Flow Traders is aiming for a valuation between €1.35 and €1.7 billion. That’s a lot, more than three times the market cap of a stock like Binck. It seems excessive for an IPO. After all the company made only 68m profit last year. That’s a multiple of more than 21. Not cheap. 2015 will beRead more
Optiver reported a record profit of € 246.9 million over 2014. This is better than the previous record from 2008 (€228 million) and once again they are the smartest kids in the room. They’ve beaten rival trading firms. Didn’t really come as a big surprise. Apart from an informed comment on this website, even tradersRead more
Optiver bullied the oil markets in the course of 24 days back in 2007. They used their software program named “The Hammer” to manipulate the close of oil futures. By doing so it made a sure profit, because it had build up big positions in TAS contracts (Trade At Settlement). See this four page pdfRead more
This is a guest post by Cornelius Müller, who works for Eurex / Deutsche Börse. It appeared first on brokerdealer.nl. This isn’t an academic paper, as you may expect the author is a supporter of a certain derivatives exchange. Still, he has valid points, nice charts and a great overview of the European option competition between exchanges.Read more
Some people never grow up. This 46 year old Dutch ex-IMC trader had his own little blast. Somewhere in Western Australia (according to the picture) he bought a Lexus car and got himself a license plate describing the activity of, well, let’s say, the best five minutes of silence a married man can ask for – andRead more
