< The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Going with the Flow
4
Jonathan Ross
Chief Technology Officer
KCG Holdings
Last year: 4
Despite its technological prowess, KCG Holdings hasn’t been immune to the declining trading volumes and low volatility that have challenged U.S. equity market makers. The Jersey City, New Jersey–based company — created by the July 2013 merger of high frequency trading pioneer Getco and executing brokerage Knight Capital Group — saw its third-quarter 2014 market-making revenue fall more than 30 percent year over year, to $166.6 million. The drop, however, was partly offset by growth in its algorithmic trading business. KCG added 50 new institutional clients during the quarter thanks to its Opportunistic algorithm, based on a Getco legacy product that incorporates “micro market structure signals from the proprietary trading side,” says chief technology officer Jonathan Ross. In November, KCG introduced Catch, a new algorithm designed to adapt to changing market dynamics and capture liquidity. “In its hunt for liquidity, the algo analyzes market data, tick by tick, to make very quick predictions for what it thinks the alpha is for the next second, half second or whatever it believes the appropriate amount of time is,” explains Ross, 46, a onetime video game programmer who was CTO of the Nasdaq Stock Market before joining Getco in 2007. He says KCG is expanding its presence in fixed-income markets, which includes its BondPoint corporate debt marketplace. “We’re extremely good at execution, and we don’t need balance sheet to do it,” adds Ross. “Firms that really care about execution are going to be looking to us more and more.”
See also Ross' profile in the 2013 Trading Technology 40.
The 2015 Trading Technology 40
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2
3
4
5
Kevin Kometer
CME Group Richard Prager
BlackRock Raymond Tierney III
Bloomberg Tradebook Jonathan Ross
KCG Holdings Charles Vice
Intercontinental Exchange 6
7
8
9
10
Chris Isaacson
BATS Global Markets Bradley Peterson
Nasdaq OMX Group Brad Levy
MarkitSERV Dan Keegan
Citi Ronald DePoalo
Fidelity Institutional 11
12
13
14
15
Gerard Beatty
Goldman Sachs Group Gerald O'Connell
CBOE Holdings Brenda Hoffman
TMX Group Billy Hult
Tradeweb Markets Nicholas Themelis
MarketAxess Holdings 16
17
18
19
20
Bina Kalola
Bank of America Merrill Lynch Gil Mandelzis
EBS-BrokerTec (ICAP) Steven Randich
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Jerry Dobner
GFI Group Michael Liberman
BlueMountain Capital Management 21
22
23
24
25
Bill Chow and Richard Leung
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Jamie Selway
Investment Technology Group Brad Katsuyama
IEX Group John Mackay (Mack) Gill
MillenniumIT Jamil Nazarali
Citadel Execution Services 26
27
28
29
30
Robert Cornish
International Securities Exchange Tyler Moeller andJoshua Walksy
Broadway Technology Rishi Nangalia
REDI Holdings Manoj Narang
Tradeworx,
Thesys Technologies Oki Matsumoto
Monex Group 31
32
33
34
35
Alasdair Haynes
Aquis Exchange Veronica Augustsson
Cinnober Financial Technology Stu Taylor
Algomi Luís Otávio Saliba Furtado
BM&FBovespa Tal Cohen
Chi-X Global Holdings 36
37
38
39
40
Donal Byrne
Corvil R. Cromwell Coulson
OTC Markets Group Alfred Eskandar
Portware Richard Korhammer
SR Labs Hazem Dawani
OptionsCity Software
