Several Dutch market makers are desperately looking for traders and it-personnel. To achieve this they have joined forces and the Holland Financial Centre will launch a campaign to attract new talent. They will visit universities and… secondary schools. Let’s hope the newspaper FD misquoted the chairman Sjoerd van Keulen, because I honestly wouldn’t know why firms would like to inform 17 year old schoolkids on derivative trading.

The involved market makers are All Options, IMC, Optiver and surprisingly Van der Moolen. In contrast the the big three VDM is not a member of the Holland Financial Centre. According to the same register All Options and Optiver are the only market makers in the member list of HFC, as IMC describes itself as an asset manager.

Instead of running advertising campaigns there are easier ways to attract potential traders. Let’s publish the average yearly bonus per firm in a nice ranking. Job seekers will be happy to find out what they always wanted to know, and the market makers will have something to talk about.

Jack