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True Partner sold to Capitalists

11 comments / May 4, 2015

Aan jou met die hutDevelopments in greater China. The combined leftovers of Saen / All Options / IMC in Hong Kong has been sold to a Taiwan powerhouse.

Headed by Ralph van Put, these (mostly) Dutch derivative traders were combined in the firm True Partner. They want to be a true friend of everyone, doing everything. Asset management, software development, low latency gateways, consultancy, legal assistance, education, hedge fund : you name it, True Partner is doing it.

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Flash crash witch hunts

34 comments / April 24, 2015

brrrr spoofingYeah, they got him. The guy who single handedly caused the markets to crash, armed with his excel sheet and some spoofing algo’s. Most people in the market are sceptic.  This post by Adrian Ip is one of the best reactions I’ve read. Everything below is written by Adrian (who works for Thomson Reuters). Original source is here.

I was pretty surprised this morning to read about the arrest of a London based futures trader for allegedly causing the infamous flash crash of 2010. I immediately downloaded the publicly available criminal complaint to have a read of the detail (available here).

For those that don’t know, this type of stuff holds a special interest for me as prior to TR I worked for companies selling, designing, building and supporting highly automated low latency derivatives trading systems (yes, I know, I’m the devil), which we licensed to companies to trade with. I’ve got many years experience in investigating strange market patterns and designing systems and algos to both combat and take advantage of these conditions so I have some understanding of the situation.

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All Options recruiting, DeGiro expands to Asia

25 comments / April 23, 2015

It’s a bull market, jobs all over the place. We’re in the happy days again! Sometimes job offerings tell more than official press releases.

All Options expanding again

From the big firms to the small boutique market maker firm All Options. Boutique is their own term. It’s been a while, but the firm once employed some 300 people after it earned a legendary profit in Altana. In a true Icarus style the firm lost it’s wings while getting loaded with overhead. And crashed. After firing hundreds of people, it’s now appearing to be hiring again. Check.

Market making is not dead after all. Allard has always been the come back kid.

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IMC’s profit in perspective

6 comments / April 20, 2015

IMC Financial Markets have made a killing last year, but I’ve missed the point with the “steady growth“. Dusted off some old posts in the archive, got their yearly profits for the last seven years. Only 2011 was missing, but downloaded it from the kvk. Here, if you’re interested in old news.

To cut a long story short, there’s no such thing as a steady growing profit. A record year, sure : but only fractionally better than 2011. Included in the graph below is Optiver – to get a sense of perspective.

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IMC Financial Markets posts record profits

3 comments / April 18, 2015

IMC Financial MarketsIMC Financial Markets posted record profits of €165 million over 2014. That’s 30% more than the previous year. Especially the last four months of 2014 have been very good, according to Rob Defares in FD (nl, paywall). The trading revenue was 17% higher with €474 million.

Sharp growth since 2009

An annual profit of €165 million is a lot. To put in in perspective, only a few years ago the profits were €28m (2008) and €26m (2009). Since 2009 the results have shown a structural growth. We still have to wait for Optiver to release their earnings, but it’s reasonable to expect Optiver to beat IMC and report a profit in excess of €200 million.

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