Sun Trading

Case Study: The Rise of Hudson River Trading (Executive Summary)

"In playing ball, and in life, a person occasionally gets the opportunity to do something great. When that time comes, only two things matter: being prepared to seize the moment and having the courage to take your best swing."Hank Aaron ** The executive summary for Alphacution case study, "The Rise of Hudson River Trading," is also available for free download (with registration) in our Reports Library ** Introduction As if on cue, and apropos of the times, a tweet by Joe Gawronski, President of Rosenblatt Securities states that December 24, 2020 marked the first time ever that off-exchange trading represented the majority of US equity volume (50.38%): Rewinding from there to a Reuters article dated January 16, 2018 entitled “Hudson River Trading to buy rival HFT firm Sun Trading,” HRT’s co-founder and director, Jason Carroll, said in a statement, “This acquisition combines HRT’s expertise in on-exchange trading with Sun’s expertise in off-exchange trading creating a stronger, more diverse firm.” What happens between these two points in time is no accident. [...]

By |2021-02-11T19:16:45-05:00January 24th, 2021|Open|

Virtu Financial: More Acquisitions on the Way, If…

When we launched our first trading program at Quantlab in the late 90's, we didn't have direct market access yet. We generated an order list (overnight) that was worked throughout the subsequent market session at the discretion of an algo-equipped executing broker; some of whom now roam the halls at Jefferies / Leucadia. This was the era when 1- to 3-day portfolio turnover was considered fast - SOES bandits were still a thing - and Schwab would soon acquire electronic trading pioneer, CyBerCorp, from Philip Berber - a short drive down the road from our Houston headquarters in Austin, TX. Of course, everyone had nicknames then - as I suspect they still do now. Ed Bosarge, founder of what eventually became Quantlab (after at least 3 prior related incarnations that began for me around 1996), was known as Dr. Evil. Let's just say it's a hair-raising story about a swashbuckling pioneer of applied math involving a hideous toupee... I was known as Mr. Bigglesworth - or, "Bigsy" for short. No [...]

By |2020-10-05T21:19:11-04:00March 27th, 2018|Open|