NON-MEMBER:
Ovid Valentin Jr.
CME RULE VIOLATIONS:
Rule 539. Prearranged, Pre-Negotiated and Noncompetitive Trades Prohibited (in part)
A. General Prohibition
No person shall prearrange or pre-negotiate any purchase or sale or noncompetitively execute any transaction…
FINDINGS:
Pursuant to an offer of settlement in which Ovid Valentin Jr. (“Valentin”) neither admitted nor denied the rule violations upon which the penalty is based, on March 16, 2017, a Panel of the CME Business Conduct Committee (“Panel”) found that on March 13, 2015, Valentin received nonpublic customer order information from a broker, including the side of the market and the size of the order in Eurodollar options on futures before the order was disclosed to the pit. After receiving the information, Valentin and the broker then devised an execution strategy whereby Valentin’s order would match opposite the broker’s customer order in the pit, thereby noncompetitively prearranging the execution of the customer order. The Panel concluded that Valentin thereby violated CME Rule 539.A.
PENALTY:
In accordance with the settlement offer, the Panel ordered Valentin to pay a fine of $35,000 and serve a 10 day suspension of access to any CME Group Inc. trading floor and of direct access to all electronic trading and clearing platforms owned or controlled by CME Group, Inc., including CME Globex. The suspension shall run from March 20, 2017, through March 29, 2017, inclusive.
EFFECTIVE DATE:
March 20, 2017