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CBO -Monthly Budget Review-Fiscal Year 2013
December 7, 2012--The federal budget deficit was $292 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2013, $57 billion more than the shortfall recorded in October and November of last year, CBO estimates.
Without shifts in the timing of certain payments in each year, however, the deficit for the two-month period would have been about $8 billion lower this year than in fiscal year 2012.
Total Receipts Were Up by 10 Percent in the First Two Months of Fiscal Year 2013 Receipts for the first two months of in fiscal year 2013 totaled $346 billion, $30 billion more than those in the same period last year. Compared with receipts in October and November last year:
Net receipts from individual income and payroll (social insurance) taxes rose by $23 billion, or 8 percent. Increases in amounts withheld from workers’ paychecks ($21 billion, or 8 percent) accounted for most of the year-over-year gain, partly because wages and salaries were higher and partly because October 2012 had two more days on which tax payments were received than October 2011 did. Nonwithheld receipts, mainly from filings of 2011 tax returns by people who had received filing extensions, increased by $2 billion. Receipts from corporate income taxes, which are quite small at this point in the year, have been slightly less.
view the CBO Monthly Budget Revue-Fiscal Year 2013
Source: Source: CBO (Congressional Budget Office)
BlackRock ETP Landscape-Industry Highlights-November 2012
December 7, 2012--In November ETPs attracted strong flows of $25.0bn, bringing the year-to-date total to $218.9bn. The previous year-to-date record through November of $208.5bn was set in 2008 during the global credit crisis.
Year-to-date global ETP flows have already surpassed 2011’s full year total of $173.4bn.
ETP investors split across the risk spectrum allocating $2.7bn to safe-haven Treasuries - with flows cadenced near US elections - while also maintaining a degree of risk appetite through the purchase of US Equities which garnered $8.2bn, and EM Equities and EM Bonds which together drew in $6.2bn.
Over the year-to-date, fixed income has been a key growth driver, attracting 31% of all inflows with $67.8bn, well ahead of the $50bn collected in 2011.
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Source: BlackRock
S&P Dow Jones Indices Announces Changes In Canadian Indices
A Deletion From The S&P/TSX Composite Index
December 7, 2012--The shareholders of Viterra Inc. (TSX:VT) have accepted the $CDN16.25 cash per share offer from Glencore International plc (LSE:GLEN). Viterra will be removed from the S&P/TSX Composite and Capped Composite,
the S&P/TSX Equity and Capped Equity, the S&P/TSX Completion and Equity Completion, the S&P/TSX Composite Dividend, the S&P/TSX Composite Equal Weight and the S&P/TSX Capped Consumer Staples Indices effective after the close of Friday, December 14, 2012.
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Source: S&P Dow Jones
CFTC Commitments Of Traders Reports Update
December 7, 2012--The current reports for the week of December 4, 2012 are now available.
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Source: CFTC.gov
Exclusive: Schwab eyes commission-free ETF supermarket-sources
December 7, 2012--Charles Schwab Corp has been quietly meeting with exchange-traded fund providers to try to persuade them to join a new network that would make ETFs available commission-free to the brokerage's 8.6 million customers.
ETF providers, however, have been reluctant to sign on to Schwab's plan because they would have to pay the firm a marketing fee they say is too high, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.
SEC Lifts Restriction on Active ETFs' Derivativates Use
December 7, 2012--The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cleared one obstacle for exchange-traded funds that try to beat benchmarks by lifting a ban on the funds' use of derivatives.
Proposed funds will have to meet requirements on managing risk and disclosure, Norm Champ, director of the division of investment management, said yesterday in a speech at a New York conference for investment advisers. The agency still won’t approve new ETFs that use derivatives to amplify returns or provide the inverse performance of an index.
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Source: Bloomberg
CFTC's Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight Issues Interpretative Guidance and No-Action Letter for Operators of Securitization Vehicles
December 7, 2012--The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (DSIO) today issued a letter providing additional guidance to securitization vehicles regarding whether they may be excluded from the definition of commodity pool.
The letter also stated that the Division will not recommend that the Commission take enforcement action against the operators of certain securitization vehicles that have not and will not issue new securities on or after October 12, 2012 for failure to register as a commodity pool operator, provided certain criteria are satisfied. Finally, the letter stated that, for securitization vehicles that cannot claim relief either under this letter or CFTC Letter No. 12-14, which was issued by the Division on October 11, 2012,
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Source: CFTC.gov
CFTC's Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight Issues No-Action Letter on the Obligation of Swap Dealers and Major Swap Participants to Provide the Pre-Trade Mid-Market Mark for Certain Foreign Exchange Transactions
December 6, 2012--The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (DSIO) today issued a no-action letter that provides swap dealers and major swap participants with relief from the requirement to disclose the pre-trade mid-market mark to counterparties in certain foreign exchange ("forex") transactions that are identified in the no-action letter ("Covered Forex Transactions").
The disclosure requirements prescribed in Regulation 23.431 state, among other things, that a swap dealer or major swap participant must disclose to certain counterparties the pre-trade mid-market mark of a swap. The no-action letter issued today by DSIO states that a swap dealer or major swap participant need not disclose the pre-trade mid-market mark for a Covered Forex Transaction, provided that: (1) real-time tradeable bid and offer prices for the Covered Forex
Transaction are available electronically, in the marketplace, to the counterparty; and (2) the counterparty to the Covered Forex Transaction agrees in advance, in writing, that the swap dealer or major swap participant need not disclose a pre-trade mid-market mark.
The relief provided in the no-action letter is applicable to all swap dealers and major swap participants.
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Source: CFTC.gov
DB-Synthetic Equity & Index Strategy-North America-ETF+ Monthly Directory-November 2012
December 6, 2012--This document includes all US listed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and exchange-traded vehicles (ETVs), plus a special section covering exchange-traded notes (ETNs).
The directory is organized by asset class and asset-class-related sub sections. Within each sub section it has also been sorted. For Equity and Fixed Income ETPs it is sorted by country (or sub region for regional products) in alphabetical order and by AUM in descending order, and for the other ETP asset classes it is sorted by sub sector in alphabetical order and by AUM in descending order. A number of key information points per product has been included in order to enable the reader to get an overview in their respective area of interest. Among the key numeric information we include avg. daily turnover, assets under management, and cash flows (all in $US).
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Source:Deutsche Bank-Synthetic Equity & Index Strategy-North America
CFTC's Division of Market Oversight Provides Swap Dealers With Swap Data Reporting Relief With Respect To Equity Swaps, Foreign Exchange Swaps and Other Commodity Swaps, Due to Effects of Hurricane Sandy
Decmber 5, 2012--In order to account for certain disruptions to the testing of swap data reporting systems caused by Hurricane Sandy, the Division of Market Oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced the issuance of a letter providing swap dealers with time-limited no-action relief from swap data reporting obligations with respect to equity swaps, foreign exchange swaps and other commodity swaps.
For these asset classes, the letter provides swap dealers with reporting relief (i) under Part 43 and Part 45 of the CFTC’s regulations, until February 28, 2013, and (ii) under Part 46 of the CFTC’s regulations, until March 30, 2013.
view 12-41
Source: CFTC.gov