Tower Research Capital: The Joy of Spoofing
On November 7, 2019, the U.S. CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) announced that it was ordering proprietary trading firm, Tower Research Capital, LLC (TRC), to pay $64.7 million in restitution, disgorgement and penalties for what amounts to the "largest total monetary relief ever ordered in a spoofing case." Apparently, this is all due to activity in equity index futures (at least) between March 2012 and December 2013. Now, this is one of those slippery - and potentially toxic [...]
Adding Merrill Lynch to Bulge Broker Equities Analysis
As we approach the completion of our initial bulge broker analysis in equities - leaving Citi, Barclays and BNP Paribas modeling among some of the remaining work to be done - today's addition to the thread is none other than the masthead for what used to be known as the "Thundering Herd": Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith. Kudos to those of you who acknowledge the oft-forgotten role played by Messrs. Pierce, Fenner & Smith. Anyway, we add [...]
Virtu Financial: Q3 2019 Update #1
“Making mountains out of molehills sells more books than a study of molehills." - Cliff Asness With Virtu's Q3 2019 earnings out this past Monday (Nov 5), but the Q3 2019 13F report coming out next week, we are going to keep most of our powder dry for this one. However, since much of what we are trying to do here is convert new information into new "shapes" - and therefore, take the occasional opportunity to conserve our [...]
Puzzle: Two Sigma and the Sons of D. E. Shaw
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust I had hoped to be able to publish the executive summary to our latest case study on Two Sigma this week, however instead, here is one of the more fascinating findings from that research (that we explore in detail in that case study) in the form of a puzzle: In the chart below, Alphacution presents the average stock position by [...]
More Bridgewater Associates: Modeling Ray Dalio’s Modeling
"Treat your life like a game." - Ray Dalio In many ways, aspects of this research are like playing a game of "Name That Tune." With a few snippets of data, we try to figure out what's going on with a trading or investment strategy - and by extension, the business strategy, too. Certainly, boosting the signal of a snippet or two of data can be done with contextual evidence; other snippets of data from neighboring strategies [...]
BlackRock, Bridgewater, Citadel: The Decline of Speculation at Scale
"Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy." - former HBS professor, David Korten “The most important question facing humanity is this: Can we reach global empathy in time to avoid the collapse of civilization and save the Earth?” - Jeremy Rifkin, principal architect, "The Third Industrial Revolution "...Bizarre..." and "...inscrutable..." is how one notable content aggregation platform has recently described Alphacution's work (after we maxed out their popularity scores with [...]
HSBC: Considers More Towel Throwing in US Equities
"The Adviser integrates information, computing power and human skill to attempt to systematically extract alpha." - Two Sigma Advisors, LP brochure On October 17, 2019, Bloomberg reports that "HSBC Considers Equity Pullback in London, New York, Germany." We used this as a catalyst to add to our ongoing bank-owned broker-dealer modeling. Here's a review of Alphacution's prior analysis in this space: Alphacution has begun to assemble a composite model on bank-owned broker-dealer operations. Before now, we have conducted [...]
(UPDATED) Citadel Punks Blackstone
"What is to give light must endure burning." - Viktor Frankl “The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.” – Carl von Clausewitz Why is it coming out now, apparently months after the talks took place, that Blackstone inquired about buying a stake in Citadel? There are a few reasons we can think of for monetizing coveted equity - or, at least showing enough leg to solicit an updated "mark" on the assets - but, the most [...]
Alphacution News: Hedge Fund Alert Showcases Alphacution
"Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else." - Leonardo da Vinci A quick shout out to Howard Kapiloff for assembling the piece on Alphacution that went out today in the latest edition of Hedge Fund Alert. Thankfully, those who operate closest to the sources of liquidity know this work well. But, those who operate at some distance from the sources of liquidity and still realize that the impacts we are quantifying and illustrating here [...]
Schwab and Others Confirm Status as Casinos, Purveyors of Financial Opioids
“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” - Leonardo da Vinci "There's no such thing as a free lunch." - Milton Friedman Maybe I imagined it, but a couple weeks ago, I thought I saw an article claiming that Jack Dorsey, CEO of the world's largest kazoo - you know, the thing with the familiar harmony and enough dissonance to over-stimulate your reptilian id - was set to replicate Robinhood's free trading platform [...]
