On the heels of the recently announced tZero alignment with BOX, one that envisions a listing and trading marketplace for crypto land digital tokens, the Swiss stock exchange (SIX) jumped into the fray and announced that it too is going to open a cryptocurrency exchange, and the exchange operator claims it will be the first of its kind in the world.

Jos Dijsselhof, CEO of SIX

The SIX plan, unveiled Friday is to build a “fully integrated trading, settlement and custody infrastructure for digital assets,” in order to “provide a safe environment for issuing and trading” established cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, and tokens issued in so-called initial coin offerings.

The custody aspect formulated by SIX is notable, as the safety of stored cryptocurrencies is one of the big fears in this market.

SIX is in good company with many industry observers who have embraced the notion “You can’t put the Genie back in the bottle.” According to SIX CEO Jos Dijsselhof, “This is the beginning of a new era for capital markets infrastructures. For us it is abundantly clear that much of what is going on in the digital space is here to stay and will define the future of our industry.”

SIX hopes to go live with this new exchange in the first half of 2019, regulatory permission pending.

SIX is not the first operator of a traditional stock exchange to get into cryptocurrency trading. The TMX Group, which runs the Toronto Stock Exchange, announced its own cryptocurrency brokerage service earlier this year, and Intercontinental Exchange, which own the New York Stock Exchange, is reportedly also toying with the idea.

Securities industry veterans who have migrated to the crypto and digital token arena have continuously advocated that the ultimate success of cryptocurrency and digital tokenization in terms of institutional market acceptance of this new alternative asset class is dependent on fully-regulated exchange platforms. When looking back to the evolution of dual and multi-listing of equity options, and now seeing the pile on to get into crypto, it’s like deja vu all over again.

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Brokerdealers everywhere have rejoiced, Shake Shack, a newer chain restaurant, recently applied for an IPO and set to go public in 2015. Shake Shack is known for its fresh cut fires, 100% all beef burgers and hot dogs, and most of all its delicious shakes. The chain has been growing ever since its opening in New York City in 2000 and now has 63  locations open  worldwide.

Shake Shack, the New York-based burger chain created by famous restaurateur Danny Meyer, is set to go public in 2015, after filing for an IPO Monday.

The chain, which plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SHAK,” details a rapid growth effort that has seen an increase from a single shack in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park to 63 locations worldwide today (about half are owned by the company, with the remainder operated by licensees.”

Restaurant concepts have proven a mixed bag in the market, as investors pore over growth prospects looking for chains that could prove as lucrative as Chipotle Mexican Grill CMG -1.73%, which has returned more than 1500% since being spun out of McDonald’s MCD -0.87% in 2006.

IPOs from companies like Noodles & Co, Potbelly and Zoe’s Kitchen were greeted with immense demand, though both stocks have taken their share of hits since debuting. More recently, burger chain Habit Restaurants has surged more than 80% since its mid-November IPO.

At a time when many legacy restaurant operators are struggling to find growth — McDonald’s certainly among them — younger chains with smaller footprints and more runway for expansion are proving attractive.

Shake Shack reported $140 million in system-wide sales for its 2013 fiscal year, up from $81 million the prior year, with 56% of revenue from its domestic, company-owned locations. Total revenue, which only includes licensing revenue from non-owned locations, was $83.8 million in 2013, up 41% from the prior year. Net income declined to $3.5 million, from $4.4 million the year before, due to a sharp increase in expenses, largely attributable to higher food costs and costs associated with opening new locations.

Growth is likely to come both abroad and at home. Aside from New York, with 15 locations, no U.S. state has more than four Shake Shacks.

“Fast-growing restaurant concepts are still hot,” says Paul Bard of IPO research firm Renaissance Capital. “Habit opened up 100% so comparable companies will see that as an opportunity and there’s a whole crop of fast-casual burger chains out there.”

Bard also points to chicken chain Bojangles and Focus Brands, a franchiser of Cinnabon and Carvel, as potential names to watch for on the 2015 IPO market as investors continue to look for growth in the consumer space.

The U.S. economy’s slow recovery and improved consumer spending is certainly a help to restaurants, but Shake Shack’s filing notes that the company’s initial expansion occurred in a far more difficult environment.

“We’ve never believed that Shake Shack only thrives in a down economy, but growing from one to 15 Shacks smack dab in the heart of the recession told us that we also don’t need a robust economy to build our business,” Meyer and CEO Randy Garutti wrote in a letter to prospective shareholders.

Meyer is listed among the shareholders who control at least 5% of Shake Shack’s shares, along with affiliates of private equity firm Leonard Green, Select Equity Group, Alliance Consumer Growth, and Jeff Flug, president of Union Square Hospitality Group, the parent company of Meyer’s other restaurant ventures, and a Shake Shack board member.

The language in the Shake Shack filing also reveals the controlling hand Meyer will maintain at the company post-IPO. He and his affiliates will be entitled to nominate a certain number of directors — five as long as he maintains 50% of his post-offering holdings, and sliding down from there — and must grant approval for a variety of corporate actions, including a sale of the company, firing or hiring of a new CEO or a change in board size, so long as the group keeps 10% of its post-IPO shares.

For the original Forbes article, click here.

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David Fabian: Yesterday marked a year-to-date low in NYSE trading volume despite the S&P 500 Index hitting a new all-time intra-day high above 2,000. Despite the fact that many stocks are seeing fewer buyers and sellers, the markets are continuing to build on this 5-year bull market in earnest.

However, when the gains come at the expense of fewer participants, the bears are quick to point out that this rally can’t last. Whether that is true or not, the reality is the gains are still as meaningful as any other trading day. Billions of dollars change hands even on a low volume session that has the ability to impact millions of market participants.

In fact, aggregate NYSE trading volume has been trending downward over the last several months. Excluding some single-day anomalies of strength, the pervasive trend has been on the decline and stocks don’t seem to care.

Volume is a traditional metric that can help establish the credibility of a move within an individual stock or index. It also provides an indicator of liquidity for buyers and sellers that are exchanging shares in real time. Conventional wisdom is that higher volume indicates the majority of participants believe in the move. Conversely, a low volume move in a stock may indicate a weaker consensus that is viewed with skepticism.

However, at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is price. Volume certainly doesn’t contribute to the total return in your account other than to aid in efficient executions of trades. Looking at various technical or fundamental technical indicators can help build a case for why you are investing in a specific area of the market, but it won’t tell you the ultimate outcome.

Continue reading the story at ETFDailynews.com

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(Bloomberg) — Citigroup Inc., the third-biggest U.S. brokerdealer, told regulators they could steer more stock trading to public exchanges by making it more affordable.

The bank suggested the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cut the highest amount that can be levied to trade by at least two-thirds, according to a letter from Daniel Keegan, head of Americas equities at Citigroup. Most exchanges charge the maximum, 30 cents per 100 shares, leading traders to favor lower-cost dark pools, he wrote. His statement aligns Citigroup, which runs alternative trading platforms, with two of the biggest exchange operators.

Citi’s Daniel Keegan

As part of a rule change that took effect in 2007, the SEC “somewhat arbitrarily established a cap on access fees that can be charged to access liquidity on exchanges,” Keegan wrote in an Aug. 7 letter posted on the regulator’s website. “This cap should be revisited in light of today’s market economics.”

More than 15 percent of U.S. equity volume takes place on dark pools, according to Tabb Group LLC. NYSE Group Inc. and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., two of the three big U.S. stock exchange owners, have both advocated regulatory measures to lure trading off the systems. Accusations of wrongdoing on the private systems have intensified this year amid Michael Lewis’s “Flash Boys” and a probe by New York’s attorney general, who alleged Barclays Plc misled its dark-pool clients.

Dark pools proliferated in the past decade as brokers sought to reduce the amount of money they pay the NYSE and Nasdaq Stock Market. Instead of giving exchanges trading fees, brokers could match buyers and sellers on their own systems.

The SEC’s Regulation NMS, which took effect in 2007, helped solidify that business model by allowing stock trades to occur on whatever market had the best price at a given time, be it public or private. Reg NMS also set the maximum exchange access fee at 30 cents per 100 shares, also known as 30 mils.

Citigroup’s LavaFlow Inc. division runs the 10th-biggest alternative trading system for U.S. stocks and charges 28 mils for shares priced above $1. It’s an electronic communication network, not a dark pool, meaning more data about trading is publicly available.

Citigroup’s suggestion of reducing the access-fee cap to 10 mils or lower could also restrain rebates that exchanges pay traders who facilitate transactions, a practice known as maker- taker that has been attacked by lawmakers and critics such as IEX Group Inc. and the chief executive officer of NYSE’s owner, Intercontinental Exchange Inc.

Rewarding Brokers

Stock markets use fees from traders to reward brokers who send them orders, a model some academics and money managers such as Invesco Ltd. and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. say creates a conflict of interest. Last month, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, told the SEC it should abolish the payments to improve confidence in U.S. stock markets.

Jeffrey Sprecher, the CEO of ICE, said during a recent congressional roundtable that exchange access fees should be reduced. His company, as well as Nasdaq, have endorsed a proposal called the trade-at rule, which would keep stock trades off dark pools unless those venues improved upon prices available on exchanges.

Nasdaq, operator of the largest exchange by volume, generated $1.1 billion in revenue from U.S. equities transactions in 2013 and gave out $743 million in rebates, according to an SEC filing. The comparable figures at NYSE Euronext, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange that ICE bought in November 2013, were $1.06 billion and $796 million, respectively, in 2012.

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Moribund financial services exchange traded funds got some much-needed good news Wednesday when Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) announced the Federal Reserve granted it permission to raise its dividend to common stockholders for the first time in seven years.

BofA said it will pay a quarterly dividend of 5 cents per share up from the paltry penny a share it had been paying since early 2009. Today’s news removes some of the embarrassment suffered by the bank in April when it said it would be forced to suspend its planned $4 billion share repurchase plan and its previously announced dividend increase due to a calculation error related to the company’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch during the financial crisis.

The BofA dividend news sent shares of the Financial Select Sector SPDR (NYSEArca: XLF), the largest U.S. sector ETF, up 0.6% while the iShares U.S. Financials ETF (NYSEArca: IYF) added 0.55%. XLF and IYF have BofA weights of 5.76% and 4.41%, respectively.

BofA’s dividend news comes at a critical time for financial services. Entering Wednesday, IYF had tumbled 3.3% over the past month, highlighting the 2014 struggles of the financial services group, the second-largest sector weight in the S&P 500. Of the nine sector SPDR ETFs, only the Industrial Select Sector SPDR (NYSEArca: XLI) and the Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR (NYSEArca: XLY) have been worse than XLF this year. [Industrial ETFs are Sagging]

Although BofA did not seek approval for a share repurchase program in its latest round of discussions with the Fed, the new dividend more than quadruples the stock’s dividend yield to 1.3% from 0.26%. Rivals Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) have an average dividend yield of 2.7%.

A higher dividend from BofA could stoke institutional buying of the stock and possibly stem the tide of outflows from some financial services ETFs. [Charts for Bank ETFs are Getting Nasty]

For the entire story from ETFTrends.com, please click on this link.

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Duncan Niederauer, the chief executive of NYSE Group, is stepping down sooner than expected after selling the company to Intercontinental Exchange Group.

The “rapid integration” of the two companies will speed up Niederauer’s retirement, according to a statement on Thursday.

The 55-year-old Niederauer, who has served as CEO of NYSE since 2007, will continue as president of ICE until August.Thomas Farley, the chief operating officer of NYSE, will succeed Niederauer, taking the title of president of NYSE.

Niederauer agreed to sell New York Stock Exchange to the derivatives-centric ICE in an $11 billion deal that closed late last year.

As the long-time boss of the Big Board, he oversaw the exchange during a disruptive time when high-speed computers replaced human traders on Wall Street.

The deal to sell the NYSE to ICE was also driven by big changes roiling the markets, reflecting the growing importance of derivatives and the diminishing influence of the Big Board.

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