A trader can have the right idea and still have the wrong business. The model spots a mispricing. The order needs an exchange connection. The position needs capital. Someone must watch the risk, preserve the records, and answer the awkward question when an investor asks how any of this is supervised. The trade is a moment. The business is everything around it.
- ARB backs professional traders with capital and shared infrastructure.
- Its related platforms help managers handle outside money and launch funds.
- The attraction is independence with support. The test is whether oversight keeps up.
That surrounding business is ARB Trading Group’s territory. Founded in Chicago in 2014, it has expanded from proprietary trading into a network linking traders, portfolio managers, and investors. Its proposition is easy to appreciate if you have ever tried to start something: keep control of the work you understand, and share the machinery that would be expensive to build alone.
01 / Go where the traders are
The origin story begins before the official founding date. Adam Passaglia says he combined his trading operation with Amnon Baazov’s group in 2012. The next year, the two visited India and met more than 100 traders in three days. The experience made the case for expansion. Talent was available; building an organization around it became the job.
That distinction helps explain ARB’s position in the market. A trader can join an established proprietary firm, assemble an independent operation, or seek a platform offering some combination of backing and autonomy. ARB courts the person who wants the third arrangement. Its stated culture emphasizes independent strategies, performance, and collaboration within a shared operating structure.
02 / Share the expensive parts
The proprietary trading business supplies capital, execution infrastructure, and risk oversight across futures, options, fixed income, equities, and digital assets. ARB currently advertises access to more than 25 global exchanges. For a professional trading team, the useful detail is what sits beneath that number: hosting near exchange infrastructure, automated trading tools, and FIX connections that link order systems to market gateways.
Those services address a practical problem. A strategy does not become easier to operate because its author is clever. Servers, connectivity, and controls still need attention. Sharing them can reduce duplicated work. In ARB’s partnership model, traders retain strategy control and economic participation while using the larger organization’s resources. The attraction rests on that bargain, rather than a promise that technology will make every strategy profitable.
Related technology business Rival Systems illustrates the value of accumulated infrastructure. Its platform began inside Ronin Capital and was commercialized in 2015. That history matters: the tools supporting a trading group can have their own development lineage, customers, and expertise. ARB’s network brings capabilities together without requiring every component to have been invented under the same roof.
03 / The strategy needs a wrapper
Once a manager wants outside investors, another set of problems arrives. ARB Asset Management, a registered commodity trading advisor, offers funds and separately managed accounts. Its audience includes institutions and high-net-worth investors looking for selected strategies, while managers gain access to a regulatory and operational platform.
The menu is specific. RoboSig pursues systematic currency opportunities through statistical arbitrage. SBGM models behavioral extremes across futures markets. The ARB Bond RV Futures Strategy compares Treasury futures with liquid instruments that act as bond proxies, seeking pricing discrepancies. These are distinct approaches, not interchangeable settings on a trading app.
ARB Fund Management handles a different layer: legal structures, regulatory filings, administration oversight, investor operations, and counterparty setup. Managers retain autonomy over strategy, fees, and counterparties. The business case is that shared operations can make a fund less burdensome to establish and run. For the manager, the relevant comparison is the total cost and control of that arrangement against building an organization independently.
The economics follow the division of labor. Proprietary trading puts the firm’s capital at risk in pursuit of trading profits; asset management organizes access to investment strategies; fund services supply the operating framework. A prospective partner has to examine the actual arrangement: capital committed, expenses allocated, decision rights, and the share of economics retained. Putting these functions in one group makes them available together, but each still has a different customer and a different job.
04 / Independence has a supervision bill
The difficult part of the proposition is visible in ARB’s public record. In September 2020, the CFTC imposed a $445,000 civil monetary penalty on ARB Trading Group LP, finding it vicariously liable through subsidiaries for traders’ spoofing. Spoofing means placing bids or offers with the intention of canceling them before execution. The regulator’s finding makes supervision a concrete operating responsibility.
A separate CME settlement, effective August 29, 2024, required ARB to pay $2,016.21 in restitution after findings concerning a subsidiary employee’s orders in offshore renminbi futures spreads. ARB neither admitted nor denied the findings. These events deserve space beside the infrastructure pitch: a platform accepting independent risk takers also accepts obligations for their conduct.
ARB selected Trillium’s Surveyor surveillance platform in August 2020. Passaglia’s explanation emphasized customer service as well as the product. That is a useful purchasing lesson: a control system is also a working relationship with people who must help resolve problems. The announcement does not establish that any particular enforcement action prompted the selection.
05 / Pick the race you can run
Passaglia’s strategic choices are similarly revealing. In a 2025 interview, he described investing in data and analytics while declining to chase the latency arms race. The distinction is an allocation decision: resources go toward the capabilities management believes can help its traders compete.
“It’s tough being small in this business.”
Adam Passaglia / July 2025
In February 2026, FoX-i announced an ARB allocation to its systematic FX mandate through a segregated managed account, following investment and operational diligence. In May, ARB was named among investors in Eris Innovations. Both moves extend its role beyond staffing a trading floor. The lesson readers can copy is to share costly infrastructure while being deliberate about what stays independent. The condition is equally practical: the strategy must justify the machinery, and the machinery must be able to supervise it. A manager whose opportunity disappears as position sizes grow cannot solve that problem merely by attracting more capital. A team that needs unrestricted operating control must weigh the obligations of joining a shared platform. Scale helps with repeated tasks; investment capacity remains a separate constraint.