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Parplus Impersonates LTCM, Drags Ronin Down

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe   With a name like Parplus, it's difficult not to take the bait. Not quite as fruitful as Lev Parnas' company, Fraud Guarantee, but ripe nonetheless, given the circumstances... For instance, we may never know if the advice - as recounted by Carl Spackler - of the Dalai Lama ever entered Jim Carney's mind: Gunga galunga. And, we may never know for sure whether the Parplus crew received total consciousness as the reality of the situation became clear. In fact, we may never know - as the Arnold Palmer story goes - what par actually was for this hole... But, one thing's for sure: It all happened fast... Here's the setup: Seeking to satisfy some of the hunger for yield enhancement solutions (and, ideally, some downside protection) - typically offered of late in the form of structured notes, "smart beta" products, and other clever overlay strategies - Parplus Partners was established [...]

By |2020-08-17T07:14:01-04:00March 30th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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ABN AMRO Clearing: Source of $200 Million Mystery Loss Revealed

“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever." - Steve Jobs   In an article published today (March 26) by Risk.net based on a statement also released today from ABN AMRO (below), new details about the demise of Ronin Capital emerge - along with that of a "mysterious second default."  According to Risk.net, a spokesperson for ABN AMRO has repeatedly suggested Ronin was not the source - a US client - of the $200 million (net) loss. It's just a matter of time now before we learn of another potential victim of this latest volatility spike... ++++++ Update 9:59PM NYC: Well, that was fast! The source of $200 million loss revealed by Risk.net as New York-based Parplus Partners, an equity volatility hedge fund with close ties to Ronin... Until next time, stay safe out there...

By |2020-08-17T07:14:01-04:00March 26th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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Poof! Legendary Ronin Capital Disappears (UPDATED)

“If it be now, tis not to come, if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all." - Shakespeare: Hamlet Act 5, Scene 2   UPDATE HERE (3/26/2020) Last Friday, March 20, CNBC was first to report that "one of the CME’s direct clearing firms was unable to meet its capital requirements. The move forced the exchange to step in and invoke its emergency protocols to auction off the portfolios. Ronin Capital, based in Chicago, was confirmed to be the firm in question, according to sources. Additional sources said Ronin’s problems stemmed from positions in futures tied to the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX)." In concert with Alphacution's recent feed post, "Marketquake: The Volatility of Volatility," on unprecedented volatility levels that surpass that of the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) period, I wanted to assemble whatever we could on Ronin. A story not well known outside of Chicago prop trading circles, John S. Stafford, Jr. - the founder of [...]

By |2020-08-17T07:14:01-04:00March 25th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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Virtu’s Optionality? Some Good News…

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” - Friedrich Nietzsche “We adore chaos because we love to produce order.” ― M.C. Escher   One intangible cost of being the sole US publicly-traded market making firm is the required level of financial and operational transparency - and the investor relations burden - that comes with that status. In this case, that cost may be unusually high because of the relative opacity of the competitors in this sector - what Alphacution typically refers to as the structural alpha zone of its asset management ecosystem map - coupled with the unparalleled use of technology and extraordinary magnitude of wealth generated by that small group of players. To compound this dynamic, recent dramatic shifts in the landscape for retail order flow sparked by the late 2019 moves - en masse - to $zero commissions by retail-oriented brokerage platforms, and the quick follow-on consolidations of TD Ameritrade (by Charles Schwab) and E*Trade (by Morgan Stanley), and given the pandemic-fueled volatility and volumes of [...]

By |2020-10-14T21:40:22-04:00March 12th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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Gearing up for Jane Street

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” - Robert Frost   Jane Street is one of the most exciting players among the roster of proprietary market making firms in the entire trading ecosystem. What began in 2000 as Henry Capital, with memberships on the American Stock Exchange and Midwest Stock Exchange, today sports a broad global footprint and continues to solidify its legendary status among those that trade for their own account. As such, Jane Street is the subject of our next comprehensive case study to be published in the coming weeks. This post is an appetizer for that... Until next time...

By |2020-08-17T07:14:02-04:00March 10th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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Renaissance Technologies: Discovering the Omnitrade

"There's a point, seven thousand RPM, where everything fades. The machine becomes weightless, just disappears. And all that's left is a body moving through space and time. Seven thousand RPM." - Carroll Shelby   In the early days of Quantlab, we suspected that there were stock trading signals in option data. Our futures program had waaaay too much slippage in it, and we needed to make a shift into a strategy with far less position concentration if we were ever going to survive. It was 1996 - or maybe it was 1997 - and the biggest challenge we faced in making such a shift was finding clean historical option data. That's when we met Sandor Strauss, Renaissance Technologies' first data guru... My brother recently gave me a copy of Greg Zuckerman's book, "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution," for Christmas. Not being someone who allocates much time to reading hard-bound books, it sat at the corner of my desk, beckoning for the right moment to [...]

By |2020-10-14T22:26:55-04:00March 4th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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A Flock of Canaries: From Allston to XTX

"You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case." - Ken Kesey   If you believe - as we do - that everything is connected to everything else, then it stands to reason that all events have potential to be seen as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Therefore, what we really need to do is notice stuff and connect dots. Here's a few of our latest observations... On February 10, 2020, Bloomberg reported "high-frequency firm Allston cuts employees amid low volatility," and further noted that this move follows XR Trading's 10% headcount reduction in late 2019. This got us thinking about the tier of smaller to mid-sized proprietary trading firms and if any of the available data (which currently tends to be US equities-centric) provide clues as to the health of those firms - as well as that space in the market ecosystem (where prop firms and market makers reside) that we typically call [...]

By |2020-08-17T07:14:02-04:00February 20th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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Virtu Financial: Musical Chairs

"No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible." - Frank Zappa   On Tuesday, February 11, Virtu reported Q4 and full-year 2019 financials. What follows are a few thoughts and charts on the latest data: Net trading income came in at $228.7 million for Q4 - not great, not terrible - based on a QoQ uptick in core equities; some weakness in global FICC, options and other (whatever that is) relative to Q3 2019; and, flat execution services revenue relative to Q3 and Q2 2019 (basically since the ITG acquisition closed last March). The chart below visualizes an historical quarterly decomposition of net trading revenue components relative to the ratio of SPX realized to implied volatility for the 24 quarters beginning Q1 2014 and ending Q4 2019 to emphasize the importance of unexpected volatility spikes in the grand scheme of profitability for market making and execution firms. When the other components of Q4 2019 NTI became available, we will circle back [...]

By |2020-08-17T07:14:02-04:00February 13th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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AQR Capital Management: The Ominous Shapes of Strategy

"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." - Joseph Campbell   For 12 straight years beginning Q4 2001, AQR Capital Management, LLC (AQR) - one of the great and legendary quant hedge funds of the current era - grew equity positions until peaking at 2,346 (long equity) positions by Q4 2013. Since that time, AQR's long US equity book has found an ominously consistent plateau averaging 2,140 positions. Here, in what would normally seem to be a benign factoid, lie the seeds of the story for why AQR has been suffering performance challenges of late; and, apparently, performance challenges for the foreseeable future according to co-founder and front-man, Cliff Asness. We start that story with the exhibit, below, where Alphacution presents the full 72-quarter record of total 13F (long) positions for the lineage of AQR Capital Management entities beginning Q4 2001 and ending Q3 2019. With these first shapes, we want to highlight that stocks are the dominant product class, thereby implying that there is little [...]

By |2020-08-17T07:14:02-04:00February 9th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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Barclays Succumbs, Flips Options to GTS

"Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine." - Alan Turing One by one, those willing to stand and make markets in options are - uh - taking a knee. Back in December (2019), Barclays became the latest in a long string of players - big and nots-so-big - to punt their options trading business to a willing buyer before any more value evaporated. So, we thought to take a closer look at what patterns or signals might exist, if any, to detect moves like this. Here's the setup: It turns out that in a Feed post entitled, "Goldman Sachs and the Long Arc of Hull Trading," we have some useful benchmarking to draw from to frame Barclays' ultimate decision. In the chart, below, Alphacution presents total 13F options position counts for parent entity, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., over the 45-quarter period beginning Q2 2008. Note: The vast majority of these position reside in the broker-dealer entity, Goldman Sachs [...]

By |2020-08-17T07:14:02-04:00February 5th, 2020|For Subscribers|
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