We are now well past a year since MF Global‘s collapse seriously damaged the futures industry and now trekking toward six months since the Peregrine Financial Group went down in flames, taking more customer money with it.

Since November, after spending four months putting together solutions to those problems with our Restoring Customer Confidence video series, there’s been a small amount of industry action on what is arguably among the biggest threats to the futures industry’s growth – the lack of customer faith in the marketplace.

It’s been the era of the four “L’s” – low volume, low volatility, low interest rates and lots of regulation. That combination has been hit by the other L – lack of customer faith in these markets. What is sad and frustrating about the issue is that so little of it is talked about. Just one panel at the FIA Expo was devoted to it – “Moving Toward a New Customer Protection Regime.” And just days before the conference, NFA and AlphaMetrix announced a deal that will allow AlphaMetrix to provide the electronic confirmation system for the CME and NFA. A good start but since then, not much to discuss.

December 26, 2012:  We’re back after a short Christmas holiday. Today’s issue features a number of predictable prediction stories for 2013, including one from former IMF economist Simon Johnson and another from Forbes.  There is also a  break though in the bankruptcy case for MF Global customers as trustees announced a major settlement.  Also, if you missed it yesterday, take a look at the ongoing Restoring Customer Confidence series with James Gellert, who talks about rating FCMs, and our Allan Schoenberg video interview, as he explains how CME Group increasingly utilizes social media as a content distribution platform to discuss market issues with customers, partners and other stakeholders.

Wet and bruised but unbroken in the hurricane’s wake, the USA’s east coast and its financial centers prepare to clean up and return to normal operation. Moscow’s financial markets, the recipient of both fascinated appraisal and ridicule from the outside, is gradually making progress on becoming a legitimate center for trade. Last year’s house of horrors MF Global is still haunting investors, and little progress has been made on finding the people responsible for moving around the money, much less the stuffed zombies.

Fund managers and regulators are displeased with US exchanges over certain order types that they say creates an unfair disadvantage for their clients. Platform operator Tradeweb launches a new service that provides multiple price quotes for ETF products to traders. NYSE Euronext chief Duncan Niederauer wants a complete review and overhaul of the structure of US financial markets, believing that the system as a whole has become too complex to serve its essential functions.

As the evaluation process begins for CME Group’s new European exchange, the company reveals that it intends to open its doors with 30 forex products on its shelf for trading. While many exchanges look to reduce or eliminate person-to-person floor trading in favor of electronic processing, the London Metal Exchange is actually considering expanding its traditional transaction form.  Nasdaq OMX Group, which is also looking to establish a new London-based trading platform, declares that they want to see at least a ten percent market share by the end of the first year of that platform’s operation.

Brian Fox, founder and chief marketing officer of Confirmation.com, found his firm in the midst of one of the largest frauds in futures history several months ago. Hired by the National Futures Association to electronically confirm customer account balances that futures brokers report with the actual balances held at their banks, Confirmation.com helped expose the PFGBest fraud. Brian Fox spoke with John Lothian News editor-in-chief Jim Kharouf about the case, how the confirmation system works and just how far electronic confirmations in the futures brokerage space can go to prevent fraud.

Watch at MarketsWiki.tv.

CME Group steps up to go head to head with HKEx as it announces new offshore renminbi futures products.  Canada’s RBC sells a world-first box of publicly traded, USD-denominated covered bonds.  Australia’s APRA regulator may be given additional power to install new management at banks and other financial institutions when it believes that failure may be imminent.  And in today’s First Read, John Lothian finally announces his retirement… of a sort.

Bats Chi-X Europe is asking to be licensed as an official exchange, seeking to turn up the heat on rivals in London.  CME Group is giving ex-clients of failed brokerage MF Global a second chance to file claims against property owned by the dead company.  EEX got the nod to sell EU emission credits, but a Barclays analyst is skeptical of how much of a dent the exchange can make in rival ICE Futures Europe’s futures volume.

Switzerland’s financial regulators shift closer to a US perspective, and plan to exert more control over private derivatives trading.  A multi-market data link receives regulatory approval in Asia, setting the Asean connection on a path to go live in September.  In the latest chapter of the thriller, “Who Sneakily Sent Money to Iran?” prosecutors believe that Chinese banks may have also been involved.  In today’s First Read, you’ll hear about the upcoming annual Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Partners charity day; and former JLN summer intern Stephen Hurst considers the cloudy skies facing aspiring bankers and financial workers.