The 2016 Trading Technology 40: Peter Maragos and David Karat

No. 36 Peter Maragos and David Karat, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Marketing Officer, Dash Financial

< The 2016 Trading Technology 40

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36
Peter Maragos and David Karat
Chief Executive Officer and Chief Marketing Officer
Dash Financial
PNR

Best execution is particularly tough in options markets, which generate vast quantities of data in an increasingly complex trading environment, with 14 exchanges now operating in the U.S. “The buy side is under increasing pressure to understand best execution,” Peter Maragos says. “Essential to this is a comprehension of order-routing practices and how algorithms and routers meet challenges relating to performance and liquidity capture.” To Maragos and David Karat, co-founders of Dash Financial, these circumstances cry out for a neutral, technology-driven agency brokerage that serves the interests of client firms. They started to put the pieces together in 2009. Maragos, now 39, had spent about seven years as CEO of trading systems developer SDS Financial Technologies; Karat, 43, was with Investment Technology Group at that time, followed by a year with Credit Suisse. They laid the groundwork for Dash, in part with assets from SDS, in stealth mode and launched their New York–based venture in 2011. Touting what its founders call bespoke innovation, Dash developed a suite of algorithms and trading tools tailored to options market microstructure, as well as deliverables including “full transparency at the order level,” Karat says, taking advantage of technological advances like the HTML5 cross-platform programming language. “We crafted the most intelligent routers to harness the shifting sands in options markets at optimal economics for the client,” says Maragos, adding that Dash executes about 6 percent of all U.S. daily options volume. The company’s innovation prowess is literally on display in Dash360, a highly graphical data-visualization dashboard released in January that, in Maragos’s words, “redefines transparency in the U.S. equity and options markets.” Karat adds that institutional traders get “the full picture into how their orders are being routed and executed.”


2016 Trading Technology 40

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1. Raymond Tierney III
Bloomberg

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2. Richard Prager
BlackRock

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3. Chris Isaacson
BATS Global Markets

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4. Jonathan Ross
KCG Holdings

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5. Bradley Peterson
Nasdaq

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6. Brad Levy
Markit

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7. Dan Keegan
Citi

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8. Ronald DePoalo
Fidelity Institutional

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9. Raj Mahajan
Goldman Sachs Group

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10. Ari Studnitzer
CME Group

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11. Mayur Kapani
Intercontinental Exchange

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12. Gerald O’Connell
CBOE Holdings

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13. Nicholas Themelis
MarketAxess Holdings

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14. Gil Mandelzis
EBS BrokerTec (ICAP)

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15. Bill Chow and Richard Leung
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

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16. Rob Park
IEX Group

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17. Philip Weisberg
Thomson Reuters

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18. John Mackay (Mack) Gill
MillenniumIT

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19. Robert Cornish
International Securities Exchange

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20. Paul Hamill
Citadel Securities

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21. Eric Noll
Convergex

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22. Tyler Moeller and Joshua Walsky
Broadway Technology

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23. Rishi Nangalia
REDI Holdings

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24. Veronica Augustsson
Cinnober Financial Technology

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25. Alasdair Haynes
Aquis Exchange

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26. Manoj Narang
Mana Partners

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27. Gaurav Suri
Arcesium

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28. Robert Sloan
S3 Partners

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29. Anton Katz and Stephen Mock
AQR Capital Mgmt

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30. Stu Taylor
Algomi

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31. D. Keith Ross Jr.
PDQ Enterprises

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32. Donal Byrne
Corvil

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33. Alfred Eskandar
Portware

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34. R. Cromwell Coulson
OTC Markets Group

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35. Masayuki Hosaka
Rakuten

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36. Peter Maragos and David Karat
Dash Financial

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37. Amar Kuchinad
Electronifie

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38. Jennifer Nayar
SR Labs

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39. Dave Snowdon
Metamako

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40. Dan Raju
Tradier


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