All Options in 2010 : Losing 300k, daily
Heralding trumpets. Pat myself on the back. Told you so. Twice.
As everyone in de business knows, All Options lost their shirt in 2010. Majority of staff axed, and the firm retreated to their small office on the Herengracht. Full scale cost cutting. The numbers are in for the personal holdings of the man who flew to close to the sun. Allard Jakobs lost EUR 67,8 million in 2010.
300k per day
His other investments fared better, so All Options lost even more. Say 70 million. That’s a very impressive EUR 300.000 per day (and the weekends are for free). The company was loaded with overhead. Too many oversized offices and too many cash burning folks occupying the desks. But you don’t lose 70 million on overhead. Derivative positions must have been a costly affair.
Tax claim
But there’s more. A provision has been taken for a tax claim worth € 38,5 million. And this may not be enough. Details are unknown, but the firm has an office in Curaçao. You don’t start a trading desk in the Caribbean for the weather, the proximity hosting or the well educated locals. A less exotic possibility is a messing around with dividends and short stocks in Germany.
The underdog again
I always fancy the underdog. And hey, All Option is one of the underdogs again. The only way is up. While the tagline “a leading European derivatives trading house” is misleading, Allard Jakobs remains the comeback kid of the market. So don’t be surprised if he hits the jackpot again sooner or later.
- source : Quote (Dutch)
Waarom zo’n gefrustreerde post? Is toch niet leuk dat ze het lastig hebben? Of zit daar nog wat oud zeer… ?
Het oude zeer zal eerder bij Allard zitten over de Getronics blunder 😉
De belastingproblemen zien op een (mogelijke) naheffing van de Nederlandse fiscus inzake de forse Altana winst in 2007 (niet om mogelijke winst dankzij gelazer met Duitse dividenden). Die werd inderdaad geboekt via Curacao (pak ‘m beet 3% vennootschapsbelasting) maar Jan Kees denkt daar natuurlijk het zijne van en slaat liever tegen ca 25% aan. Dat scheelt 40-50 miljoen euri. Dat doet pijn. Zeker als de zaken al zo slecht gaan.
Daarnaast voeren zij dezelfde discussie als Optiver en anderen met de fiscus over de waardering van opties (de zgn. “comparis” methode. Het bedrijf waardeert optieposities tegen de gunstigste van de twee: aanschafprijs of huidige marktwaarde). Het bedrijf stelt zo winst uit naar de toekomst, de fiscus wil nu reeds afrekenen. Een erfenisje van de overname van Saen. Dit gaat ook om een 8-cijferig bedrag.
Het lullige voor Allard is dat hij een aantal uitgestapte aandeelhouders van All Options heeft uitgekocht tegen de oude (te hoge) boekwaarde (d.w.z. zonder naheffing). Een heeft hier in geuren en kleuren over verteld. Rijen dik, echte vrienden.
Can you post their annual report Jack???
@12:01
Good input. Too bad the thumbs up system has been removed here.
with the thumbs up system you could be traced by your colleagues and management who were using the same ip-number
“I always fancy the underdog. And hey, All Option is one of the underdogs again. The only way is up. While the tagline “a leading European derivatives trading house” is misleading, Allard Jakobs remains the comeback kid of the market. So don’t be surprised if he hits the jackpot again sooner or later.”
Sounds like wishful thinking, even if All Options is going to flourish in the future, they are going to need experienced traders in order to grow. Fat chance any experienced and well paid trader would give up his current position to join All(ards) Options.
@12:01: proberen ze op die manier van 2 walletjes te eten door de ene keer aanschafwaarde en de andere keer marktwaarde te gebruiken? Dat is wel heel doorzichtig.
2:44 pm
Doorzichtig, maar de fiscus heeft dit vele jaren in orde gevonden. Klinkt misschien maf, maar is echt zo. Partijen als Optiver beroepen zich op de afspraken die een jaar of 20 geleden hieromtrent met de fiscus zijn gemaakt en eisen dat de fiscus deze vreemde waarderingsmethode blijft accepteren; de fiscus wil normaal waarderen (leuker kunnen ze het niet maken?). Daar wordt al een tijdje over geprocedeerd. In zekere zin is het uitstel van executie (vroeg of laat expireert elke optie) al begrijp ik dat het minst genomen prettig is om het geld voorlopig op zak te houden.
Nice picture
Due to technical issues all Individual Equity Options (IEO’s), Index Option and Commodity option contracts will remain in pre-open until further notice.
For Amsterdam and Brussels markets Prof trading is allowed.
Lekker is dat. Eindelijk eens wat actie in PNL en TNT, krijg je dit…
Dan handel je toch op TOM?
Good thing this pathetic trading system and incapable staff who cannot prevent issues for a single week are not going to merge with Deutsche Borse and mess up the German grundlichkeit.
Flow Traders numbers for 2010 are out – and they suck. Jack, worth an article?
source?
Aqtant dead ?
are they? I think lots of people in bp5 still using them.
Wouldn’t surprise me. They’ve been on their last legs for years after Optiver dumped them.
it was IMC that dumped them afaik
Actant not dead, alive and kicking and product performing better than ever. I’m sure software competitors would like it though.
thanks, product performing better then ever? you must be kidding 🙂
never the less, competition is good and there will be enough tears running in BP5 soon due to clearing disaster. DOB and Deriva cannot replace – Orc is too high fly and expensive for the smaller guys.
there is always Clickstation, the best and fastest trading software!
Click who? With all the clearing going to abn, sol drei will clean up.
Clickstation. You only need one PC per underlying.
Hahaha @ 614
Who the hell are these guys? They are not CMM / PMM right?
———————————————————————————–
ADG Market Making, one of Europe’s largest independent option trading firms, has seen its revenues double year on year, as the firm capitalised on volatile trading in its core European markets.
ADG Holdings, the firm’s parent company, reported a jump in revenues to £25.6m for the 12 months to March 31, 2011, and an operating profit of £9.4m. That compares with £12.4m and £4.2m for the 2010 financial year.
The firm’s market making operations were the chief revenue driver, its accounts show. The firm acts as a market maker on equity and fixed income option contracts on NYSE Liffe and Eurex, Europe’s largest derivatives trading platforms, offering two-way prices to buyers while eschewing risk-taking with its own capital.
The firm’s core markets are Bund, Schatz and Bobl options on German debt on Eurex, Deutsche Börse’s derivatives trading platform. Options contracts offer the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying security at a future date for an agreed price. German bond derivatives offer proxy exposure to European sovereign borrowing costs, which have fluctuated wildly over the past few years.
The firm also makes markets in European index options, including the leading German and Swiss indexes and FTSE 100 futures on Liffe. Much of 2010 was characterised by fluctuating prices on European indices during the advent of the European debt crisis, meaning many asset managers will have turned to the options market to hedge against risk of loss to their equity portfolio.
Revenues from ADG’s broking arm, where the firm trades Dutch and French index derivatives, also rose, as did proprietary trading revenues. In 2009, the firm launched an asset management arm, ADG Capital Management, through which it manages small open-ended hedge funds.
ADG was founded by Andrew and Dominic Guy. The firm did not respond to a request for comment.
London based company, I think they took some of the ex RV Capital traders when they went bust.
Webb Traders made more in 2010 than Flow Traders.
Those guys over at Webb are genii!
sold! en doorlaten
webb traders is alleen maar div stripping in duitsland…veel succes dit jaar
don’t know,
but the dutch Belastingdienst may also take a closer look at other companies like IMC, Optiver and even a company like Effective Traders
they’re dividend stripping the world, fucking countries over
where IMC and Optiver also do other business than that (perhaps as a cover up), Effective Traders and Frank Vogel solely strip dividend for a living
Even a shop like Effective Traders does dividend stripping? Don´t they only have daytraders?
You are probably referring to Jaap Harteveld who is the Head of Event Trading at Effective Traders. Wasn´t he the responsible person at VDM middle office for the tax stuff? Is Effective Traders already on the tax authorities radar?
yes VDM indeed
before that KBC
dividend-stripping .. what a hell of an Event!
Anyone heard the rumour that Flow Traders is up for sale? Management looking at exit/ partnership options. Would seem to follow in steps of Virtu/EWT Madison Tyler, Getco/Automat and Sun/Endeavor. Definitely one to watch.
They’re making next to nothing compared to a few years ago, so no wonder they’re looking to get out. Headcount has exploded, costs are going through the roof, meanwhile income is going down just as rapidly. Let’s just say that their private equity investor hasn’t made a great return. Under those conditions, good luck selling the rest of their company!
The Virtu/EWT/MT merger of sorts made perfect sense, as it was one and the same guy who owned all of these companies (Vinnie Viola). Getting rid of three times the same expensive infrastructure was a no-brainer.
Anyone heard the fact that 323 Trading is for sale ?
welcome to world of financial players selling their fwd earnings, guess need some more consolidation in the dwindling world of volume,
virtu is doing pretty good, i think they overtook these dutchies in high freq and are comparable to citadel/tower/getco,
323 is selling themselves, what do they have, licence to trade thru actant, one toilet, rented room ?
don’t think they’ve used actant in ages. Lots of groups stopped using them over the last few years. I wonder why??? 🙂
Do I hear a 323 bid?
When I read this stuff about 323, Flow and others it seems that Webtraders is the only trading company that is still growing exponentially (also in terms of profitability)!! Tip of the hat to Marko and Thijs.
Trading companies “make a killing” these days with multi year low volumes and volas. But the whopping overhead stays. Which company is the first to close shop?
what are they using inplace of actant ?
I thought it was 323 Offer?
you can suck their monkey while at it,
Everybody is so happy when other Market makers are doing just as bad as they are….. zal wel gezellig zijn op BP5
#tommtf welcomes 323 Trading as new Member of TOM MTF.
Webb traders without the support of GSFS will be gone in sixty seconds
Goh, als we het op Euronext niet meer kunnen verdienen zal de marge er op Tom nog wel zijn ?
tuurlijk, daar staan de spreads 2x zo wijd … not
where is GSFS going and why,
the volumes are dying, you should look for new job,
Alphabay did some stuff together with GSFS and i guess they quit because off clearing issues with the dividend trades
And last but not least, Egbert has more brains and know how of the trading business than Marko and Thijs together so that was the main reason that they picked Alphabay in the first place
Gsfs?
haha..
Citraders is where the best traders off Van der moolen went to, if they ever would go public you have to go max. long
The german taxpayers will lynch webb traders if they found out that the money of them is flowing in the pockets of webb
webb doet een beetje Fix handel adr ordinary is niks meer mee te verdienen verder niet veel (klein avondhandel) , 323 trading Eelco (sold) verdienen helemaal niks meer
good,
how is Duyfken doing these days?
Is that Robert Van Duivenbode’s new firm?
Van Duyvenbode??? What century are you living in?
What is Duyfken?
Vogel is da man,
Really? He was on Evers Staat Op this morning, talking about beauty spas and make-up (revisit the show via the Evers website, he was on at around 7:10 am). I kid you not. What self-respecting “man” would do something like that?
one who is secure in his masculinity and sexuality? 😉
@ 10.45: obviously you have not seen his wife Miriam!!
Evers Staat Op komt vandaag live vanaf de Golfbaan Spaarnwoude omdat Frank en Myriam Vogel 100-duizend euro betaalden tijdens 538 voor War Child. Samen steunen zij namelijk Spieren voor Spieren en daarvan is Louis van Gaal de ambassadeur. Hij kwam een bakkie doen tijdens de ochtendshow op locatie.
Niet eens van de belastingbetaler, maar betaald vanuit zijn doorgeefluik-“goede doelen”-stichting (waarop derden geld kunnen storten). Vroeger heette die de GSFS Foundation, inmiddels de MF Foundation (Myriam/Frank), iets minder bescheiden en voorkomt de nare geur die aan “GSFS” hangt. Het goede doel is voor het tweede jaar op rij Radio 538, waarmee Frankie reclamezendtijd koopt om de flutbedrijfjes van zijn vrouw te promoten. Ik denk dat de mensen die geld hadden overgemaakt een ander idee hadden van goede doelen.
Een andere gulle donatie van het fonds was voor het instandhouding van de fauna op zijn eigen ranch in Zuid-Afrika. En ze hebben voor 100 euro aan pluche speelgoedbeesten gekocht (waarschijnlijk waren de kinderen van M/F toen jarig). Ach ja, sommige mensen kennen totaal geen gene.
Met de bedrijfjes van Myriam (die alleen elkaar werk toeschuiven, zoals het interieurverzorgingsbedrijfje dat de beautysalons aankleedt en zo de schijn ophouden) en de Portugese kipverkoop van Frank/David Crouwel wil het overigens niet zo vlotten.
Dan toch maar meer wat dividendstrippen volgende maand en tot ziens volgend jaar bij Edwin Evers/Radio 538.
“De uitzending van Evers Staat Op werd mede mogelijk gemaakt door Van Der Moolen, Webb Traders en Jan-Kees de Jager.”
Recent nog bij de duitse vestiging(GMBH) van webb traders geweest, bleek er helemaal niemand te zitten…
Je hebt vast die labtop achterin gemist. De robots staan aan…..
Was op zich wel grappig aan gezien er een occupykamp voor deur gestationeerd was…
Wie weet waren ze net soep aan het uitdelen bij hun vrienden van het occupykamp 🙂
Webb Traders GmbH huurt in Frankfurt een zogenaamd “virtual office”. De verhuurder rekent er niet op dat er echt iemand aanwezig zal zijn.
http://www.virtualofficesales.com/europe/41-germany/573-47-mainzer-landstrasse-frankfurt-60329.html
wat is een labtob?
Er zal alleen iemand aanwezig zijn als er dividenden gestript moeten worden
Dat zal wel meevallen, want dan handelt Webb Frankfurt tegen Webb Amsterdam met een broker ertussen. Daar heb je volgens mij niet zo lang voor nodig.
so what’s ms Miriam vogel like, if is she hot, gorgeous, sexy, beautiful, pretty, sweet, average, not so good looking, or cud be described as ugly, which of the above,
kindly don’t give obv bs, there is enough on this site already,
this is the correct answer
http://www.mffoundation.nl/en/?p=4
i think fair to say pretty and attractive dutch lady would be good description, that leaves the part unexplained about ‘@ 10.45: obviously you have not seen his wife Miriam!!’
AO is still losing money as costs are still way too high. AJ announced another reorganization about two weeks ago. I thinking current headcount is about 70 (from over 300 3 years ago). This inlude 20 IT. Biggest problem is lack of revenue (due to the Atom Pro system). Also AJ fucked over his traders by paying out less bonuses than promised. I heard IT-ers got better bonuses than some of the traders. Market making actually did quite well last year but AJ’s baby, the strategy desk lost shitloads of money which hurt marketing making bonuses. His dispersion strategy wasn’t working out after all.
pretty embarassing for equity holders in BATS
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-23/bats-ipo-reversal-may-cost-morgan-stanley-banks-7-1-million.html
@5:11 What kind of dispersion do you mean? index against components? Isn’t this strategy dead for years?
why do you think its dead, the dispersion trader at optiver got made partner at 26-27, i don’t think progress like that has happened in last few years at optiver or is really ever going to be repeated,
Well what is the reason? I don’t think it has anything to do with a partners age.
Apparently Allard thought there was some money to be made. Is he the kind of guy that has an idea and trade it without further research?
no its much less to do with age as such and lot being in right place and right time, there are plenty smart people, few get lucky as well,
apparently Allard use to run big dispersion back in late nighties with his previous firm gadoe gadoe options or something, I think that caused headaches then as well with 97 crisis, the problem with dispersion is that underlying instruments are illiquid at just the wrong moment and of course to run a pure dispersion you need a counterparty to take the pure other side of trade, so in reality while running spreads, if you end up owning wrong strikes in wrong instrument in wrong direction, yes you can get f*cked,
haha, thank you for the explanation!
it was ‘goed gedaan options’ btw – I Googled it
means something like ‘well done’
haha ? what was so funny in that explanation,
@3:14 There are several things wrong in your explanation. Goed Gedaan Opties went bad on either the Arnhemse / Akzo spread or on a short bund position. A dispersion consists simply of straddles, long components, short index. If you do everything right you can only lose your premium if you are long. Last year saw high correlation, a dispersion is a bet on low correlation, so the premium is lost.
its not a bloody explanation, like everything else on this blog, its just one goddamm rumour,
‘If you do everything right’, you should take up teaching, it fits well with your style,
“April 2nd, 2012 at 2:39 pm” your explanation sucks, but that’s normal, you might be a market maker, that’s not your fault…and if you are from AO, then I laugh my ass off! that would make sense though…
Well well… of course he explained what a dispersion is in essence… a position in components vs. index.
But of course he’s not going to explain you how to do it. What do you expect really?
wow its such a rocket science on how to do it,
The explanations are very apt and quite frankly there is no trick in doing it right under ‘favourable conditions’.
@3:14 nailed it saying “the problem with dispersion is that underlying instruments are illiquid at just the wrong moment”
O***r has the biggest workforce dedicated to making markets in single stock options. those mm’s were a source of free liquidity to the disperson desk.
Not discounting the talent of the ‘young partner’ who made it work but it just would not be possible to do it another company given the lean workforce that exists at other MM companies.
‘favourable conditions’ is indeed the right word, whereby for dispersion you need the counterparty to do it,
if you can start doing it at mid internally against 25 odd single stock options trader in house, you’ll end up taking most of the liquidity premium they are trying to generate while market making externally, i am not sure why this is deemed as genius, the one part that is indeed useful is that this brings in the volatility stat arbitrage for less liquid single stock vols which is normally reserved for much more liquid index vols,
@5:22
It must piss off the MM’s who have to trade at mid with no prior heads up.
Thank you good for the skilled details. Purely nondiscriminatory wen upwards! As i constantly carry out not necessarily icreasing about those however think about one made any animatedly buddy-buddy despoile and also I’m indisputable some individuals suavity that a smaller amount in any case.
there is one more solid reason for mid, its an incentive for correlation trader to try forcing/prevent rogue single stock trader who is building illiquid position; if there was spread to pay, the vol arb guy woud be less willing to try exploiting less traded part of pricing anamoly specially long dates where big positions can lead to large unnecessary losses with no recourse out, mm on the other hand getting a even larger position part against inhouse arb guy would get scared away from trying to bully the market,