Flow Traders

Flow Traders was founded in Amsterdam in 2004 and built its business on what most firms treated as plumbing: exchange-traded products. It became one of the biggest names in ETF and ETP market making, first in Europe and then globally, by quoting thousands of listings other firms found too fragmented to bother with. In 2015 it did something almost no proprietary trading firm does: it went public, listing on Euronext Amsterdam.

That listing makes Flow unusually exposed. Its fortunes rise and fall with market volatility, and because it answers to shareholders, those swings are public, the blockbuster years and the quiet ones alike. From its ETP core it has broadened into other asset classes, and it runs its own engineering from a technology hub in Cluj, Romania, acquired in 2008. For a market maker, it looks a lot like a listed software company.