Rosenblatt Securities Inc.

ROSENBLATT SECURITIES LAUNCHES LISTED OPTIONS TRADING

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

ROSENBLATT SECURITIES LAUNCHES LISTED OPTIONS TRADING

Boutique Institutional Broker Hires Veteran Four-Person Team

NEW YORK, NY, April 10, 2012 – Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce its entry into the listed options business. The firm has hired a four-person options sales, trading and strategy team, led by Gary Wishnow, Managing Director, Derivatives Sales & Trading. Joining Wishnow at Rosenblatt are: Steven Williams, Chief Derivatives & ETP Strategist; Fabian Amezaga, Vice President, Derivatives Sales & Trading; and trading clerk Matthew Stoeber.

In keeping with the firm’s longstanding commitment to helping institutional investors prosper with trusted, conflict-free advice and expert trade-execution services, Rosenblatt is pursuing a unique path in options. The new team combines a hybrid agency execution service with customized hedging strategy and portfolio-overlay models for institutions. When executing orders, Rosenblatt focuses first and foremost on speedily accessing displayed liquidity, and supplements this approach by working closely with leading options liquidity providers who can offer larger-than-average size for institutional customers. Importantly, the firm eschews the common industry practices of holding customer orders to avoid exchange fees and accepting payment-for-order-flow from options exchanges and other counterparties.

“We have wanted to get into the options business for a long time,” said Joe Gawronski, Rosenblatt’s President & COO. “Options market-structure has been taking on many of the characteristics of its cash-equities cousin, and more and more institutional investors are using options as part of alpha-generation and hedging strategies. In Gary and his team, we have finally found a group of talented people who share our vision for how an agency options desk should work — with the customer’s interests first and foremost.”

Wishnow’s extensive options-industry expertise includes stints as Head of Options Sales & Trading at FBN Securities and Vice President of Institutional Sales and Trading at Louis Capital Markets. He also has been a market maker at Knight Financial Products and a broker at ICAP. He has covered long/short, quantitative and special-situation accounts and brokered listed and OTC options in the US and Europe, as well as more-exotic energy & metal contracts. 

A recognized expert in derivatives pricing and structure, Williams comes to Rosenblatt from Ramius Capital Group, where he traded a long/short volatility book and structured hedges for other portfolio managers. Previously, he founded MOG, an options and ETF market making firm, and helped build the options sales and trading business at Oppenheimer & Company. He has consulted for governmental agencies, think tanks, and insurance companies on market structure, alpha generation and dynamic hedging solutions. 

A veteran options trader, Amezaga most recently served as co-head of the crude-oil options book at Citigroup Derivatives Markets, Inc. (CDMI). Previously, he was head of NYMEX floor operations and a global risk manager at CDMI, as well as a lead market maker in ETF options on the Pacific Exchange and an index-options market maker for Knight Financial Products.

Prior to joining Rosenblatt, Stoeber was with FBN Securities, where he worked in the corporate-access group. Wishnow, Williams and Stoeber work out of Rosenblatt’s New York headquarters; Amezaga is based in San Francisco.