You realize how incongruous it is for a trader to be begging for a monopoly? Capitalism is the most inefficient form of economy....except all the others that have been tried! Ironically you can find as many or more threads complaining about the monopoly ICE has and uses to charge high data fees and limit product offerings, right here on ET. Overall exchanges tend toward a monopoly or a few players with tacit collusion, it's the nature of the increasing returns from liquidity, so we can expect consolidation over time. Not sure there's a good reason to rush that though, you might not like getting what you ask for.
Income and profit are two very different things. It takes a lot of income to earn a dollar in profit in the retail brokerage space, where as a small team of software devs and a couple traders can run an almost infinitely scalable MM operation. One of my pet peeves how often people get distracted by the big shiny income number when they think they're looking at profit.
That is old news: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...kers-selling-timber-hill.304185/#post-4356119 That they will quit was already announced and in the making.
That was already announced a while ago that they will get rid of TH, shutdown or sale...nothing to be seen here...
one person, one person in this whole thread gets it. That is about the only impact this will have. Zero market impact, zero impact on options liquidity. The reason they get out is because they can't compete with the top shops on the technology level anymore. Simple as that.
So I am possibly well behind on the news front, so forgive me for being ignorant. However, if memory serves, there was a time when Timber Hill was bigger than Citadel and was #1 in terms of mkt share. So at some point in the past they used to be able to compete with, and even do better than, the top shops on the technology level, right? Of course, that was a few years ago, so have they lost a lot of ground since then?
Sorry, I did not mean to have come across like that...you are right, but then Citadel attracted the interest of a large investment bank to team up in terms of algorithmic solutions cooperation. I forgot which bank it was, Credit Suisse possibly? Their dark pool (Citadel Connect) is also attracting vastly more client interest than TH's. But that is only in the tier 2 or 3 algo/dma department. TH has never even scratched the surface of the tier 1 names such as Virtu. I have never read of TH being part of any uhf data transmission project so I am pretty certain they never played in that league. It is actually hard to believe for me that they survived this long (TH) given how their technology stack is vastly inferior to some of the top players.
Right, so since I last looked, they must have really really dropped the ball (willingly or not is immaterial). Makes sense, thanks...
apparently, what really interests me is what they plan with their prime/institutional brokerage desk. Are they looking to expand, add services...