Equity Options Conference
The good old days from the open outcry trading in the pit are gone. But it remains a source of good stories. Last Friday was a good place to share them, with the annual reunion of the former traders, brokers and order book officials.
FOW Event
Coming up next is another networking event, but this time aimed at the present and the future. FOW Events will host the European Equity Options Trading Conference. It will be held this Friday the 20th of April in the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam. See here for the list of speakers.
With all regulatory impact, the danger of financial transaction tax, exchanges trying to join forces and MTF’s like TOM seriously to take off this year – there is enough to talk about. A lot more than the official name (“equity options”) suggests. Interesting speakers such as Mark Spanbroek, Willem Meijer and Harold Duineveld.
AMX options failed
It’s still early to call, but it certainly looks like the AMX options have failed. Markets are wide and trading is completely absent. To ignite trading a different incentive for liquidity providers should be in place. Providing a tight and liquid market should be rewarded with some cash. All Options is working and taking a risk for nothing.
Flow Traders had a good year
The leading ETF trader had a good year. The Dutch office earned € 30,5 million. Results of their offices in the US and Asia are unknown – for the company as a whole not much can be said with certainty. But looks good. Also for other firms, it was a volatile trading year with the European crisis and Fukushima.
“Also for other firms, it was a volatile trading year with the European crisis and Fukushima.”
What does that mean for the likes of Optiver, IMC, etc. ? If Flow made upwards of 30 mil, is it reasonable to assume 2011 was a great year for market makers ?
All Options made almost a billion, that’s how good it was for market makers.
Excuse me??? A billion? Is that you Allard?
Closer to a million I would say if I hear what kind of bonuses were paid out. I was also told that one of their most experienced traders left because he had no faith in the future, or more precise Allard- he says he is going to Nino. So All is actually competing now with Nino and Calimero. And even losing that. The harder they fall…
Congrats Allard! You have managed to chase every decent trader away and practilly destroyed
yah the reported profit (close to 1mm indeed) masks the actual profits (close to 1 billion) because of Shares/Capital structure and dividends paid to Partners not to mention global tax arbitrage. if this is too difficult for you to understand just ask.
2011 was a good year for the likes of IMC, optiver and tibra. Better than 09 and 10.
Prob not as great as 08.
yeah, how are shares/capital structure and partner’s dividend, not to mention global tax arbitrage, masking 1bn actual profits to 1mm reported profits, this is indeed too difficult to grasp, pls elaborate,
All’s trading profits were only about 15 mio including around 3,5 coming from cum/ex trades on Curacao. Apart from that there is no global tax arbitrage going on. They
lack the knowledge.
Re any dividends paid out to partners: the only one is Allard.
The glory days are truly over.
the post above was supposed to be sarcastic pun at my previous comments, the pun was of course badly timed and poorly delivered,
Can someone explain to me, a non-Dutch expat here in the Netherlands, how one can make a billion in net profit become a reported million? Surely when a company reports financials they would have to report say the net income pretax, the tax paid, leaving the rest to either be paid as dividends or reinvested in the company, both of the latter surely something which needs to be reported? As I say, not from the Netherlands, but finding it difficult to grasp how Dutch financials are likely reported.
Someone was just making fun of the trolling American visitor who had suggested just a few days ago that the earnings of a company such as Curvalue could be substantially higher than their reported earnings.
yes, someone was trying to be funny, the humour attempt missed pretty much everyone and everything, these Europeans suck at one more thing,
okay two things, one, why am I getting the American moniker, and two, if you don’t know how real vs reported earnings for tax are managed for tax optimization, then you don’t have to go around spreading your ignorance, here’s another latest read, this time from UK,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/georgeosborne/9194558/George-Osborne-Im-going-after-the-wealthy-tax-dodgers.html
I am not sure why this point about taxes is automatically assumed to cause huge differences in income numbers, nothing of sorts was suggested for Curvalue, this is just one possible source to difference on ground vs accounting statements, its very hard for outsiders to ascertain the magnitude, large or small,
Has somebody got the access to curvalue financial statements, there were couple of morons putting their d*cks up, but as always fcuked off once asked to post real material/links,
You can buy a copy of their financial statements from the Dutch
commercial registery. As such there is no free weblink you cheap bastard. Go ahead and spend a few euros if you still don’t believe the numbers that were quoted. Similar statements have been uploaded to this website for Optiver and IMC for you to download for free. Obviously you never bothered to read them or you wouldn’t have written such nonsense. Do your research first, then come back. Or better yet: stay away.
this is rich, being accused as cheap by the cheapest of all, the dutchchies,
the blog is meant for voluntary posts, jack doesn’t charge entry fees and posts out freely, if you got it by paying something, either share or shut up, no need to show it off, same goes with your bloody ass research you seem to have already done, share or shut up, there are enough people with small dicks here,
I don’t think AO will survive another year given the market volatility and the management…well, except if Allard injects more cash again (that’s what he’s doing since 2010 in case people have forgotten). AO is a scam in theory from an outside point of view. I don’t think there is a huge gap in term of traders knowledge between MM beside Optiver that might be a step ahead, as usual. MM is not a secret science, traders are replaceable…it’s very rare to find “special and gifted” traders nowadays…AO traders are fairly good to me, we never heard of any pure trading loss and traders getting fired because of it…well except in 2008. What makes the difference is the structure around it meaning the CEO, the people around him (the board & managers) and the technology devoted. AO seems out-of-date in term of technology and managers. Too late to recover the path now. Optiver has done a TREMENDOUS effort in the last 5 years (as well as IMC in a different scale) to diversify their activities…The only diversification from AO comes from their strategy desk (=Allard’s toy) which is a disaster, don’t know why, but that’s what it is. In conclusion, I would prefer people to be talking about trading managers (from Optiver, AO and IMC) to understand more what’s really happening. We rarely refer to them, but what about them? Does AO have a good trading and IT managers?
apart from altana/allard, is there any difference between VDM and AO?
Sounds like AO can be saved if they cut everything but the options(mm) desk. Something that Caerus did after the bankruptcy of vdm.
you got it other way round, it wasn’t caerus who ran all the bs in vdm, it was eggbert, and of course he didn’t stop doing that in the next round either, some people never learn,
i meant Caerus, after the spin off, only trades options. A wise thing as a quantative desk takes years of research and a lot of knowledge. Don’t know if market making is still there only business model.
Anyway the old dutch saying is true: schoenmaker blijf bij je leest
more than research and knowledge, it needs right people, some people never learn or are too lazy, doing more research and gaining more knowledge wouldn’t help their cause,
hear hear. more sharing of research and trading strategies, less lazy senior arseholes keeping everything to themselves.
lol, what do you need to hear your lordship, you are the greatest, whoever you are, you are the best,
how are these low volume downticks for everyone
if after all the stimulus, and good figures, markets are struggling, it doesn’t look much good sign for things to come,
http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=2818333
They have been posting such openings for years, efc etc,
http://www.powned.tv/nieuws/buitenland/2012/05/bankiers_dwingen_bonussen_af.html
lol, CB had it coming, written contracts mean for something after all,