Suddenly a bucketload of news on IMC. First of all, Wiet Pot and Remco Lenterman have called their old pals at Goldman Sachs. Seems IMC is bidding 30 million for the floor trading business at the big board in New York. Maybe they’re keeping the specialists alive as main argument for HFT, it’s a kindRead more
Four years ago, I wrote a small post about a Russian programmer called Sergey Aleynikov. He allegedly has stolen some of Goldman’s HFT source code. He switched from Goldman to a Chicago based hedge fund. Arrested and prosecuted for taking some source code with him, he was sentenced to eight years in federal prison. Unbelievable.Read more
In the option market, the market makers are quoting options to capture a profit from the bid-ask spread. Apart from this, sending bids and offers to the market serves another practical goal. Euronext Liffe is charging less when you are providing liquidity to the market. It’s not unusual for a lot of market makers toRead more
Outsiders usually have difficulty distinguishing a broker from a market maker, and this time it’s no different. Strange thing is even Euronext is confused. Every firm is a trading firm. Wouldn’t surprise me if some people at Euronext have the title “trader” on their business cards themselves. Anyway, the trading floor at the exchange building wasRead more
Goldman Sachs doesn’t clear any option market maker firm in Amsterdam. This is the territorial pissing ground of ABN AMRO and KBC, although the latter is slowly losing ground. Their clients Van der Moolen and All Options have scaled back operations in some degree. In the area of global delta one trading GS clearing isRead more
