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In this 193-page, 272-exhibit, 30,800-word case study, “The Robinhood Effect,” Alphacution brings together data and modeling from 25 entities - 11 retail brokers and 14 wholesale market makers - to explain a new phenomenon that now lives at the center of the US capital markets ecosystem. Alphacution's most ambitious research project to date, this report covers the governing liquidity economics framework that defines PFOF rates, the mechanics of Robinhood's aggressive retail brokerage model, the transformation of the retail brokerage industry, the sophisticated strategy architectures of wholesale market makers, and the "retail flow factors" that impact all market actors in the ecosystem - among many other themes and avenues for future research. An executive summary is available for review and download by open subscribers (w/ free registration). The complete case study is available to premium subscribers or via individual report purchase.

In this 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 breakdowns of odd lots and round lots - as well as some hints on where we will need to look next to further refine this factor in preparation for extending this analysis throughout 2021 and beyond...

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 order flow intermediaries – have a unique persona. This persona – a unique pattern formed by order type distributions – is a distillation of client trading behaviors. In this presentation, Alphacution demonstrates that broker personas are partly due to investor demographics and, more interestingly, partly due to broker influence. Furthermore, when we broaden our perspective to consider that retail brokers are now compensated for trade flows largely by their wholesaler counterparts, we see a clearer picture of how desired outcomes could be manufactured...

2020 will be remembered for many reasons. In the context of Alphacution’s ongoing research focus, we want to remember 2020 as the first full year of enhanced transparency into the mechanics and impacts of the long-held practice of payment for order flow (PFOF). It turns out, enhanced use of PFOF as the linchpin in a new zero-commission brokerage framework for retail investors (pioneered by Robinhood) sets a series of dominoes in motion that ultimately influence, to some degree, all stakeholders and all products in US listed markets. The question now is: To what end? In this 23-page, 20-exhibit deck, Alphacution presents PART I of its upcoming comprehensive case study, The Robinhood Effect, with a focus on order routing rate heatmaps.

In this 91-page, 102-exhibit case study, “The Rise of Hudson River Trading,” Alphacution adds another leading proprietary trading firm - and recent entrant to the $1 billion+ trading revenue club (2020e) - to its library focused on the most secretive and consequential players in the global markets ecosystem. Notable highlights include the history of Sun Trading and the impacts of its acquisition by Hudson River Trading (HRT) in Q1 2018, and explorations into the firm's European trading operations, US equity and equity option strategies, comparative analysis with select competitors, and revenue estimation, among many other details. An executive summary is available for review and download by open subscribers (w/ free registration). The complete case study is available to premium subscribers or via individual report purchase.

In this 125-page, 149-exhibit, 26,000-word case study, “History of Jane Street,” Alphacution sets a new bar for the scope of a case study focused one of the leading proprietary trading and market making firms in the world, with notable expansions relative to prior cases studies into regional, US option strategy, revenue estimation, and comparative analysis details (including Citadel Securities, Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and affiliates, and Two Sigma Investments and affiliates). The complete case study is available to premium subscribers or via individual report purchase.

In this 51-page, 61-exhibit case study on one of the most successful quantitative trading firms launched since the dawn of the 21st century – Two Sigma Investments, LP – Alphacution presents the next in its series of unprecedented reports based on its modeling of many of the most mythological players and impactful themes operating within the current global asset management ecosystem. Of particular note, this report includes a groundbreaking comparative analysis of key strategy parameters between Two Sigma and D. E. Shaw, with additional analytical comparisons that include Millennium Management and Renaissance Technologies; together a grouping of the most revolutionary asset managers in the large-scale quantitative domain. The complete case study is available to premium subscribers or via individual report purchase.

In this 55-page, 64-exhibit case study on one of the most legendary proprietary option trading firms of all time – Susquehanna International Group, LLP – Alphacution publishes the next installment in its unprecedented Hiding in Plain Sight series that leverages an assembly of publicly-available data and a growing library of models based on some of the most impactful market participants in the global asset management ecosystem today. The complete case study is available to premium subscribers or via individual report purchase.

In this 55-page, 45-exhibit case study on market making powerhouse, Citadel Securities, Alphacution continues to expand its unprecedented Hiding in Plain Sight series to explore the unique trading engines and business strategies of the most successful, noteworthy – and mythological – asset managers in the world by presenting its latest storyboard based an assembly of data that lies open to the public. The complete case study is available to premium subscribers or via individual report purchase.