Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are reportedly preparing to enter the London gold vaulting and clearing market, seeking to rival JPMorgan Chase's dominance amid surging investor demand for the metal. The move would expand the number of clearing members in a market that stores over $1 trillion in gold, as the London Bullion Market Association works to make access more open.

President Donald Trump has nominated Michael Selig, chief legal counsel for the SEC's crypto task force, as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Selig has pledged to support the development of crypto markets. He has received praise from industry leaders for his commitment to modernizing regulatory frameworks to foster digital asset growth.

Tom Hayes, the former UBS trader recently exonerated in the Libor-rigging scandal, has filed a $400 million lawsuit against UBS, alleging the bank made him a scapegoat to avoid criminal prosecution. Hayes, whose conviction was overturned in July, claims UBS portrayed him as the "evil mastermind" to protect senior management.

Record trading in single-stock options and leveraged ETFs has amplified volatility in major U.S. equities, with individual companies now seeing daily moves of more than $100 billion in market value. Analysts say retail investors account for about 60% of single-stock options trading, while leveraged ETFs and zero-day options are magnifying price swings around Big Tech earnings.

London Stock Exchange Group has partnered with Anthropic to give users of Anthropic's Claude AI access to data licensed through LSEG products, including Workspace and Financial Analytics. The collaboration aims to automate financial analysis, including summarizing earnings calls and triggering agentic workflows.

tZero Group, the blockchain-based securities marketplace backed by Intercontinental Exchange, plans to go public in 2026, CEO Alan Konevsky said. The firm, which helps companies issue and trade tokenized securities under US regulations, is also exploring a pre-IPO funding round as competition in real-world asset tokenization intensifies.

Citigroup and Coinbase have partnered to launch a blockchain-based payment and settlement system aimed at supporting 24/7 trading and cross-border transactions. The collaboration combines Citi's 300-network global payments infrastructure with Coinbase's digital asset expertise to develop real-time fiat-to-stablecoin solutions, marking a major step toward integrating traditional finance with on-chain settlement.

Intercontinental Exchange reported record open interest in its interest rate futures and options, reaching 34.7 million lots on October 23, a 40% increase year-on-year. The milestone was driven largely by increased activity in UK short-term rates and government bond markets amid anticipation of further monetary easing by the Bank of England.

Robinhood Markets has introduced futures trading in the UK, offering more than 40 CME Group contracts through its app and desktop platform, Robinhood Legend. This move follows the launch of options trading and aims to attract more active traders.

Deutsche Boerse posted a 3% year-over-year increase in third-quarter revenue to €1.44 billion, buoyed by higher fixed income and commodities trading. Growth was led by an 11% rise in interest-rate revenue and a 31% jump in natural gas trading at its EEX unit, keeping the group on track to meet its €5.2 billion full-year target amid solid diversification and scalable operations.

Gold futures have fallen around 2.8% to $4,001.90 an ounce, the steepest decline since Oct. 21, as optimism over a potential US-China trade deal reduced demand for safe-haven assets. Analysts said the rebound in the US dollar and improving risk sentiment drove the sell-off, though HSBC still forecasts gold could average $4,600 next year with a possible peak of $5,000 in 2026.