Advanced/Professional volatility trading

Well, the easiest way to price it "value-added" would be to charge a license fee for every execution, maybe with some cap. If you make it compatible with multiple brokers, bla bla bla... profit will ensue

 

RMS would be worse

At least with excel, the desk maintains control without having to kowtow to some tech czar's arbitrary release schedule.

Some do Oz from HK, unfortunately.

So, what are Tibra & friends up to? Have heard IMC's been shrinking. (Not enough profit ensuing.)

 

I doubt so, the same guys do programming for Excel usually. A rare trader is able to put together such a complex spreadsheet on his own.

Yep, profits are falling. IMC closed down their HK office. Tibra's profits are going down as well, heard it's their second year with almost no bonuses.

 

True that.

Second year, ha, on low low bases too. And they wonder why they can't retain ppl.

Tough times out at Bondi Jnctn, and then there's that court case

 

Sounds like you're in Oz

 

Yeah, but staying clear of those funny prop shops near the old colo.

Your comment "Doing some MM stuff only to collect rebates to fund index arb." confused me. Makes sense in HK wrt tax, but here? Dunno what that's about.

 

I think though times is the new normal for the industry. From what I hear, bonuses are going to be slightly down to flat across the sell-side and in the places where they are bumping people up slightly, it's because last year they cut them massively.

Anyway, talking of advanced/professional volatility trading, one thing that I am surprised about is how lousy the historical analysis services/packages are. Even Livevol data leaves a lot to be desired, especially considering the cost and other services are just as crappy. One would imagine that someone could have spent some time cleaning and parameterizing the data and sticking it into so some smart database framework with a real programming language attached - once that's done you can keep renting this to hedge funds and prop shops.

 

I think that lack of accessible data may be part of your edge

Edit: The guys out at Bondi Jnctn might be a special case. There's an ongoing battle between a group of traders and their ex-firm. Some ugly attitudes and animosity. Even their broker code is an insult to the old place. Do or die fight on in the courts currently. Intellectual property case. Stole code etc. Emails written in disappearing ink etc.. small bonuses for different reasons.

 

It's about rebates on exchange fees, nothing to do with tax. ASX charges less if you are a MM.

 

Nothing to do with options, per se, but this is actually a shocking truth across markets. For a massive oligopolistic industry characterized by fat margins and large IT spending, the general state of the infrastructure is piss poor, IMHO.