Kronos Focuses High-Frequency Trading Amid Market Volatility
While facing global financial market volatility, Kronos Research, one of the world's top ten cryptocurrency quant trading teams, focuses on high-frequency trading (HFT) strategies.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak this year and intense global market fluctuations, investors have begun positioning themselves in hedging assets. However, panic can lead to erroneous investment judgments. Therefore, emphasising discipline, real-time decision-making, avoiding subjective emotional influences, and accurately predicting market trends through "quantitative trading" has become a prominent practice. Quantitative trading has recently become a focus in a highly volatile cryptocurrency investment market. Within just two years, Kronos Research, a cryptocurrency quant trading team specialising in "high-frequency trading (HFT)" strategies, has become one of the top ten cryptocurrency trading teams globally by volume.
In addition to expanding their business and launching the dark pool platform "WOOTRADE," they are also expanding recruitment efforts in Taiwan this year to accelerate the development of quantitative trading in Taiwan and support cryptocurrency exchanges.
Kronos Research leverages its advantages in high-frequency trading strategies and quantitative technology, minimising the impact of overall market trends. Their daily trading volume reaches as high as $2 billion USD.
"Quantitative trading" is an investment method that uses mathematical models, algorithms, historical data simulations, and computer technology for automated trading. It has nearly half a century of history in European and American markets. With the rapid development of financial technology in Taiwan in recent years, Taiwan's investment market has also begun to pay attention to this emerging technological investment method. An investment trust recently announced plans to launch Taiwan's first quantitative trading fund this year. Kronos Research, focusing on the development potential of quantitative trading in the cryptocurrency market, uses artificial intelligence and machine learning-based technologies. They specialise in high-frequency trading strategies that require robust technical capabilities, combining trend tracking (CTA), arbitrage, subjective trading, and other strategies. They provide investors with high-quality quantitative trading investment services through rapid and real-time market data collection and signal analysis.
Mark Pimentel and Jack Tan, co-founders of Kronos Research, come from Wall Street and Chicago, respectively. Mark focuses on high-frequency trading strategies, bringing extensive experience leading high-frequency quantitative trading teams. Jack, a senior subjective trader, has accumulated years of professional financial trading experience at French Paris Bank and Deutsche Bank. Mark Pimentel, founder and CEO of Kronos Research, said: "Our initial goal was to bring more diverse investment opportunities to the market. For example, given the severe fluctuations in the cryptocurrency market earlier this year, Kronos Research's products, with their emphasis on high-frequency trading strategies, can seek maximum profit for investors in milliseconds, making them less susceptible to overall market trends. The team also looks forward to expanding into traditional financial markets, continually optimizing high-frequency trading strategies, and introducing more new strategies, providing investors with a better investment experience."
Kronos Research is currently focusing on the mainland China and Southeast Asian markets. In just two years since its establishment, it has achieved impressive results, managing tens of millions of dollars in digital assets. Its daily trading volume on major global exchanges such as Binance, Huobi, and OKEX can reach between $500 million to $2 billion USD, consistently ranking among the top ten globally. For example, their flagship product, the Kronos Olympus Fund, a multi-strategy fund, adapts quantitative trading strategies according to market conditions. Despite recent market volatility, the fund has not experienced any retractions since its launch, maintaining positive monthly returns.
Recognizing Taiwan's mature technology talent and semiconductor industry development, Kronos Research has chosen Taiwan as its headquarters and research and development center. They consider the technical team as the core of the company's development, with technical personnel accounting for over 50%. This year, they aim to expand the team to 60 members and continue to expand their presence in Asia. They attract outstanding engineering talent with an open corporate culture, flat organizational structure, generous salary, and benefits package, offering salaries as high as NT$5 million annually, aiming to recruit excellent quantitative trading technical partners.
Hank Huang, Director of Trading Technology at Kronos Research, said: "Global token rating agency TokenInsight's 2019 'Global Cryptocurrency Quantitative Fund Industry Research Report' highlighted that quantitative trading funds are one of the few profitable investment targets in bear markets, offering advantages such as relatively stable returns and manageable risks. Kronos Research identified this market opportunity early on, focusing on researching and analyzing signal compositions and cultivating a large number of technical members. They quickly became one of the top ten teams globally by trading volume. We also believe that there is considerable development potential for quantitative trading in cryptocurrency, so this year we hope to attract more proactive and innovative engineering talent to join Kronos Research's R&D center in Taiwan, jointly promoting a more complete and mature cryptocurrency ecosystem and driving the development of Taiwan's quantitative trading field!"
Additionally, Kronos Research continues to root itself deeply in campuses, mining outstanding students. They are in their third year of the "Campus Ambassador Program," recruiting students interested in financial technology and cryptocurrency fields. Serving as a bridge between Kronos Research and major universities in Taiwan, this program assists in promoting knowledge of cryptocurrency and quantitative trading fields. The "Kronos Research Campus Ambassador Program" offers mentorship programs and priority interviews for full-time positions, aiming to attract more students to enter this emerging industry. They continue to provide lectures, corporate visits, career counseling, and other opportunities on campuses. In the future, they plan to collaborate with universities such as National Taiwan University and National Chiao Tung University and organize hackathons to recruit outstanding technical and engineering talent.
With high liquidity and trading depth, dark pool platform WOOTRADE assists cryptocurrency exchanges in enhancing market competitiveness. While the size of the cryptocurrency trading market has surpassed $200 billion USD, it remains relatively small compared to traditional financial markets. Currently, there are over a thousand cryptocurrency exchanges of various sizes globally, with retail investor traffic mainly concentrated on large exchanges. This has led to issues such as "asset liquidity and fragmentation," "difficulties in reducing transaction fees," and "inadequate technical foundations for small and medium-sized exchanges," posing significant operational challenges for cryptocurrency exchanges in the market.
In view of this, Kronos Research's subsidiary brand, "WOOTRADE," has recently launched a dark pool platform. Exchanges can connect to the WOOTRADE order book via API, utilizing WOOTRADE's backend technology to achieve large-scale trading in a non-public environment, enjoying transaction liquidity and zero transaction fee services. Jack Tan, founder and CEO of Kronos Research, said: "With the support of Kronos Research's trading volume, WOOTRADE's main advantage lies in its high liquidity and trading depth, which can assist exchanges and institutional clients in providing better trading results to their users and tapping into the long-term trend of reducing or even eliminating transaction fees, further enhancing the market competitiveness of exchanges themselves. Currently, WOOTRADE has collaborated with six exchanges and other institutions, looking forward to mutual growth and cooperation with more cryptocurrency partners in the future."
