Learning Platform - "Trade Compliance & Surveillance"

Course: Marking the Close

About the online training programme

Marking the close concerns a form of market manipulation. It concerns the manipulation of reference prices, such as settlement prices, indices or markers, which are used as reference to settle contracts, like commodity supply agreements of financial instruments, such as cash settled derivatives. Manipulation of a reference price would imply that invoicing takes place on an incorrect price reference. Analogously, positions are valuated in an incorrect way. However, regulations which prohibit market abuse in financial markets aim to protect investors, while regulations which prohibit market abuse in commodity and energy markets aim to protect consumers.

Course contents

This series of courses covers the following videos:

1. Price positioning – Introduction
2. Price positioning – When and where?
3. Marking the close – Introduction
4. Settlement of commodity supply contacts
5. Settlement of derivatives contracts
6. Valuation of contracts
7. Markers
8. Marking references
9. Mistakes
10. Benchmarks
11. The LIBOR scandal
12. Conflicts of interest
13. Corporate policy
14. Example
15. Trigger
16. Choice market
17. Susupicious timing