In a recent speech, Caroline Pham, acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), discussed how the agency is promoting regulatory policy and approaching innovation and market structure.
The CFTC has submitted its 2025 Spring Unified Regulatory Agenda and will highlight a few items. In accordance with Executive Order 13771, Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs, Pham identified the following rulemaking initiatives to provide regulatory certainty, eliminate unnecessary cost burdens, and unleash a golden age for markets.
These include:
- Improving the SEF “Made Available to Trade” (MAT) process for swaps
- Expanding access to markets for insured depository institutions by broadening the scope of products excluded from the swap dealer de minimis threshold calculation
- Expanding access to markets by no longer requiring associated person registration for personnel of introducing brokers that only refer swaps to a wholly owned affiliate de minimis dealer
- Codifying foreign exchange product interpretation that window FX forwards and package spot FX transactions are not FX swaps
- Codifying no-action relief from both the pre-trade mid-market mark disclosure requirement and certain documentation requirements for cleared swaps and prime brokerage transactions for swap dealers
- Codifying no-action relief from the clearing requirement for legacy swaps resulting from multilateral portfolio compression exercises
- Codifying no-action relief from ownership and control reporting under Parts 17, 18, and 20 of CFTC regulations
- Codifying no-action relief for DCMs and DCOs from duplicative reporting of fully collateralized binary options to swap data repositories (SDRs) under Parts 43 and 45 of CFTC regulations
- Sunsetting duplicative and burdensome Part 20 large trader reporting obligations for physical commodity swaps, as required under Regulation 20.9
- Eliminating the burdensome and costly cotton-on-call reporting requirements and related CFTC Cotton-on-Call Report
These items have been longstanding issues regarding CFTC regulatory overreach and administrative burden, some for over a decade.
On 24/7 Trading, she noted that many of the main issues raised by 24/7 trading and clearing that will need to be addressed are already clear. No changes to CFTC regulations are necessary to enable 24/7 trading, which recently went live on Coinbase Derivatives (a DCM) and Nodal Clear (a DCO) in May 2025.
Nonetheless, because of the broader implications for market structure, the CFTC issued a request for comment in April 2025 on the uses, benefits, and risks of derivatives trading and clearing on a 24/7 (or almost 24/7) basis. CFTC staff are currently evaluating the responses.
Pham discussed the operational challenges, as well as market conditions, liquidity risk and market risk, among some of the issues in 24/7 trading.
For direct Access and non-intermediated clearing, Pham noted that many of these same issues may also apply to non-intermediation in derivatives markets—providing direct access to market participants (particularly to retail traders) and clearing by CCPs of such direct access customers’ positions in individual accounts.
She discussed issues such as: auto-liquidation and tear-ups; Technology innovation; and customer protection.