After several months of reorganizing, KOR Trading has re-stepped out into the consultancy business as KOR Group. And now it is not only a consultancy for all things market structure, but KOR is now an official lobbying group to help promote equity market transparency and other industry interests.
KOR Group is backed by two equities industry powerhouses – Christopher Nagy and David Lauer. As both said in a recent interview with Traders, they are two great tastes that go great together. The two look to take their vast equity market experiences, Nagy from an execution perspective and Lauer from a technology view, and provide clients a complete and well-rounded view of the market from regulation to order routing – data presentation to advocacy.
Nagy is no stranger to the equity markets and a celebrity of sorts. As the KOR’s chief executive, he brings 25 years of retail trading and U.S. market structure experience to KOR Group. Previously, Nagy spent 12 years at TD Ameritrade, where he wore a trademark green sportcoat and/or tie as the managing director of order routing, sales strategy and market-data strategy and co-headed the company’s government relations efforts. He is also a registered lobbyist, currently serves on the FINRA Uniform Practice Code Committee and has previously held positions on the boards of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, the NYSE AMEX Options Exchange Board, the NASDAQ Quality of Markets Committee, the Security Traders Association Trading Issues Committee and the Options Industry Council Roundtable.
Lauer is also no stranger to the market. Serving as president and managing partner, Lauer?s specialty is his expertise in market structure and technology. In addition to spending many years as a quantitative analyst and trader at HFT desks, many of Lauer’s designs are the cornerstones of modern electronic trading system infrastructure. He has previously worked as a technology architect at Verdande Technology and IEX Group, as public advocate at Better Markets and in electronic trading at Allston Trading and Citadel Investment Group. A registered lobbyist, Lauer also sits on several for-profit and non-profit boards.
According to the two, the highly complex and ever-evolving financial services industry suffers from a lack of market transparency. In response to this issue, KOR Group was created as an advocacy and consultation firm dedicated to increasing transparency in financial services. The firm offers data-backed research and reporting, consulting, lobbying and market education workshops to its clients in order to help them navigate regulatory and compliance issues. The firm also looks to help firms become more technologically savvy and increase their profitability through a better understanding of market developments.
KOR Group’s Nagy and Lauer offer clients views from opposite ends of the spectrum; Nagy from the perspective of retail brokers and Lauer from financial technology and high-frequency trading (HFT) firms.
“Firms are overlooking or are ill equipped to understand changes to market policy and structure, regulatory requirements and technology offerings, putting them in dire straits in an increasingly competitive and fast-paced environment,” Nagy told Traders. “It made sense for both of us to team up tackle these issues together.”
PrairieSmarts Looks Forward, Back at Trading Risks
In the middle of 2013 the two formed KOR Trading, but were focused on other separate projects such as Prairie Smarts, a venture Nagy partnered in that marketed risk management software. As 2013 drew to a close, the two saw that market structure education and transparency were still underserved and decided to focus KOR’s resources there.
As Nagy put it, KOR Trading was rebranded and reformed in KOR Group and focused its efforts on filling the industry void for easy to access and easy to read data regarding market structure. The fledgling firm added staff and created a data repository on its website and began working on several initiatives to stir up market interest.
Lauer said that the firm is working on several areas that will build its online repository such as listing SRO filings, Rule 605 and Rule 605 filings. KOR takes these jargon-laden volumes and condenses them into easy to read summations, adds supporting data and graphics and presents them to clients. As Nagy noted, traders don’t always have the time to parse through these highly jargon and lengthy filings to find the data they need, quickly.
“This data or these filings haven’ been readily accessible to the public and some instances, places charge for the data,” Nagy said. “We don’t. We graph it up, add our insights by keeping our ears to the round in Washington and wrap it up into monthly publication.
And that monthly publication is titled “Market Insights.” Inside, Nagy said, lay the secrets of market structure and the firm tells the multiple stories in an easy to understand format. “We’re looking to build a coalition of like-minded firms and move market transparency and education forward.” It is available for a nominal charge.
Among some of the topics future issues will delve into are: modernizing Rule 605 and Rule 606, as well as the implementation of a “Trade At” rule. The first issue soft-launched in February and the Nagy/Lauer tag team are hitting all the market stops and visiting the exchanges, institutional investors, hedge funds and high-frequency traders to drum up interest.
So far the strategy seems to be working, as Nagy and Lauer are set to present several workshops at a large hedge fund next week. The topics include “Market Structure 101, Intro into HFTs” and “Order Routing Dynamics.”
“We’re putting out the data in a way that hasn’t been done yet and adding value where we can,” Nagy said.
