Citadel Securities’ Book: Hiding in Plain Sight (Teaser #1)
Image Credit: Liu Bolin “The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein Like discovering a secret doorway into a long-forgotten section of the Great Library of Alexandria, our recent focus on the data contained in the SEC's Form 13F has been nothing short of captivating. Yes, one interpretation of these reports - the most common interpretation - is that these reports merely represent a fleeting and illusory [...]
Digging Liquidnet With ITG’s Shovel
"Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short." - Henry David Thoreau With the help of our ITG modeling - and a recently discovered S-1 filing for Liquidnet from 2008 - we present the following storyboard. Though some of you will miss the lyrical wordsmithing, this one is presented without the usual auditory accompaniment. Perhaps this will help lubricate some questions from the audience... Using data from our [...]
Sorry, Virtu. You Still Need a Lift
"Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is not a clear one." - Ludwig Wittgenstein For once, there might not be much more to say after a title like this one - and I'm not getting paid to offer strategic advice to the players on this rink - so I will be brief. First and foremost, my hometown [...]
Goldman Sachs’ Book: Hiding in Plain Sight
Image Credit: Liu Bolin "The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long." - Ludwig Wittgenstein It turns out, there is a ton valuable data lying around, hiding in plain sight - just waiting for any fool to come along and turn it into something else, something greater. And, it also turns out that I am one such fool who is captivated - perhaps even obsessed - with solving [...]
Alphacution Debuts on TD Ameritrade Network
Many thanks to Oliver Renick (@OJRenick) and the team @TDANetwork for this one. We had some fun discussing the IBM-RedHat deal, and the implications for the larger cloud infrastructure and AI segments of the enterprise IT arena. Also touched on some thoughts for NVIDIA, AWS, Google and HPE. Based on our recent post, IBM Hides Watson Under a Red Hat. Link to Video here. It's a good one. Enjoy... As always, if you value this work: Like it, [...]
Virtu, ITG: Much More Than Meets The Eye…
"The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust (1923) “Develop your senses — especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” — Leonardo Da Vinci (~1500) If you - like the precious thousands of other professionals, mostly notably from the high-performance end of the global trading spectrum, who will venture this way - have come this far in search of Alphacution's unique brand of irreverent spin on Virtu's 3rd quarter earnings [...]
Robinhood and Payments for Order Flow
It was a recent father-son (and dog) road trip. Several hours in the car, on our way to support daughter / sister, Emma, at her final regatta of the season. Head of the Hooch in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And, an opportunity for some undistracted conversation. Among the many topics was our ongoing debate about how to trade Tesla (TSLA). Eddie has proven himself to be fairly decent scalper of this volatile name, so I usually ask how he is [...]
IBM Hides Watson Under a Red Hat
A charitable assessment might have called it an experiment, really; an experiment to find out if the headwinds on the hardware and infrastructure services side of the house could be mitigated to some meaningful extent by perceived tailwinds on the software side of the house. A less charitable assessment might have called it a gamble... But now, with the (Sunday evening) October 28, 2018 announcement that it will be acquiring open source software leader, Red Hat for an [...]
When #ETFs Ate The Beta
These days, making a point - and then creating enough initial magnetism to draw folks' attention further down into that point-making exercise - has become quite an art form. Would anyone even notice if a piece of writing had already been published under a different image and title? Perhaps someday we will perform that exercise. 😉 In any case, this post completes the natural progression of our tour of the three primary segments of Alphacution's asset management ecosystem [...]
@VirtuFinancial: Yes, There Are More Acquisitions on the Way!
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. - Albert Einstein On October 4, news broke on all the major market news outlets that - after feasting on a meal formerly known as KCG Holdings, Inc. (KCG) in 2017, which itself was a combo platter made up of GETCO and Knight Capital - Virtu Financial, Inc. (Virtu) was returning to the all-you-can-eat buffet to consider the total consumption of multinational agency brokerage [...]
