Author Archives: jsaluzzi

Mr. Saluzzi co-heads the Themis trading desk. In addition to his extensive experience in equities trading, Mr. Saluzzi is an expert in electronic trading. Prior to Themis, Mr. Saluzzi worked for more than nine years at Instinet Corporation, where he headed the team responsible for equity sales and trading for major hedge fund accounts. Mr. Saluzzi graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an MBA in Finance. Mr. Saluzzi received a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance from New York University.

Equity market structure caters to interests of the few

David Weild knows a little something about our capital markets.  He was previously Vice Chairman of Nasdaq and now runs his own firm, Capital Markets Advisory.  He is also a senior advisor To Grant Thornton.  David and his partner, Ed Kim, have written extensively about how there has been an IPO crisis going on in [...]

Barrons’ Abelson chimes in on HFT

We have recently pointed out that many more voices have been weighing in on our fragmented equity market structure.  Firms like Southeastern, Invesco, Principal, Iridian and Baron Asset are all well respected, established institutional players that have joined the chorus of voices and are starting to demand action from our regulators.  The chorus got even [...]

Media wakes up to HFT concerns

Ok, who woke up the media and told them about what has been going on in the stock market over the past two years?  After being one of the few critical voices trying to be heard over a chorus of HFT cheerleaders, we at Themis Trading have been pleasantly surprised with all the critical attention [...]

Latency Arbitrage revisited

Some of you may recall a white paper that we wrote a few months back titled “Latency Arbitrage” :
http://www.themistrading.com/article_files/0000/0519/THEMIS_TRADING_White_Paper_–_Latency_Arbitrage_–_December_4__2009.pdf 
In this paper, we detailed the effects of having two separate quotation systems.  The fast system which the HFT’s use is constructed with high speed, co-located computers that have direct access to data feeds supplied by the exchanges.  [...]

GM and Creative Destruction

 
 “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”  -Ronald Reagan 
 We thought the above quote was appropriate considering the delay of the GM IPO filing.  The bankruptcy of GM was a national [...]

Themis Trading Calls for a Moratorium on the Approval of All New US Equity Exchanges and Market Centers

 Themis Trading today called for a moratorium on the approval all new US equity exchanges and market centers by US regulatory authorities until the causes of the May 6, 2010 “flash crash” have been determined. 
“Most industry professionals generally agree that something in our current market structure caused May 6th and unless we get to the [...]

Locusts, HFT and Friday the 13th

If you live up in the Northeast, you are all too familiar with sounds of August.  The crickets and cicadas have been serenading us with their nightly tunes for a few weeks now.  A distant cousin of the cicada is the locust.  A locust is much more destructive than a cicada though.  Locusts are solitary [...]

Sen Schumer echoes suggestions of HFT industry

Here is how the press release was titled: “SCHUMER TO SEC: IMPOSE TOUGHER RULES ON HIGH- FREQUENCY TRADERS TO CURB STOCK PRICE VOLATILITY AND PREVENT ANOTHER FLASH CRASH”  http://schumer.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=327160&  We hadn’t seen much from Sen. Schumer on the high frequency trading debate since last summer when he proposed banning flash orders (which by the way still [...]

What costs $1.8 billion dollars and people go there all day to gamble?

What costs $1.8 billion dollars and people  go there all day to gamble?  If you answered the latest Las Vegas casino, you are incorrect.  The correct answer is the investment in data centers last year from equity trading firms.  According to our buddies at the Tabb Group, equity firms spent $1.8 billion last year on [...]

CSCO: Another halt because of erroneous trades

CSCO was halted for 5 minutes today because of 7 trades that went off between $24.13 and $26.00.  It looks like these trades were executed on the NYSE Amex.  If you recall from our post the other day, NYSE Amex is now trading NASDAQ stocks as of July 12th.  They are using a model of [...]