate. And then it happens all of a sudden. And now we go into liquidity issues, Tracy, that you referenced earlier because of an event of volatility. Then we have illiquidity, what it appears to be because of the event. This is exactly what I wanted to ask you, which is are there technicalities that the CME is now on the lookout for in terms of missed coupon payments and things like that?
26:38We are. We just did a presentation, and I can't share all the information that I gave to my fiduciaries, my board of directors, with my team last week here in Chicago about what it would look like in lieu of maybe a technical default and where we stand from our makeup of margin. You got to remember we're holding$250 billion that we pass through into either the Federal Reserve on our cash because we have the ability to do that as a SIFMU or we're holding treasuries. We hold roughly 10 % to 20 % of other collateral, whether it's gold warrants, corporates, or other small. But we haircut things dramatically already, including government debt.
27:14So the only thing we don't haircut is cash. And so we are in a strong position. we're holding roughly over$130 billion today in cash against our margin positions. So roughly almost half in cash. So we're in a strong position right now, but we do have some treasuries. The only ones we would need to worry about are the durations that are expiring in a period that we think could be an issue, which is maybe that August to October period. And again, that's a very small portion of the margin we're holding today. I'm scared to deviate from our list of talking points. I didn't get anything ahead of time.
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27:51I just got my little sheet here that I wrote down. Can I pivot slightly to AI, which is like the big talking point at the moment? And it feels like everyone's freaking out over the possibility of losing their jobs. Joe and I have joked that ChatGPT could easily replicate one of these episodes with a guest. And I would love to hear - Never replicate Terry. Never replicate Terry. I would love to hear from From your perspective, though, the CME is an entity that has gone through significant rounds of technological change. We all remember, you know, open outcry, pit trading. You had human traders actually shouting out their trades and things like that.
28:28That went away. So how are you thinking about AI now? And what advice do you have for people who might be grappling with the potential of this new technology? I don't know about the market so much. But boy, Michael Bloomberg has got to be just really thinking close about this. You guys are replaceable. You know that? Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm teasing. Sorry, listeners. We'll do a chat GPT generated version of this interview and see how it does. Yeah. We'll do one every year. You guys will rig that. Remember, the information that chat GPT has is only up through 2021. We have like two years. We're just going to keep racing ahead of it.
29:06I think that there's always pain and there's always gain as we progress. So, Tracy, you gave the analogy of markets as open outcry transitioning to markets electronic. There was a tremendous amount of pain for people who could not make that transition from the floor-traded model to the electronic model. Now, the electronic model could not distribute markets around the world like the electronic model can. So there were so many more benefits, the efficiencies that the electronic model created. Now, a lot of people were able to adapt to the new model, and there were some that couldn't. So that's the pain part of it, because you can't bring everybody along.
29:48The gain part of it was the market got much, much larger due to the technology that the markets now use today and continue to evolve in each and every day. So when you look at artificial intelligence, you know, there might be some short term pain, but I think that long term, there could be a tremendous amount of activity. You know, I teased a moment ago, Cherisee, about you and Joe, but I think that there's many opportunities for all fields as it relates to artificial intelligence. And the question is, we just got to make sure we don't deploy it in a way that no one understands it. I'll go back to my crypto answer.
30:26As long as the rules of the road are well understood by all participants, we have an opportunity to participate in new technology, including artificial intelligence. So that being said, I hope that it increases the job market, not decreases it in the long run, but in the short term, it could have an impact where people see this as a major cost savings to what you referenced it as displacing people from their jobs. I think ultimately it creates jobs. Since you mentioned and since in the context of no longer having that physical trading floor, I'm curious about like the future of Chicago and your role here.
31:02And we have seen some financial firms leave like Citadel. I don't know if I assume they still have some offices here. They do. I'm not sure. Sure. City elected a new progressive mayor who has talked at times about a higher tax on hotels, a higher tax for large employers, and even a financial transaction tax, which I imagine goes straight to the heart of your business. Have you talked to the mayor-elect? No, I have not spoken to him. How much of a, you know, were some of these proposals to go through? How much would that, you know, what do you, what would that mean for the CME? And how committed would you, is there a future in which the CME isn't in Chicago?
31:42First of all, I think that there's a huge difference between a campaign, the rhetoric associated with campaigns, and once somebody assumes an office, whether it's mayor of Chicago, or whether it's President of the United States. A lot of people say a lot of things during an election process. Now, what they can do and get accomplished are two different things. I've got to imagine that if you run for President of the United States, the day you walk into that White House, it's got to be absolutely the most awesome experience in your life, and it's also got to be the biggest burden you've ever seen in your entire life, saying you are the leader of the free world.
32:23what I said on a campaign trail. Now, okay, that was interesting, but now I'm sitting here. Now I got to make decisions on behalf of 335 million people that make sure we're doing the right thing. And so I think that when you look at, you know, Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, I don't know him. I know he's very progressive and he's made a lot of comments as it relates to taxes. I'm hopeful that he reaches out to folks, I don't care if it's me or whoever, and talks about these things. I have, first of all, let's make one thing perfectly clear for your listeners. Mr. Johnson has no legal authority to impose a transaction tax on my business.
33:02He just doesn't have it. The city of Chicago doesn't have the ability. It's not him. It's the city of Chicago. The state of Illinois is somebody that can propose a transaction tax on it. And then the federal government are the only two entities that can do so. So on the hotel tax, I'll leave that to the people that run this hotel to determine how they're going to deal with that. I don't think it's healthy for tourism. That's one of the things we rely on in this great city is tourism. So you hate to chase people away over a silly cost. You'd rather maybe take the Walmart model and bring in more and charge less.
33:35So I'm hopeful that he deals with some of the issues that are of concern, and most of those are around crime and safety. So I'm hopeful that the new mayor focuses on those issues and doesn't get too bogged down on how he's going to short-term think he's going to raise taxes on certain people in order to fit his agenda. We have a problem in Chicago, and I think there's other cities here. It's not just the crime, it's the community. You need to create community amongst your city if you're going to survive in the future, meaning we need to have businesses open. We need to have people walking into those businesses.
34:12You need to have commerce. You need to have people living in here. You can't chase everybody away. Everybody is afraid right now because of whether it's the crime issue or whatever. So I think layering on additional cost as you're trying to fix one problem would be a catastrophic mistake. As far as CME's future in Chicago, CME, we have sold all of our property in the state of Illinois, in the city of Chicago. We don't own anything any longer. We put ourselves into a very strong position many, many years ago. I actually in our leases we have language in there that says if there's something that's ill-conceived from the city of the state that our leases are null and void so we're in a really strong position we have options coming up on our long-term leases already so that doesn't mean we're leaving we like Chicago we as I said earlier today on a panel I think Chicago's been on its back foot before and it can get back on its front foot but it takes all of us to do so so I want to be a part of the solution, not part of the problem.
35:11And that's how I look at Chicago. So again, we're in a strong position from a whole host of reasons, from a risk management, as I talked about earlier, to a real estate. And if there's any ill-conceived taxes, we're in a very strong position. If we had to leave, we could leave. Yeah. A lot of these dynamics apply to New York as well. Does the CME feel a responsibility to get people back into the office and into the city. If we're talking about crime, it would help to have people walking around and businesses open, as you said. So do you feel that you're part of that? So Tracy, that's an excellent question.
35:46And it's been an issue, as you all can imagine. Everybody has been locked up or they've done things a certain way for three plus years. And it really gets hard to say, okay, that's over with, now come back to work. Everybody is like, well, why? I'm doing just fine doing it the way I'm doing it now you know I think it's up to and I said this to our governor I said to him I said you know when COVID when you shut down the state of Illinois and certain businesses had to stay open for because they were essential to the lives of others some banks and exchanges were part of that as being essential not just grocery stores not just big box stores and others but they we were essential nobody thought about how do we get them back now you know so why isn't government getting involved with saying we need people back.
36:35We need people back in cities and communities. You know, I'm a big believer that if you're a steward or a fiduciary of other people's money, that you need to be there to be on top of it. And to sit at home and monitor that off a screen, to me, is not the appropriate thing to do. You should always have somebody involved in an office setting as you're relying on someone to keep your money safe for you. So there's a couple different ways I'm looking at that. Tracy but I will say that you know from our standpoint I've met with my people I'm not a big fan of the hybrid but at the same time it's a competitive world out there so you have to do what you have to do I will say that my risk in clearing people are in five days a week and that's non-negotiable and they know that and I've had meetings with them they're comfortable they understand my concerns around risk and clearing I outlined them for you all and sitting here how volatility can come up very quickly.
37:32So I'm very committed. I understand that certain people in finance and legal and other parts of my company can hybrid a little bit. But again, I'm holding everybody accountable. I have shareholders that are holding me accountable. So we'll see how this all pans out. But I do believe there's a role in not only federal government, but state government to help rebuild these cities. And listen, we have a massive problem with vacancies in office buildings around this country, especially in New York and Chicago and L.A. And that's not healthy. I mean, that's a massive shoe to drop because all these buildings are levered up.
38:08I mean, there's loans against them that are going to be refinanced at much higher rates and there's no occupancy. What's going to happen to them? So not an economist. I'm a realist. I look out the window and I can you see certain things. And again, I think it's upon not only executives like myself, but of course, people in elected offices to make sure that we put these pieces back together. And it's hard.
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40:29Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. You mentioned office vacancies problem and the other issue that a lot of banks have run into besides their duration risk is this perception that many of them have significant potential losses related to commercial real estate. We talked about this on a recent episode. Real estate is one of these areas which sort of seems somewhat impervious to robust hedging instruments or futures related to indices. Can you talk to someone in this business of these instruments, what is it about real estate or commercial real estate that has made it difficult to build instruments that would allow for hedging activity?
41:15So I think there's a lot of things that are really difficult to provide what Tracy talked about earlier, which is liquidity for every single instrument, because everybody who's in a certain business believes that they should have a risk management tool. There's other people that don't want to participate in it because of whatever that industry may or may not look like. You also have to make sure that nothing is readily maniputable before you can go forward. So you have to have a strong cash market, like I referenced earlier. so sometimes the markets are just not you know i don't want to say centralized but are just not customized and that is the word i'm looking for customized enough to have for every single product so in return you know when you look at here's a great example jet fuel you would think boy there's a lot of people flying why don't we have a jet fuel contract why because they use the west texas intermediate to manage that risk in their jet fuel cost why don't we have other contracts for other businesses.
42:08I mean, I've had people come to me saying, Terry, have you seen this lobster market? I'm like, excuse me? The lobster market. We need to have a futures market on lobsters because in Maine right now they're rolling. I'm like, oh boy, okay, I don't think they care in Kansas, but all right, whatever. So you need to make sure that you have a natural buyer, natural seller in a market that's not readily manipulable. I'm not saying the real estate market is or the commercial market is, but the way you can deal with that is through interest rates and interest rate markets so you can hedge those exposures on your cost.
42:37You're not going to be able to have a pure hedge on occupancy, the way I look at it. But maybe somebody, you know, Robert Shiller, as you know, created the Case Shiller Index on the home index. And that seemed like a real natural product, right? But it's - There are some futures on that. There are. And we had them. And we worked with Dr. Shiller on the contract. But again, it's not a liquid contract because there's a lot of people don't participate in that marketplace. Joe, I was just thinking this was our opportunity to turn this into our long-awaited Onion Futures episode. Onion. It's one of the only products that's outlawed by the United States government.
43:13We've joked about this for years, but we've never done an Onion Futures and why it's banned. We may never do an episode on it. We'll just keep joking about it. You want me to give you a snapshot on it? Yeah, do it. The market was cornered on the onions and they dumped the onions in the Chicago River and kept the burlap sacks that they're in because the burlap sacks were worth more than the onions themselves. And the United States government stepped in and said, we will not have a futures contract on onions ever again. It's amazing that the U.S. government was so active on the onion market in like, what was this, like the 1920s or 30s, something like that.
43:47And yet here we are today. Okay, speaking of government in action, maybe this is my segue into crypto. I was just going to say, it's impressive how long we went without really going to crypto. I'm glad. Anyway. You sure we didn't talk about crypto? A little bit with FTX. But let me ask the broadest crypto question possible. What is your take on crypto at the moment? Because you have voiced some concerns about the way the market functions and how it could fit into your business. But at the same time, you do have a big and growing suite of crypto offerings. So, again, I don't believe I've ever come out publicly and said that I don't believe in crypto because I know I haven't said that.
44:31What I have said is I do believe that people need to understand what they are participating in. And for some reason, people get a case of FOMO or they get a case of influencers who influence them because they're celebrity types or whatever, that this is something that you got to have. And we live in an age of where people follow other people and it's just, you know, off to the races. So what I believed with crypto was for an exchange like ours, a highly regulated entity that, you know, when we decided to list Bitcoin, it was going to be under our comfort level, for lack of a better term. And we did that.
45:16We did it with making sure that we have the functionality that we have in all of our other markets could apply to the Bitcoin, such as stop logic functionality, velocity logic functionality, meaning if the market was to precipitously move so fast, it would stop, replenish liquidity, then start again. That's called velocity logic. And then we would also make sure that the margins were a lot higher than they were charging at some of the cash exchanges like FTX and others, which was just a couple percent. We actually went into the high 30s, low 40s when we listed that contract on margin. And then we listed an awful large size contract to make certain that we were attracting sophisticated participants.
45:58We did not want to attract retail participants who still didn't understand the product very well. Now, we have subsequently gone into smaller contracts on Bitcoin and Ether. So we have what's called micro contracts that trades more for the retail. Now, what I will tell you what's interesting about that, and this has happened in the last couple of weeks, is our retail contracts are actually lower in volume now on a percent basis. And our large contract is up in volume on a percent basis, which tells me that the larger sophisticated participants who will trade the larger contract are in that one because it makes economic sense for them to be in that.
46:39And the smaller one, some of the retail participants are not trading that as often. So what that can tell you as a proxy is retail getting a little worn out with the inflation without the stimulus money and having to use that money for other costs associated with running their household. So not saying that's a pure analogy, but I find it quite interesting. So from my standpoint, I think crypto, you'll have a few of these cryptocurrencies going forward. And as long as we continue to educate and prove out their use cases where people can use them and feel comfortable using them and not worry about losing their money to participants who are holding that form.
47:25Remember, the bigger issues with some of these exchanges is the cold wallet where you can get your own, but some people just trust that the exchange will do it for them. And that's been an issue. So I think it's going to continue to evolve and you'll have a survivor of one or two of these cryptocurrencies. And then you'll have the blockchain technology being deployed in many other ways outside of just crypto. Maybe it's used with stable coins or used with another means. Just on crypto, one last question. You know, what would you look for in terms of other additions? So you have Bitcoin, Ether.
48:01Do you have some, I assume you have a team that sort of monitors other coins and sort of like where the market is going. Do you have like sort of like benchmarks or things that you would see would like, oh, maybe we'll add a third coin, maybe we'll add a fourth, like types of things that sort of like, okay, this is hitting a threshold where it might justify having a futures market. Yeah. And that's a great question. So we do measure by thresholds on a lot of our products that we list. On crypto, one of the things that we've been successful doing is we have reference rates. and even prior to us listing the derivative of bitcoin we had a bitcoin reference rate now we have listed several more reference rates and we'll see how those reference rates go over the next you know several months to maybe a year and see if they start to participate more where people are actually using them and then we may decide to go from there so it gives us the ability to have a non-tradable product on the reference rate that so to see how people are looking at it and then if we decide there's enough interest we could always list a futures contract about it.
48:58Just going back to liquidity real quickly, which is how we sort of started this conversation. There does seem to be, I don't want to say more of a concerted effort because it feels kind of disjointed, but there does seem to be more noise at the moment about regulating crypto. And you have crypto futures. And I guess the question is, are you concerned at all that a clampdown on crypto in the cash market would affect the futures business? Because as anyone in financial markets knows, in order to have vibrant and healthy futures contracts, you do also need vibrant and healthy markets in the underlying.
49:35Yeah. And again, Tracy, I appreciate that question. I think when you look at the cash market as it relates to crypto, it's already been question asked, question answered as it relates to Bitcoin, that it is a futures contract. So I think as long as we're in that place right now, and we have been since we listed a contract, and both the SEC and CFTC obviously have agreed that that is the case. So I don't think that harms Bitcoin. Now, let's talk about some of the other cryptos. What does it do? There is massive uncertainty of what is the security and what is the derivative. As you know, both the SEC and CFTC have a difference in that definition, and they both want to seek regulation of those products.
50:24So until there is clarity, markets hate uncertainty. And I think we've got to get clarity between the regulators about who is going to regulate some of these other cryptocurrencies and what are going to define them. You know, I remember when the Shad Johnson Accord was passed, and that is basically saying what devises a broad versus a narrow-based index. So what can be traded as a future? What can be has to be traded as cash? So, you know, I think it's 11 or under on the products can be determined as narrow and 11 or more is a broad based index. So you can trade those as futures like the S &P 500.
51:04We trade at CME and other security indexes are deemed as futures. I'm not saying that's the way they're going to look at crypto, but they have to come to a decision one way or another. if the market is going to have the ability to find its footing and grow going forward. But I don't believe, Tracy, that it's going to have a massive impact on Bitcoin and its liquidity or not. I think that'll be like every other product up to what's going on in the world today, not the regulators. It does with the other products. All right. Well, an absolute treat to be able to come back to Chicago after 20 something years and speak to Terry Duffy.
51:47So thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots. Appreciate it. Tracy, Joe, thank you very much. Thank you. And I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you and your listeners. And again, I hope you enjoy Chicago and stay safe. Thank you so much.
52:13Joe, I really enjoyed that conversation. You know what I want to do? I want to have Terry back. But just for one where it's like we throw out like different commodity futures and he tells us. And he just says something. Why don't we have jet fuel futures? I never thought about that before, but that there's already an instrument that's like close enough. Or just like old war stories from running the CME. Because I remember also a few years ago when I was sort of like more involved in this coverage. I remember there was like a cattle herdsman association that like went to Chicago to talk about the cattle futures contract.
52:47Like there are so many stories he could tell. The burlap sacks, I had no idea. Yeah, I didn't realize that either. But there were a few things that were really interesting to pull out of there. I mean like one, to hear how he's thinking about crypto liquidity was interesting. And also that they're thinking actively about treasury market risk. I mean, I guess that should be obvious, but it does feel to me like the debt ceiling drama is one of those things that could really materialize. Like the risk could be there's some obscure contract language about delivery. And so it's interesting that they're sort of looking for that at the moment.
53:25Speaking of contract language, I thought it was interesting that he pointed out specifically that in the leases they have for their real estate in Chicago. And it would be interesting to talk to a real estate lawyer. What kind of leases companies have if they want to leave or move to Florida? And they say, oh, it's tied to political choices, what that looks like. And the fact that he was kind of – he didn't say, oh, we're going to leave or anything like that. But it's clearly something that if they – I think there was an implicit threat there. Threat, yeah. It's obviously something they have been thinking about.
53:59Concern, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, on that note, shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. All right. We're going to go off and enjoy Chicago now. This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at The Stalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armin and Dashiell Bennett at Dashbot. For all of the Bloomberg podcasts, follow them on Twitter at podcasts. And for more OddLots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash OddLots, where we blog, we post transcripts.
54:33We have a newsletter that comes out every Friday. And check out the Discord, discord.gg slash OddLots. Listeners are in there 24-7 talking about all of these topics, markets, econ, crypto, water, energy, real estate, and more. Super fascinating, fun place to hang out. I'm spending more and more of my time in there. Go there, check it out. Is there an Onion Futures room yet? We've got to add an Onion Futures room. There's no new development. Maybe we'll get a bot that just updates and says, Onion Futures are still illegal. And I'll just post that once a day, and there's no new development. Can we do that?
55:08I want to do this. Let's do that. All right. Thanks for listening.
55:41We'll see you next time.
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From the publisher
Terry Duffy is the chairman and CEO of CME Group, the world's biggest derivatives exchange and a trading behemoth whose name is synonymous with Chicago's financial industry. In this wide-ranging interview, Duffy talks about the big risks in the market he's seeing right now and how the CME is preparing for them. He discusses everything from complaints over a lack of liquidity in Treasury futures, to the impact of the debt ceiling on CME's risk management, interest rate hedging trends in the aftermath of the recent banking crisis, and the exchange's expanding suite of crypto offerings. We also talk about how Duffy is viewing the CME's future in Chicago and, finally, his take on the onion futures debate.
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