“We” Were Wrong About Jane Street
"Two wrongs may not make a right, but a thousand wrongs make a writer." - Dennis Miller "If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything." - John Wooden In my last in-person meeting of the B.C. (Before Coronavirus) era, a noted Chicago hedge-fund-slash-market-making C-suiter told me: "You're just making this stuff up..." Answer: "Well, yes - yes I am. Based on an interpretation of an assembly of data supplied by you - and others..." There [...]
Hacking the Matrix: A New Era in Risk Perception
"Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance." - Daniel Kahneman Chances are, "global pandemic" wasn't in your bag of quantamental factors; at least not by any name other than slippage. But now that that cat is out of that bag - and, rightly or wrongly, the wheels of a response strategy have largely been set in motion - the least we should do against [...]
Ports in the Storm: US Options Exchange Rankings
“It’s not bragging if you can back it up.” – Muhammad Ali While so many seem to be pleasuring themselves with the Tiger King, some of us continue to geek out with the latest data. Now, with March so freshly in the review mirror, certain monthly and quarterly data updates are going to be among our first chances to benchmark the significance of what has just happened in capital markets. We started with a focused comparison of [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
Marketquake 2020 – Volatility Update
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” - Theodore Roosevelt In last week's Feed post, "Marketquake: The Volatility of Volatility," we set up a comparison of volatility levels - and duration - from the GFC with that of the current pandemic period. In that, I implied that elevated volatility persisted for 218 trading days after the initial GFC shock. In other words, it took about 218 trading days for the VIX to traverse [...]
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 [...]
Marketquake: The Volatility of Volatility
“To develop a complete mind: Study the art of science; study the science of art. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else” – Leonardo da Vinci If there was ever a moment in time when we realized just how much everything connects to everything else - a quote (and concept) I have been using to repeatedly bludgeon you lo these many past months - now would be that moment. However, so as not to [...]
Those Pennies Add Up: Crain’s Chicago on Citadel Securities
The latest from Lynne Marek, Crain's Chicago Business: "Why Citadel Securities may not be cheering all these retail brokerage mergers: The combos of Morgan Stanley and E-Trade, plus Schwab and TD Ameritrade, could squeeze an important revenue stream."
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 [...]
