Posts by Paul Rowady

About Paul Rowady

Paul Rowady is the Director of Research for Alphacution, a research and strategic advisory platform uniquely focused on modeling and benchmarking the impacts of technology on global financial markets and the businesses of trading and asset management. He is a 35-year veteran of the proprietary, quantitative and derivatives trading arenas.

Contact: feedback@alphacution.com

The Retail Flow Factor: Hiding in Plain Sight

In this introduction to the 17-page, 21-exhibit presentation – Part III of Alphacution’s case study on payment for order flow (PFOF) – we present our preliminary development of the “retail flow factor” for 2020 based largely on a reconciliation of 606 data (from 10 retail brokers / 11 entities) and 605 data (from 7 wholesale market makers). The results include estimated monthly penetration of retail order flow relative to the full U.S. cash equities market for 2020 – including estimated...

Alphacution Publishes Payment For Order Flow 2020 – Part II: Broker Personas

In Part I of Alphacution’s case study on payment for order flow (PFOF), we focused mainly on the rates paid by wholesale market makers to retail brokers under a full range of securities categories and order type scenarios. In this 22-page, 20-exhibit deck, Alphacution presents PART II of its upcoming comprehensive case study, The Robinhood Effect, with a focus on a concept called broker personas. Alphacution’s working hypothesis on this topic is that each retail broker – in fact, all...

XTX Enters The Dark

Expanding its footprint in US equities, XTX Markets drops its first 605 report for March 2021. Alphacution uses this event to make some comparisons and offer some interpretations about the evolving US equity market structure...

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...