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

MEMX Is Different

"Price improvement" and other execution quality metrics are typically used to justify payments for order flow (PFOF) in the US when many other jurisdictions have banned it. However, it turns out, all market centers - including public exchanges - provide price improvement to one degree or another. In a twist of contextual development, in this Feed post, Alphacution shows how the execution quality metrics for Members Exchange (MEMX) are uniquely supportive of the strategic objectives of wholesale market makers. Of...
By Paul Rowady | May 22, 2026 | Premium Subscribers
Read More →

Jane Street Is Different (formerly Make Jane Street Famous – MJSF)

The news is out: Jane Street Group delivered a Wall Street record $39.6 billion in trading revenue for 2025, exceeding JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citadel Securities, and others. It's a very big number. So big, in fact, that it pisses many people off and effectively places a target on their back. That's because Jane Street is doing something unique. How unique? Beyond its recently published case study, "How Jane Street Generates Alpha," Alphacution adds to the analysis here with a comparison...
By Paul Rowady | April 26, 2026 | Premium Subscribers
Read More →

Liquidity Provider Rankings by Price Improvement

Under most circumstances, talk of price improvement is no different than gaslighting. That's because in the context of retail order flows, "price improvement" ultimately benefits wholesale market makers and not retail investors. It's only in the context of institutional order flows that price improvement benefits both the investor and the market maker. In this Feed post, Alphacution updates modeling on a selection of 22 leading market centers - including wholesalers (like Citadel Securities and Jane Street Capital), exchanges (like NASDAQ...
By Paul Rowady | April 21, 2026 | Premium Subscribers
Read More →

Overnight Trading Heats Up – Pt. I

"24/5" trading is happening. New players are emerging. Established players are taking advantage of new opportunities. Infrastructure providers are figuring out how to make it all work properly. It's a bizarre and exciting time in capital markets. Undoubtedly, overnight trading will be an ongoing topic here at Alphacution. This installment uses data from Interactive Brokers to provide some incremental insight on the progress of trading during the wee hours...
By Paul Rowady | April 8, 2026 | Premium Subscribers
Read More →

DV Trading: Entering With a Splash…

Founded in 2006, and achieving independence in 2016, DV Trading has been around for years, mainly in futures markets. And yet, Alphacution is just now discovering evidence of this group's expansion into US equities and equity options. Resembling a pattern in much of our research, this is a story within a larger story...
By Paul Rowady | April 6, 2026 | Premium Subscribers
Read More →

Peak Retail Trading

Uniquely, Alphacution has used this top-down metric over the past few years to monitor relative engagement between retail order flows and institutional order flows in US equities. The latest readings show that retail engagement recently surpassed a former milestone...
By Paul Rowady | March 29, 2026 | Premium Subscribers
Read More →

SIG, CitSec, Jane St: Strategy Footprints

This slate of charts didn't make it into the recently published case study, "How Jane Street Generates Alpha." But, they're incremental to the story because they provide incremental insight and context for the three largest US equity (and equity option) market makers, Susquehanna Securities (a key SIG affiliate), Citadel Securities, and key affiliates of Jane Street Group...
By Paul Rowady | March 27, 2026 | Premium Subscribers
Read More →
Receive updates on Alphacution's latest research.