For Subscribers

Hudson River Trading Advertises Next Move

In a rare example of public messaging, HFT and dark liquidity specialist, Hudson River Trading, overtly signals its move into the land of PFOF and price improvement. Independently, Tower Research Capital adds a clue that's related to the story. Here's why...

By Paul Rowady | July 14, 2021 | For Subscribers

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Robinhood IPO: An Elaborate Card Counting Assistance Platform (Updated)

On a lazy Thursday afternoon leading up to the US 4th of July holiday weekend, Robinhood unveils its IPO (S-1) document to the world. Here are some early highlights and analysis that can only be found at Alphacution...

By Paul Rowady | July 1, 2021 | For Subscribers

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The Retail Option Flow Factor: Hiding in Plain Sight

Similar to its early development of a retail stock flow factor, Alphacution turns its attention to measuring retail participation in options. As expected, the early visuals are illuminating...

By Paul Rowady | June 29, 2021 | For Subscribers

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Jane Street’s Machine

Bloomberg's Tom Maloney recently shed some light on Jane Street's jaw-dropping revenue figure for the 12 months ending March 2021. Here, Alphacution circles back to provide a kaleidoscopic view of what that success looks like from a trading strategy perspective...

By Paul Rowady | June 23, 2021 | For Subscribers

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Information Waves and Timing: A Master Class By Jim Simons

Using our ecosystem framework as a guide, this is Alphacution's mechanical interpretation of how Jim Simons and the RenTec team gains a persistent edge on the competition; a master class of sorts that may be useful to your trading strategy development, as well...

By Paul Rowady | June 16, 2021 | For Subscribers

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Optiver vs. IMC: Battle of Amsterdam’s Option Powerhouses

The missing data finally showed up, and that led us to this comparison of Optiver US and IMC Financial Markets through year-end 2020...

By Paul Rowady | June 8, 2021 | For Subscribers

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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...

By Paul Rowady | June 3, 2021 | For Subscribers

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Fix the Spread! A Comparison of Price Improvement by Wholesale Market Makers

Alphacution expands upon an outstanding analysis by BestEx Research on PFOF with additional context on price improvement by leading wholesale market makers.

By Paul Rowady | May 26, 2021 | For Subscribers

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WorldQuant Gets Unruly About Memes

Inspired by reading Igor Tulchinsky's books - albeit a couple years late - Alphacution digs into some modeling to uncover a real world application of The UnRules...

By Paul Rowady | May 19, 2021 | For Subscribers

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IMC Financial Markets: You Win Some, You Lose Some

Options powerhouse IMC Financial Markets scores some recent wins and, apparently, some losses, too. Alphacution shares its evidence...

By Paul Rowady | May 17, 2021 | For Subscribers

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