Morgan Stanley: Swimming Against The Tide
Returning to a provocative thread from late 2022, Alphacution updates some of Morgan Stanley's latest moves in wholesale market making...
The Transformation of GTS – Part II
On the 1-year anniversary of what would turn out to be Part I of this thread, Alphacution adds new details to the story of New York-based prop trading firm GTS Securities and its emerging adventures in option market making...
Tower Research Capital: Seeking Option Traders?
In further preparation for its upcoming case study focused on option market makers, Alphacution identifies a seemingly insignificant shard of evidence that may represent Tower Research Capital's first foray into equity option trading...
Millennium, Two Sigma, D E Shaw: Big Quants, Big Options
Alphacution has been quite busy developing its next case study focused on option market makers. To build context for that research, we have been expanding our understanding of institutional option traders. It turns out that there is a familiar cast of characters in this space, including some of the most legendary quantitative hedge fund managers...
The World After Derivative Securities Saturation
Alphacution builds on its ongoing "derivative securities saturation" theme including the combined proliferation of stock options, index options, equity futures options, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and ETF options...
Alphacution Publishes “The Transformation of Belvedere” Case Study
In this 72-page, 75-exhibit, 17,400-word case study, “The Transformation of Belvedere,” Alphacution publishes its findings on equity index option specialist, Chicago-based Belvedere Trading. Founded in 2002 with a current team of ~300 employees, Belvedere’s story represents a unique addition to the Alphacution research library due to the significant strategy transformation it has undergone over the past few years while maintaining its strengths in SPX options. This case study also provides key comparisons and new context on the US-based strategies of legendary Amsterdam-based option houses, Optiver and IMC Financial Markets, along with new insights on the boom in zero days to expiry (0DTE) options and their impacts on a broader constellation of US option market makers…
Group One Trading: Through The 0DTE Lens
Group One Trading is not participating in the zero-days to expiry (0DTE) option boom. And yet, Alphacution shows how its data yields a pattern that illustrates certain 0DTE impacts on the broader US option market...
Retail Equity Option Review – Q2 2023 (Updated)
Alphacution updates its comprehensive review of retail option activity - including breakdowns by wholesale market maker and retail broker - through June 2023...
Guest Post: Tactical Impacts of 0DTE Boom
Guest Post: Derivatives specialist, Don Dale, shares key missing pieces to the 0DTE option puzzle...
Alphacution Press: Time Magazine on Peak6 Co-Founder Jenny Just
"I tell women, ‘You don’t have to be a trader the rest of your life. But if you can understand options, you can sit at any table in any industry, in any position, and understand what’s going on with the money. And that’s where all the decisions are.' "Jenny Just, Co-Founder, Peak6 This one lands a little close to home for me... Jenny Just and I were contemporaries - in both cases, our first jobs out of college; in both cases, within the equity options group - at O'Connor & Associates (OCA) in the early 1990's. Since then, we've been on dramatically different journeys, as explained in Time Magazine's recent profile "The Female Billionaire Thinks the Secret to Women's Wealth Is Poker." by editor-at-large, Belinda Luscombe... It will not mean much to most readers here, however, to be quoted in the same paragraph as "the brain" - Clay Struve - around which so much of OCA's success was built is quite an achievement, particularly from the perspective of my younger [...]
