Simplex Trading

Alphacution Publishes “Simplex Trading, Unadjusted”

In this 67-page, 64-exhibit chart book, “Simplex Trading, Unadjusted,” Alphacution borrows the spotlight from the record-setting volumes in the US options market for 2021 and focuses it in on one of the key – yet, relatively little known – players in the space: option market maker, Simplex Trading, LLC. Taking some of its recent modeling upgrades for an initial spin, Alphacution performs its unique brand of visual display on public regulatory data to present what is likely to be an unprecedented review of such a secretive player operating in such a complex arena like Simplex.

By |2022-01-04T23:09:08-05:00December 31st, 2021|For Subscribers|
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It’s 13F Season Again. Simplex Trading Goes First

In a world of ultra-fierce competition among proprietary traders, it has become increasingly challenging for newer, smaller players to succeed. We have been keeping a close eye on two players who appear to be bucking this trend above the rest. One of them is option market maker, Simplex Trading. In this Feed post, Alphacution showcases the latest 13F reporting to test for signals of Simplex's ongoing success...

By |2021-04-28T00:56:38-04:00April 28th, 2021|For Subscribers|
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Cutler Group’s Book: Hiding in Plain Sight

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.”T. S. Eliot As we were riffing along with our recent Feed post on HAP Trading, I would've sworn than I had already shared a few words on another unique player from the option market making corner of the world, San Francisco-based Cutler Group, LP. Turns out, I had not... With the upcoming publication of a deep-dive case study on Hudson River Trading imminent, Alphacution is going to spend much of the first part of 2021 in option land, cranking out its first multi-player comparative case study on option market makers. So, I don't want to burn too much dry powder here. However, I do want have a standalone post on Cutler in the archives as reference for those who don't yet have access to the case study content... Anyway, in the charts that follow, Alphacution presents a few of its most basic analytics from its modeling of 13F data related to Cutler, with comparison [...]

By |2021-01-04T15:34:43-05:00December 30th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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Simplex Trading: Against the Odds

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”Henry Ford On occasion, we have framed the world's leading proprietary trading firms with the following graphic: And, as many of you know, this is the terrain upon which we have focused a notable component of our attention to date - and likely where we will place a disproportionate share of our attention going forward. This is partly due to the fact that this group bears out-sized responsibility for a quiet cascade of impacts throughout the global markets ecosystem, and partly because there are so few others that have managed to marry such scale with such creativity. This dynamic is made more notable by the idea that winner-take-all market dynamics that tend to reinforce an "incumbency of incumbents" make such an ascension less likely than the previous unlikeliness from all the yesterdays before... That said, based on our ongoing surveillance of the broader landscape, there are always exceptions. If you watch [...]

By |2020-10-16T23:50:57-04:00October 16th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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Ranking of Select US Option Market Makers

"The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics." - Galileo Galilei As we prepare to turn the page on a new year, and consider what we may want to accomplish during that year, derivatives are on the priority list. Why? Options are important for many reasons from risk management to computational rigor and signal generation. And, if you had been paying close enough attention over the course of this year, you might have noticed that each of our case studies have touched, in one way or another, on options. Now, given that Alphacution is committed to its research providing new pictures to ponder, I wanted to drop the following chart on you with little additional commentary for this go 'round - except to say that the plan right now is to dedicate a full case study to the key players in options trading during 2020. Stay tuned... Until next time...

By |2020-08-17T07:14:02-04:00December 5th, 2019|For Subscribers|
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