Market share in Sweden

In the world of Euronext and Eurex the market shares of individual market makers are well hidden secrets. The only detailed information the exchange is willing to give you is your own market share. And all right, they exchange is willing to tell you how you rank among the rest. But if you’re number two, they won’t tell you who is number one. Or number three. In addition, Euronext is giving information on the market volume traded on massquotes, and your rank in there as well. Difference is you can see the other market maker’s market share in quote traded volume – but without identifying these firms.

The folks in Scandinavia take a different approach. The whole list of market makers is shown with the corresponding percentages. That is exactly what we’ve been looking for. Unsure to which extent the ranking is comparable to the whole market – but at least it gives us a clue. Apart from the derivative market shares there is another interesting goldmine available at the NasdaqOMX – the market share in stocks. Monthly, and yearly.

The NasdaqOMX covers five of those Scandinavian countries, but the only seriously traded derivatives are the Swedish index options. Other indices and stock options bear similarity with the Belgian market. The trading fun is in the Swedish index pit.

Optiver king of the Swedish index..

Market share alone won’t make you any money, but in terms of market share nobody comes close to Optiver. Broadly speaking Optiver has got an astonishing market share of 25%. Not just for one month, this is a steady result.  Second and third in line are two vikings, but on the fourth spot we find Timber Hill. Didn’t trade as much as usual in August, which doesn’t count for Optiver’s long term buddies from Tibra. The Australians increased their market share substantially in a year.

Few places lower there’s Kyte and IMC – trading a lot less with a decent 5% but in another playing field compared with Optiver. At least they are playing, something which can’t be said on All Options. They completely walked of the pitch. Probably putting resources at work to defend their top spot in Ten Cate, Brunel and Mediq.

Please note the market share is calculated a little different. It’s not the number of contracts, but the traded value of the options. Doesn’t change much anyway. On average 50.000 contracts a day trade in the Swedish index.

..but IMC trading more stocks

The Scandinavian stock options seem to be dead, but that won’t stop several market makers from hedging their delta’s anyway. These are a few familiar and interesting names from the list of market share in the Nordic cash market.

Impossible to say anything specific on the kind of strategies at work – endless possibilities (of which of course also straightforward delta hedging on Eurex options on stocks like Nokia). Tibra isn’t a member of the cash market yet – checked the list twice.

For more details have a look at the source. Excel files from the north – market share in derivatives and cash.