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The seven dwarfs

104 comments / January 1, 2010
Reading yesterday’s news on the remains of Van der Moolen in the Financieele Dagblad. Turns out at least seven spin-off’s have been created from the wrecked company. One may wonder how many of the seven dwarfs will survive in 2010. Fairy tales usually have a happy ending, so maybe we could say “and they lived happily ever after”..

Caerus

Formed by the ten traders who left the firm before the the company asked for credit protection and went bankrupt. You’ll need to be pretty self-confident and have deep pockets to leave a trading house to start your own in the middle of the year. Newspaper is very enthusiast on their license of primary market maker – but this is only the license for AEX index options as far as I know.

Location: Beursplein 5

Alphabay

Don’t wish to look back at the past. Makes sense because this is the company is founded by the former managers of Van der Moolen. The newspaper lost track of the amount of traders working for Alphabay. First reporting 13 traders, later suggesting a total headcount of 15 of which 8 traders. Sounds like a serious overhead problem. Informal sources indicate this number of 8 traders is exaggerated.
Location: Singel

EXT

Stands for Europe X Trading, comparable with it’s mother Asia X Trading. Complicated story of traders based in Hong Kong, Geneva and Amsterdam. Sounds difficult to make this work as a small start up venture, but the traders behind this venture have good reputation.

Location: Beursplein 5

Aespen

Nothing new here. Well-known and reliable broker like it has always been in the past. Same brokers, same company name. Just a change in ownership. The chairman of Van der Moolen during it’s last days (Peter Zwart) is today some kind of non-executive board member at Aespen.
Location: unknown

CIT

The German / Swiss operation of Van der Moolen continues as CIT, which stands for Cologne Independent Traders. Large operation with a lot of traders (17, according to the press), which makes it by far the biggest spin-off. They published their software source code on their website.

Location: Cologne, Germany

WEBB Traders

A little odd company, as the owners didn’t suffer from the fall of VDM. They were fired by Richard den Drijver before the company went down. According to the newspaper both managers won a court case against VDM, and with the financial compensation they financed their start-up. Based in the well known former Optiver building next to central station. The only company with a serious website so far. Something with bridges.
Location: former Optiver building

London
The former VDM traders in London also must have started something. But that’s all the newspaper can tell about it.

(Newspaper story here, in Dutch)

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2009 expiration

27 comments / December 26, 2009
The year 2009 is almost gone, and trading has been fairly quiet as usual during the last weeks. Plenty of time to look back on the events of 2009.

All Options to buy Saen Options

One of the few main events this year happened straight in the first month. January 28th the market maker All Options announced to take over rival firm Saen Options. The latter had experienced a troubled 2008 due Volkswagen positions, and All Options was happy to buy some television airtime with the Beursplein 5 former trading pit.
Clan warfare remained low among traders, but the merged firm fired scores of employees in the fall of 2009, including some well known senior positions. The results of All Options didn’t benefit however, and the traders will receive no bonus over 2009.

AEX drops to 1995 levels
A great buying opportunity happened end of february / beginning of march this year. The AEX index dropped below the 200 points level, last seen in July 1995. As we all know, the financial melt down didn’t occur, and the index climbed some 72% to levels above the 330.

Van der Moolen early signs of trouble followed by bankruptcy
Analyzing the VDM quarterly report with some general derivative trader common sense was the first post on this company. Still patting myself on my shoulder re-reading my post on their weird dividend losses. One month later it turned out the balance sheet of the firm clearly carried some obvious weak spots. Traders left the firm to form Caerus Trading, and a few weeks later VDM was dead and buried. Other remains of the firm continue in several new ventures.

Optiver – Binck deal still allowed

The initiative by Optiver and Binck to route all Dutch retail flow straight to the books of Optiver did absolutely gain momentum this year. The market maker lobby couldn’t reach a consensus and has no opinion on the largest and most dangerous threat to the rest of the market. The financial watchdog AFM and other relevant institutions don’t interfere (yet). Nobody trusts Optiver, and Optiver won’t trust their employees. Mobile phones are banned at the office.

Last & least

And, last and least, this site Amsterdamtrader will see it’s very first anniversary next week. Thanks to everyone who helped with content and grammar in the posts, thanks to the contributors in the comments and the visitors of course. Everyone is invited for the Amsterdamtrader-one-year-anniversary party on January 8th in the Beurs van Berlage. Cheers!
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The market maker lobby

26 comments / December 11, 2009
APTThis very professional logo with the green circles will not encounter a lot of recognition among the members of the Amsterdam derivative trading society. It belongs to the APT (we can read, yes). APT stands for the Association of Proprietary Traders, but it’s not very clear what they’re doing.

 

The APT is the successor of the MMA, the Market Maker Association, and it should be defending the rights of the Dutch trading firms. Their headquarters are located somewhere in a suburb of Gouda, that’s one hour by car to get there from Amsterdam. It appears the APT hires someone who runs all the operations, as she’s doing the same thing for several other branch organizations. The chairman of the APT is someone from the completely unknown firm Cross Options. Maybe a relatively old company, but as far as I know without any serious market presence.

 

Retro APT website

And yes, the APT has a website too. As a sparring partner of all kinds of governmental bodies, it’s important to have a professional look. Well, here it is. Apart from the general my-first-website look and feel, the content is even worse. And that’s a serious matter for an association trying to sell their story to other organizations and institutions.

First of all, everything is in Dutch and outdated. Under the link of “actueel” there’s a messy text with topics ranging from 2004 till 2009 – but that’s hard to say because most text contains no reference to any given year. There’s a link to a scan of a letter from the Dutch tax authorities which reveals a year of 2004. There have been two meetings in 2007, a few in 2009 and apparently none in 2008.

Worse than the website

Investigating the date of certain topics, I spotted a letter from the APT to the financial watchdog the AFM. They are against something unclear, but it has been way too much effort to write a decent letter. If you write this kind of lousy formal letters, maybe you shouldn’t be representing other companies at all. Mister Kruisinga and Kaemingk may have great capabilities, but writing letters isn’t one of them.

Optiver/Binck

There’s no reference to the joint-venture of Optiver and Binck, where all Dutch retail orderflow is about to be channelled to he books of Optiver ; cornering the market and threatening the future of all other market participants with “TOM“. After some questions, the APT decided to have no view on “innovative” developments with the sector. They couldn’t reach a consensus. That’s hardly a surprise with an APT member like Optiver. Any market maker association or representation ignoring this threat can’t be taken serious and should be relieved from their duty.

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For sale : cheap car, hardly used, good condition

47 comments / November 26, 2009
The title says it all. Somebody definitely needs to get rid of his brand new Renault Scenic with license plate 16-JNZ-5. Hardly ever used and in perfect condition. As good as new.
The car is part of the remaining assets of Van der Moolen, to be auctioned somewhere in January 2010. Together with the other rather unimpressive VDM cars (the Lexus is a nice exception).

The curious fact is the car had been bought by the firm on August 5th, just five days before seeking creditor protection. Five days including a weekend. Who has been driving these cars? Can’t imagine traders to be driving this kind of vehicles..

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Euronext in short term illiquids

20 comments / November 19, 2009

Euronext is trumpeting the introduction of even more expiration months in ranks of certain illiquid stock options. “Supply creates demand” seems to be the spirit at the exchange.

The new short term expiration months will be the first month, a second month and a third month – next to existing the four quarterly expirations. Introduction will be November the 23th.

The following option classes will see the introduction of new expiration months:

Aalberts, BAM, Binck, Boskalis, Fugro, Heijmans, Logica, Océ, SNS, USG, Vopak and the good old Wessanen.

Good luck for all market makers in Vopak. After the weekend you’ll be quoting:

dec ’09, jan ’10, feb ’10, mar ’10, jun’10 and sep’10. Cheers!

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