Last week there were a lot of happy folks around in the Mittal crowd, largely thanks to an anonymous big spender who apparently didn’t read the manual (or the wrong one). Some fingers point at Timber Hill or Sig, but we will never discover where to send the flowers.

Anyway, the Aperam spin-off has been trading for a few days, and this monday the options were launched as well. It isn’t easy to quote options on stocks without a trading history, and interest among market makers to act as a liquidity provider is very thin.

As little as three market making firms have signed for quoting the Aperam’s – with Caerus feeling confident to combine two roles as a Ccompetitive Market Maker (cmm) and Primary Market Maker (pmm)  together. The other half of the quote depth are are Nino (cmm) and 323 (pmm). Curious wheter or not some trading will emerge in those Aperam’s.

The flash crash

The flash crash didn’t occur during European trading hours, but nevertheless it was an astonishing what-the-hell moment. Dutch television produced an interesting short documentary with the title “Speed & Money : inside the black box”.  It’s available for the iPad as well, for free in the app store . It’s mainly English spoken with Dutch subtitles. If you’re waiting for a new iPad version, here’s the regular online version. For old times sake, here’s Jim Cramer again covering the flash crash.

Jack