Grasshopper

When Singapore's SIMEX trading pits went dark, John Lin, a former floor trader there, opened a window into electronic markets. Grasshopper grew out of that pivot in 2006, staffed not with Chicago or Amsterdam prop veterans but with local university graduates and technologists drawn from gaming, defense, and engineering.

The firm is an Asian specialist by design, a designated market maker in Japan, Singapore, and on the CME, and more recently in Malaysian, Thai, and Vietnamese markets. It bet on FPGAs running inside the exchange rather than microwave towers, arguing that Asia's single-venue, lower-information markets reward that choice. Positions last seconds to minutes and the book is hedged overnight, with edge coming from turnover an order of magnitude above comparable quant shops.