Capabilities
A research and development practice for markets that are still being built.
Kinetic Alpha works on the structural questions that determine whether a new market functions: what the reference price should be, how the contract should settle, how it should be collateralised, and who will actually use it once it lists.
The public research on this site is the working evidence — index methodology critiques, full contract specifications, margin and liquidation frameworks, and empirical work on primary market data. The same capability is available on a commissioned basis.
Practice areas
Four ways we engage.
Index & benchmark design
New asset classes need reference prices before they can be hedged. We design and stress-test the methodology — construction, constituent selection, settlement windows, governance — and we read other people's methodologies for the assumptions they relocate rather than remove.
- ▸Methodology design and documentation: construction rules, constituent eligibility, settlement window, calculation agent responsibilities
- ▸Independent methodology review against IOSCO benchmark principles — design, data sufficiency, and disclosure
- ▸Denominator and normalization analysis: what an index's unit choice embeds, and the basis it leaves tradeable
- ▸Comparative index diligence across competing benchmarks in the same underlying
Contract & product design
A contract is the hour, the tail, the collateral, and the settlement rule — all at once. We design instruments end to end and pressure-test whether the thing a venue is about to list will actually be used by hedgers rather than only by speculators.
- ▸Full contract specification: underlying definition, settlement mechanics, funding or financing design, position and price limits
- ▸Perpetual design — funding-rate construction, cash-carry versus premium anchoring, and the no-arbitrage relationships that discipline a complex
- ▸Physical delivery and EFP mechanics: basis tables, delivery specification, convergence behaviour
- ▸Event and prediction contract architecture, including tiering, benchmark-versus-single-name liquidity, and scoring-rule sizing
- ▸Pre-listing gap analysis: what is missing from a filed complex, and what listing it would be worth
Risk, margin & collateral
How a derivative is margined determines who can hold it, at what size, and against what else. This is the practice's deepest bench — clearing-house risk frameworks, collateral mobility, and what happens to a margin model in the tail rather than the mean.
- ▸Initial and maintenance margin framework design, including portfolio and cross-commodity offsets
- ▸Clearing-house risk architecture: default waterfalls, liquidation horizons, concentration and wrong-way risk
- ▸Collateral eligibility, haircut construction, and mobility analysis — including tokenized and non-traditional collateral
- ▸Liquidation and cascade analysis: forced-flow estimation against observable depth, auto-deleveraging design
- ▸Scenario and stress design for non-storable, non-deliverable, or thinly transacted underlyings
Market structure research & diligence
Commissioned research on where a market is going and what that implies for a product decision — venue landscape, regulatory pathway, competitive positioning, and the empirical work underneath. Delivered as documents you can hand to a committee, and tools your team can drive.
- ▸Venue and competitive landscape analysis for a new or contested product category
- ▸Regulatory pathway assessment: listing routes, self-certification precedent, jurisdictional perimeter
- ▸Empirical market analysis on primary data — settlement records, order-book and index history, physical fundamentals
- ▸Build-out of interactive analytical tools for internal use, from the same engines behind the public dashboards
How we work
Four commitments that shape the output.
Primary data, not secondary summaries
Analysis runs on settlement records, exchange rulebooks, published traces, and filings — pulled and processed rather than cited from someone else's summary. Where a figure is modelled, the model is stated and reproducible.
Every conclusion ships with a tool
Findings arrive as an interactive artefact as well as a document, so the assumptions are drivable rather than buried. That is how a client tests a result instead of taking it on faith.
Caveats stated before a critic finds them
Sample limits, borrowed distributions, and modelled figures are labelled in the work itself. Research that oversells its own certainty is not usable for a product decision.
Compressed delivery timelines
Data ingestion, model implementation, and the interactive tooling that ships with each piece are heavily automated. Practically, that means the cycle from question to working model runs in days rather than quarters, revisiting a finding when new information lands costs hours, and a principal-led practice can take on scope that would ordinarily require a team.
Engagement shapes
How work typically gets scoped.
Diligence sprint
A focused two-to-four week question — is this contract designed correctly, what is the competitive landscape, does this methodology hold up. Delivered as a document plus the working model.
Design engagement
Full specification of an index, contract, or margin framework, from first principles through documentation a committee or regulator can read.
Ongoing advisory
Retained input on a product programme as it develops — design reviews, competitive monitoring, and analysis as filings and launches land.
Open to partnerships, commissioned research, and consulting engagements.
If you are designing an index, listing a contract, building a margin framework, or trying to understand a market that does not have a settled structure yet — that is the work. Exchanges, venues, index providers, trading firms, and infrastructure builders all welcome.