Trevor Kitchen v. CFTC

── Trevor Kitchen v. CFTC ── Court: Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Date: June 05, 2026 Category: General United States Court of Appeals FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT Argued February 11, 2026 Decided June 5, 2026 No. 25-1098 TREVOR KITCHEN, APPELLANT v. COMMODITY FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION, APPELLEE Appeal of an Order of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission F. Franklin Amanat argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant. Raagnee Beri, Senior Assistant General Counsel, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, argued the cause for appellee. With her on the brief was Anne W. Stukes, Senior Assistant General Counsel. Before: HENDERSON, CHILDS and GARCIA, Circuit Judges. Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge HENDERSON.  2 KAREN LECRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge: Trevor Kitchen (Kitchen) appeals the final orders of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC or Commission) denying his application for a whistleblower award. His application relates to five successful enforcement actions the Commission brought against banks whose traders manipulated benchmark rates in the foreign currency exchange market. Kitchen alleges the Commission’s denial of his application was arbitrary and capricious but, contrary to his allegation, the enforcement actions were not based on conduct about which he provided specific, credible and timely information. See 17 C.F.R. § 165.2(i)(1). In addition, there is no evidence he was the original source of information on which the Commission did rely. See id. § 165.2(l). Accordingly, we affirm the orders. I. Background Kitchen traded within the foreign currency exchange (FX) market for many years. The FX market enables traders “to buy, sell, exchange and speculate on currencies.” Record on Appeal (ROA) 965. Traders aim to profit by forecasting which currencies will increase or decrease in relative value. The most common type of FX instrument is “spot” trading, which involves “immediate delivery of and payment for the product.” CFTC, Futures Glossary, https://www.cftc.gov/ LearnAndProtect/AdvisoriesAndArticles/CFTCGlossary/inde x.htm [https://perma.cc/88QV-R9ZF] (last visited Apr. 28, 2026). The exchange rate at any given moment is the “spot price.” Id. In addition to setting the rate for real-time transactions, spot prices are used to determine (or “fix”) “benchmarks” on which traders base the valuation of other instruments in the FX market. Benchmarks are based on an evaluation of spot prices over a set period of time (the “fix period”). ROA 966. For the most  3 popular currencies—including the U.S. dollar (USD) and pound sterling (GBP)—benchmarks are issued every half-hour as “the median of all trades in a minute-long period starting 30 seconds before the beginning of each half-hour.” ROA 1134. For less popular currencies, the rates are issued every hour using a similar process. The World Market/Reuters Closing Spot Rates (WM/R Rates) are some of the most popular benchmarks. WM/R Rates are based primarily on data from platforms that large banks use to execute their FX instruments. In re Foreign Exch. Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litig., 74 F. Supp. 3d 581, 587 (S.D.N.Y. 2015). The most frequently referenced WM/R Rate is the one set at 4:00 p.m. London time (“4 p.m. WM/R fix”). From 2008 to 2011, Kitchen used an FX trading platform operated by the Oanda Corporation (Oanda) to conduct his transactions. Through his account, Kitchen traded the USD, GBP and euro (EUR) against the Swiss franc (CHF) thousands of times. In August 2011, Kitchen allegedly “observed a precipitous drop in the values of the GBP, USD, and EUR[] . . . relative to the CHF” and thought “that the size of the drop in the affected currencies could only have been the result of collusion among market makers.” RO