Rearranging some deck chairs

I confess, in the light of the current market crisis and US downgrade this isn’t the most spectacular news. Market makers have been competing for the primary market maker (pmm) licenses in a few stocks. This head to head competition is always interesting, as the market maker with the best quoting performance is selected. But then again, it’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at the moment.

Recently Optiver has bitten the dust in a few stocks. It lost their positions in Ahold and Akzo to contender 323. That was quite a surprise. Apparently this was reason for Kaemingk to try a little harder. They won their play off in both Unilever and KPN with a wide margin from Caerus and All Options.

In the heavily traded ING options the game was played between Tibra and Nino. Again the much larger firm won and it wasn’t a photo finish either. Both Nino and Caerus had in the last month serious trouble with Euronext as the exchange wasn’t able to send them realtime underlying stock prices, and quoting during these hours was impossible. Weird, as both firms are located inside the exchange building.

The last battlefield was between Scrocca, Caerus, 323 and Leopark in Tom Tom. Nice to quote tight and for size when stock is suffering from a devastating profit warning. Anyway – the two spots are won by Scrocca and Leopark.

Good luck monday all of you.