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 [...]
Adventures in Speed: @VirtuFinancial, @FlowTraders
“Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses — especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” — Leonardo Da Vinci (~1500) It has been a little while - since here - that we updated our analysis on the market making and high-speed trading strategy end of the playing field. And, during that time it came to our attention that our friends at Flow Traders N.V. (FT) had begun to feel a [...]
Vision and the Pace of Innovation: A Little Perspective…
“Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses — especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” — Leonardo Da Vinci Da Vinci is now known to have been able to "see things" that he had the tools to make real in the period, and see some that he couldn't. For those visions he couldn't bring into reality, that disconnect - I have concluded - was mainly a function of the underlying [...]
The Privatization of Alpha
“Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses — especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” — Leonardo Da Vinci (~1500) "Hedge funds — there are too many of them and most of them are lousy." - Stevie Cohen (2016) The highest Sharpe Ratios - which, for the uninitiated, is a measure of risk-adjusted returns for specific strategies and financial portfolios - now live behind a declining roster of gilded gates. [...]
Does Big #FinTech Innovate? Introducing Alphacution’s #BigFinTech Index
Jensen Huang, CEO, Nvidia: "Software is eating the world, but AI is going to eat software..." One of the most fascinating aspects of innovation is its resistance to scaling. At least this is one observer's interpretation. Those trying to innovate at increasing scale - like, inside a large enterprise - might prefer to describe it as frustrating, to say the least. The rabid interest in startups - small groups of visionaries and entrepreneurs that are able to deliver [...]
