Considering San Francisco is the home of numerous world-class companies and countless other fast-growing startups, it’s no surprise that the city plays a major role on the nation’s financial stage. Known as “The Wall Street of the West Coast,” San Francisco’s Financial District boasts several of the city’s Fortune 500 companies including Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab. So while tourists flock to the district’s famous Transamerica Pyramid and Union Square, mathematicians and analysts are busy at work solving some of the world’s most complex financial problems.
Financial Trading Firms in San Francisco You Should Know
- BTIG
- Dexterity Capital
- Group One Trading
- Jefferies
- Wolverine
Among the many companies situated in the heart of the Financial District are some of the nation’s most active and influential trading firms. These firms specialize in a variety of sectors and operate on a global scale. From benchmark algorithms to futures and commodities, there’s no shortage of financial expertise at these eight trading firms in San Francisco.
Location: Financial District
Focus: Proprietary Trading, Asset Management, Order Execution Services, Tech Solutions
What they do: Wolverine is a financial institution that specializes in proprietary trading, asset management, order execution services and technology solutions. Wolverine’s proprietary trading group engages in market making and valuation arbitrage across global markets. The group provides continuous bid and offer quotations on a wide range of listed securities and derivatives. Additionally, the group offers execution services, asset management and securities.
Location: Financial District
Focus: Institutional Sales + Trading, Investment Banking, Research + Strategy, Outsource Trading, Prime Brokerage Services
What they do: With 18 offices across the globe, BTIG is a financial services firm that specializes in institutional sales and trading, investment banking, research and strategy and outsource trading and prime brokerage services. Under the umbrella of institutional sales and trading, the firm offers a variety of services, including equity sales and trading, event-driven trading, outsource trading, futures and commodities trading and foreign exchange trading. In terms of outsource trading, BTIG works directly with portfolio managers and chief operating officers to manage broker commissions and execute on their behalf, supplementing an in-house trading desk, handling overflow on heavy trading days and providing coverage when in-house traders are unavailable.
Location: Financial District / The East Cut
Focus: Capital Markets
What they do: Cutler Group, LP is a derivative trading firm that combines mathematics, technology and finance to be the one of the most cost-effective producer of liquidity in the U.S. exchange traded equity option space. The firm ultimately aims to create a unified system that efficiently operates across electronically traded derivative product.
Location: Financial District
Focus: Cryptocurrency, Proprietary Trading
What they do: Dexterity Capital is a quantitative trading firm with a focus on cryptocurrency markets. Due to the uniqueness of cryptocurrency markets, the firm has built a proprietary trading platform with a “crypto first” philosophy. Dexterity Capital’s one-of-a-kind technology, coupled with quantitative analysis, enables them to trade smarter and faster than other firms of various sizes.
Location: Financial District
Focus: Proprietary Trading, Market Making, Technology
What they do: Group One Trading, LP is a proprietary trading firm dedicated to making markets in U.S. equity options by leveraging superior risk management and software development. The firm’s traders provide competitive liquidity across a broad range of securities, managing portfolios of several hundred issues and simultaneously streaming quotes across multiple exchanges. Group One’s trading platform is designed to handle massive amounts of data in real time and is optimized to meet tight performance requirements.
Location: Financial District
Focus: Capital Markets + Financial Advisory Services, Institutional Brokerage + Securities Research, Asset + Wealth Management
What they do: With offices in over 30 cities across the globe, Jefferies is a global investment banking firm that provides clients with capital markets and financial advisory services, institutional brokerage and securities research, and asset and wealth management. The firm’s electronic trading arm includes a global electronic trading platform with algorithmic access spanning 45 countries, as well as a full suite of liquidity-seeking and benchmark-tracking algorithms working to minimize market impact, improve trading performance and add consistency to the trading process. Jefferies’ other services encompass investment banking, fixed income, asset and wealth management and research and strategy.
Location: Financial District
Focus: Quantitative Trading, Game Theory, Decision Making in Trading
What they do: Susquehanna International Group, LLP is a global quantitative trading firm that commits its own capital to trade financial products around the world. Boasting a team of traders, quants, developers and systems engineers, the firm builds virtually all of its own trading technology. In conjunction with quantitative researchers and developers, the firm’s quantitative traders create and monitor complex algorithms in almost all financial products. The firm’s trading expertise encompasses derivatives, commodities, energy, equities, bonds and foreign exchange. The firm also specializes in game theory and decision making in trading, including confirmation bias, anchoring, availability bias and framing.
Location: Financial District
Focus: Global Equity Trading, Equity Sales + Research, Public Finance, Asset Management, Fixed Income Services, Debt Capital Markets
What they do: Established in 1895, Piper Jaffray is an investment bank and institutional securities firm that specializes in trading. The firm’s global equities trading team is defined by its substantial investments in proprietary tools, dark pool connections and algorithms, which enhance their high-touch services with advanced low-touch implementation strategies and technology. The firm boasts an expansive suite of trading technologies, which integrate high-touch, low-touch and programmatic technology-driven strategies. Piper Jaffray’s equity trading services encompass a variety of sectors, including consumer, energy, healthcare, diversified industrials and technology. The firm also specializes in equity research and sales, fixed income insights and corporate and venture services.
