As a continuation of Part I, this Part II represents a deeper dive into Alphacution's latest analysis of the US affiliate of legendary, Amsterdam-based derivatives trader, Optiver - including comparisons with the other legendary, Amsterdam-based derivatives trader, IMC Financial Markets...
Bloomberg's recent exposé on legendary Amsterdam-based derivatives trader, Optiver, is heavy on gloss and sabre rattling - against market leaders like Citadel Securities, Jane Street, and Susquehanna International Group - and light on strategic and competitive analysis. In Part I of this Feed post, Alphacution begins to fill that gap with data, context, and perspective...
Retail engagement in US equity options is directly having an outsized impact on US capital markets and indirectly on global market sentiment. Alphacution presents its latest charts on the topic, including clues related to the growth of international retail trading in the US equity market...
From a Jane Street perspective, Alphacution asks a different question to showcase the recent acquisition of Morgan Stanley's option market making unit by Citadel Securities...
In this 118-page, 145-exhibit case study – “US Equity Market Macrostructure Evolution: The Temple of Financial Fantasy” – Alphacution presents its case for how the adoption of technology by a subset of leading proprietary trading firms have leveraged the regulatory framework over the past 20 years to permanently alter and distort the US equity market to the point of a farcical rivalry between two separate and distinct “stock markets” that are animated by two competing realities. The first reality is represented by a mob of self-directed retail traders with a lot of time and very few assets, and the second reality is represented by an increasingly complacent institutional asset management industry with nearly all the assets. Today, institutional asset managers are trapped by their own complacency – and the clock is ticking… To tell this incredible story, Alphacution will present its updated framework, new modeling, and never-seen-before measurements for the evolving symbiosis between risk managers, risk strategies, and asset flows within the US equity market ecosystem over a span of the past 12 years, beginning late 2013…
In Alphacution's upcoming case study, "US Equity Market Macrostructure Evolution: The Temple of Financial Fantasies," we expose patterns discovered by modeling the entire 13F dataset over a period of nearly 12 years. It turns out that there are significant concentrations of reporting managers at the intersection of certain metrics that we've mined from that dataset. This suggests that there are significant concentrations of similar strategies. Alphacution presents a teaser for its findings...
Oddly enough, April 2025 was a month of significant achievements for the 47-year old brokerage, Interactive Brokers. Alphacution presents its review of the key metrics...
Alphacution continues its analysis of US equity liquidity factors contextualized against the backdrop of foreign holdings of US securities - which is further contextualized against the backdrop of the composition and expected growth of the US national debt - and all of which is set against the backdrop of the "Trump Trade War." Meanwhile, as the key financial spokesman for the Trump administration, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears to have consciously adopted one of recent history's most colorful roles; that of "Baghdad Bob."
Alphacution continues its analysis of US equity liquidity factors contextualized against the backdrop of foreign holdings of US securities - which is further contextualized against the backdrop of the composition and expected growth of the US national debt - and all of which is set against the backdrop of the "Trump Trade War." Meanwhile, as the key financial spokesman for the Trump administration, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears to have consciously adopted one of recent history's most colorful roles; that of "Baghdad Bob."
In keeping with its current focus on the evolution of US equity market macrostructure, Alphacution presents its estimate for foreign (non-US) holdings of US equities by domicile for year-end 2024. As if right on cue, Bloomberg published similar estimates by Goldman Sachs this morning. In this Feed post, find out 1) how close Alphacution's estimate is to GS, and 2) what both estimates likely mean for US equities in the current era...
