Jump Trading to Regulators: Lit Markets Are Too Toxic For Us (UPDATED)
Alphacution provides an analysis of Jump Trading's recent announcement - via WSJ - that it intends to enter the equity wholesaling arena...
Summary of Robinhood’s Legal Woes
Today - February 26, 2021 - at 12:13pm ET - in what appears to be a well-managed front run of press collaboration, the Wall Street Journal published "Robinhood in Talks to Settle Finra Probes Into Options-Trading Practices, Outages" based on a filing that says the company is also being examined by the SEC, states. Here are the key parts of that filing - and then some...
Price Improvement: A Sacrificial Cost of the Trade
Alphacution provides numbers, pictures and rationale for "price improvement" - in the context of captive retail order flow - having an indelible function that is different than what you have been told by those who traffic in it...
Citadel Securities Picks Fight With SEC Over Crystal Ball
"If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product."The Social Dilemma In a rare display of miscalculation, Citadel may have overplayed its hand... Here's the setup: According to Bloomberg, "Citadel Securities LLC has sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the regulator’s approval of an order type introduced by stock-exchange operator IEX Group Inc." Approved by the SEC in August and launched on October 1, IEX's discretionary limit order type - or, "D-Limit" - is essentially a mechanism designed to protect liquidity providers from potential adverse selection by latency arbitrage strategies - otherwise known in less polite company as getting "picked off" on the basis of stale quotes. In a comment letter, dated April 23, 2020, Citadel Securities expresses its objection to IEX's proposal, in part, because it "will broadly and indiscriminately affect myriad liquidity takers, including retail and institutional investors as well as market makers in equities and related asset classes, such as ETFs, options, and futures." (Hold that thought for a minute...) Now, [...]
The Fourth Exchange
“Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.” – Sophocles With a geyser of attention-snatching news as our normal daily backdrop, one could easily be forgiven for missing a signal from a collection of recent market structure clues. Individually, most of these have been on the radar of those that follow capital markets closely. And then there are others that are much deeper down in the weeds. Taken together, however, they paint of picture of increasing levels of market complexity coupled with increasing dependencies on fewer dominant players. Here’s the evidence: By now, most of you know that the launch of Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), the launch of Members Exchange (MEMX), and the launch of MIAX Pearl equities exchange – all of which going live this month – bring the total number of US equities exchanges to 16. Now, considering that 33 alternative trading systems (ATSs) and at least another 12 internalizing broker-dealers (including wholesale market makers, single dealer platforms (SDPs) and central risk books) executed trades in NMS (national market system) stocks in 2019, US equity market fragmentation continues to [...]
The Evolving Value of 13F Reporting: Building a Macro-Structure Cockpit
“The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?” - Louise Bogan, poet and author After 40 years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on July 10, 2020 that it had proposed to amend Form 13F to update the reporting threshold for institutional investment managers and make other targeted changes. The proposal would "raise the reporting threshold to $3.5 billion, reflecting proportionally the same market value of U.S. equities that the current threshold - $100 million - represented in 1975, the time of the statutory directive." Furthermore, the new threshold is expected to "retain disclosure of over 90% of the dollar value of the holdings data currently reported while eliminating the Form 13F filing requirement and its attendant costs for the nearly 90% of filers that are smaller managers." Now, those of you who have been following Alphacution's work know that we have leveraged 13F data in ways that no one else has ever replicated, and therefore, has become [...]
@VirtuFinancial: Yes, There Are More Acquisitions on the Way!
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. - Albert Einstein On October 4, news broke on all the major market news outlets that - after feasting on a meal formerly known as KCG Holdings, Inc. (KCG) in 2017, which itself was a combo platter made up of GETCO and Knight Capital - Virtu Financial, Inc. (Virtu) was returning to the all-you-can-eat buffet to consider the total consumption of multinational agency brokerage and financial markets technology firm, Investment Technology Group, Inc. (ITG). Of course, this news generated a chuckle around here because it seemed that it was not too long ago that someone was predicting that this kind of pairing would make sense for Virtu - if conditions were such that they needed to bolt something else onto their expanded frame. Oh, wait a sec, that was us... To wit, from Alphacution's post "Virtu Financial: More Acquisitions on the Way, If..." (March 27, 2018): "One other notable move for significant growth for a firm [...]
Operational Clues: Asset Managers Shifting Strategies
You can track shifting asset class and/or strategy allocations over several years for a long list of asset managers, and then add it all up to arrive at a data-driven industry trend. Easier said than done. This is an extremely heavy lift without the aid of a database that has already aggregated such information - if at all. But, we think there is another way to generate such a signal that yields a similar conclusion (if you know how to read the tea leaves). Hint: As always, it still comes down to the people... That preamble aside for the moment, we will spare you the geek-speak and give you the cart before the horse: In the exhibit below, based on US Securities and Exchange Commission Form ADV data for 181 large asset managers (w/ AUM >$10 billion) over the 5 years ending March 2017, Alphacution's newest analytic - assets under management per employee, or AUM/e - indicates, upon calculation of total weighted average AUM/e for all reporting funds per period, that strategy trade durations have been lengthening. Translation: On average, asset [...]
