CME Group imposes fines and temporarily suspends traders for prohibited disruptive practices

The international derivatives trading platform CME Group has fined and suspended Benjamin Roth for alleged violations of stock exchange rules.

Pursuant to a settlement offer in which Benjamin Roth neither admitted nor denied the rule violations or findings of fact on which the penalty is based, a panel of the Business Conduct Committee of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) found on June 26, 2024 that between January 3, 2023, and February 2, 2023, Roth placed orders on multiple occasions in the March 2023 E-Mini S&P 500 futures and March 2023 Australian dollar futures markets with the intent to cancel those orders at the time of order entry prior to execution or to modify the orders in a manner that avoided execution.

Specifically, Roth entered a larger order on one side of the market and then canceled that order after his smaller remaining order was executed on the other side of the order book. The resulting profit for Roth was $20,825.

The panel concluded that Roth violated CME Rule 575.A for the reasons stated above.

Under the settlement offer, the panel ordered Roth to pay a fine of $20,000 and disgorgement of $20,825, and to be barred from accessing any trading venue owned or controlled by CME Group and from directly or indirectly accessing any specified contract market, derivatives clearing organization, or swap execution facility owned or controlled by CME Group for 40 business days from the effective date (June 28, 2024) through August 23, 2024.