Headlands Technologies: Return of the Pioneers (Case Study)
In this 33-page, 32-exhibit case study, “Headlands Technologies: Return of the Pioneers,” Alphacution details the profound paradox of one of the newest liquidity providers in US equities while simultaneously being one of its most consequential pioneers. Follow Matt Andresen’s journey from Island ECN to the early incarnation of Citadel Securities to the launch of Headlands, where he and team spent a decade – racking up success after success as a liquidity provider in other products, asset classes, and regions – before returning to US equities, where it all began.. Competitors should pay close attention…
Retail Flow Factor: Everything Is A Trading App
The roster of market actors around retail option trading continues to grow. Beyond the marquee names - like Charles Schwab, Robinhood, or Interactive Brokers - there is an expanding array of new, old, and different players joining those who cater to the "emotional money." In this Feed post, Alphacution expands its retail equity option volume estimates from 17 to 25 players...
XTX Markets: More Strategy Clues
Alphacution updates its recent Feed post, "XTX Markets Preps Options Incursion," with new and fascinating strategy clues...
24/5: Exporting US Equity Market Access
In support of its great "sentiment engine," there's a rush to develop the next big wave of retail trading in the US. The irony here - with all the recent sabre-rattling around tariffs - is that this new wave requires exporting access to US equity markets to additional retail investors around the world. Alphacution adds significant new evidence to its ongoing case on the matter...
The Market Macrostructure Factor
In this Feed post, Alphacution takes another step on its mission to quantify the capacity of alpha in the US equity market by ranking 71 notable trading firms by average stock position value; thereby highlighting which leading players are capturing which components of the liquidity spectrum. This story is also for those who don't know Nigel Tufnel...
XTX Markets Preps Options Incursion
In this Feed post, Alphacution presents new evidence for how XTX continues to invade new markets...
Nigel Tufnel’s Market
In this Feed post, Alphacution brings together a wider-than-usual Overton window of macro-economic and market macro-structure factors to explain an era of extremes - including the "Bitcoin product expansion mania", all-time highs in off-exchange US stock trading, and new evidence for "wag-the-dog" impacts of options - at the beginning of the new Trump 2.0 era...
Case Study: US Equity Options – Top 100 Institutional Customer List, Q3 2024
In this 27-page, 20-exhibit case study, “US Equity Options – Top 100 Institutional Customer List, Q3 2024,” Alphacution ranks a group of 111 institutional US equity option participants – including banks, brokers, hedge funds, asset managers, and proprietary trading firms – by 5 factors, including total notional long option value, long option positions, average long option position value, long option contracts, and average long option contracts per position – all of which, as of September 30, 2024. This study complements Alphacution’s case study, “US Equity Option Market Makers: Core Strategies and Market Shares.” This and related case studies are available to premium and enterprise subscribers or via individual document purchase… A link for Enterprise subscribers – with PDF download rights – will be posted shortly…
BlackRock + Millennium: A Succession Plan?
Last week, the Financial Times was first to report that BlackRock, the largest overall asset manager in the world (at ~$11.5 trillion), was in early talks to buy a minority stake in Izzy Englander's Millennium Management, one of the largest hedge funds in the world (at ~$67.9 billion). Though there is no way of knowing the outcome of this news at this time, Alphacution presents its analysis of the potential meaning and impacts of this partnership...
BlackRock + Millennium: A Succession Plan?
Last week, the Financial Times was first to report that BlackRock, the largest overall asset manager in the world (at ~$11.5 trillion), was in early talks to buy a minority stake in Izzy Englander's Millennium Management, one of the largest hedge funds in the world (at ~$67.9 billion). Though there is no way of knowing the outcome of this news at this time, Alphacution presents its analysis of the potential meaning and impacts of this partnership...
