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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


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

1. Raymond Tierney III
Bloomberg
2. Richard Prager
BlackRock
3. Chris Isaacson
BATS Global Markets
4. Jonathan Ross
KCG Holdings
5. Bradley Peterson
Nasdaq
6. Brad Levy
Markit
7. Dan Keegan
Citi
8. Ronald DePoalo
Fidelity Institutional
9. Raj Mahajan
Goldman Sachs Group
10. Ari Studnitzer
CME Group
11. Mayur Kapani
Intercontinental Exchange
12. Gerald O’Connell
CBOE Holdings
13. Nicholas Themelis
MarketAxess Holdings
14. Gil Mandelzis
EBS BrokerTec (ICAP)
15. Bill Chow and Richard Leung
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
16. Rob Park
IEX Group
17. Philip Weisberg
Thomson Reuters
18. John Mackay (Mack) Gill
MillenniumIT
19. Robert Cornish
International Securities Exchange
20. Paul Hamill
Citadel Securities
21. Eric Noll
Convergex
22. Tyler Moeller and Joshua Walsky
Broadway Technology
23. Rishi Nangalia
REDI Holdings
24. Veronica Augustsson
Cinnober Financial Technology
25. Alasdair Haynes
Aquis Exchange
26. Manoj Narang
Mana Partners
27. Gaurav Suri
Arcesium
28. Robert Sloan
S3 Partners
29. Anton Katz and Stephen Mock
AQR Capital Mgmt
30. Stu Taylor
Algomi
31. D. Keith Ross Jr.
PDQ Enterprises
32. Donal Byrne
Corvil
33. Alfred Eskandar
Portware
34. R. Cromwell Coulson
OTC Markets Group
35. Masayuki Hosaka
Rakuten
36. Peter Maragos and David Karat
Dash Financial
37. Amar Kuchinad
Electronifie
38. Jennifer Nayar
SR Labs
39. Dave Snowdon
Metamako
40. Dan Raju
Tradier

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