New entrants
Commerzbank. Quoting as competitive market maker (cmm) in all ten large caps (ING, Unilever, Mittal etc). The proud new owner of a large chunk of Imtech is also CMM in a dozen small stocks. Don’t really understand why a large bank would like to quote Aalbers or Wereldhave. Worth mentioning, not quoting Imtech. No index trading.
Wolverine Trading UK. Similar to Commerzbank all ten target group big caps and a few smaller ones (like again Aalberts, USG, Wolters Kluwer). No index trading either.
Exit
Last year we had to say good bye to a lot of smaller firms. This time even All Options is throwing in the towel as liquidity provider. Used to be active in smaller stocks last year.
- Archelon Deutschland. Don’t know whether or not they exist elsewhere in Europe. Have been around for quite a long time.
- All Options. Rumors haven’t been good lately, and as of next week they stopped providing liquidity. Understood Allard won’t entirely stop trading, maybe shifting to market taker business model. After all they are still hiring.
- M & M Trading. Small shop shut the doors.
- The Hague Options. Disappeared from the list. Has always been a one man show probably.
- Smart Trading. Similar to the small ones above.
- Inhouse Trading. Similar to the small ones above.
- Goldman Sachs. Not very similar to the ones above. But not on the list anymore.
Who’s trading what
A few market makers are left providing most of the liquidity.
- Susquehanna is in a way the new All Options for Euronext. They quote everything when the rest of the market isn’t interested. The spotlight options, but also stuff like OCI.
- Srocca (/Fluhalp) is quoting everything, using their second license in the AEX as cmm. Just a very few options are left out (Arcadis, Nieuwe Steen etc).
- Webb is trading with their memberships Caerus II and II. Have left the index and Heineken, don’t know is this is related somehow. According to this source they just switched to T-Bricks. (“One of Amsterdam’s largest financial trading firm’s has appointed Tbricks” – right..)
- 323 Trading. Is primary market maker everywhere, including the AEX index.
- Optiver is active this time with three memberships. They have two entities for the large Dutch stocks, and one for Anheuser-Busch Inbev in Brussels. Not active in smaller stocks.
- IMC. Still active as PMM in nearly all stocks, including the index.
- Nino (Kemp) is active in half of the stocks, but not in the index.
- Liquid, Maven, Leopark, Market Wizards, Tibra, Cebulon and Better are only active in the index.
Here’s the pdf with the entire overview. While you’re at it, compare it with last year’s edition (here).
More
Blast from the past. Volkswagen and the mother of all short squeezes. This blog Priceonomics has reconstructed all events back in 2008. The squeeze has caused some post traumatic stress for dozens of options traders. (Via daskapital.nl)
Hong Kong based Algorithmic Trading Group (ATG) has finally become a member of Euronext, Tom Voute will open the market Friday the 31st. Search here for the video.