The Market Making Book

Foreword

Everything you need to understand, evaluate, and design market making strategies — from your first order book to venue-specialized algorithms for Kalshi, Polymarket, Hyperliquid, Binance, and beyond.

A practitioner's manual

The Market Making Book

Everything you need to understand, evaluate, and design market making strategies — from your first order book to venue-specialized algorithms for Kalshi, Polymarket, Hyperliquid, Binance, and beyond.

live — a market maker at work
A market maker continuously quoting a bid (green) and an ask (red) around a moving price. Every dot is a trader hitting one of the quotes. This entire book explains what you're looking at.
19 chapters + glossary30 interactive figuresDeep math + parables6 venue analyses6 original algorithm proposals

How to read this book

This book is organized like a course, in the spirit of The Rust Programming Language: each chapter builds on the previous one, and the navigation lives in the sidebar. Part I teaches trading from absolute zero — the order book, then the chart toolkit every platform shares (candlesticks, timeframes, EMAs, order types), then the market maker's role and history. Part II develops the theory — the real mathematics, but every formula arrives with a parable that makes it obvious. Part III dissects six real venues. Part IV matches algorithms to asset classes, covers risk, and closes with a hands-on crypto practicum — a complete, reproducible path from signal research to a live bot. Part V proposes six new, testable, state-of-the-art strategies — the destination of the whole book.

Every dark panel is a live figure: drag the sliders, press the buttons, break things. The figures are simplified simulations designed to build intuition, not production simulators.

The one-sentence summaryMarket making is the business of selling immediacy: you quote two prices at once, earn the gap between them, and spend your entire professional life managing the two risks that gap must pay for — inventory risk and adverse selection.

Educational material, not financial advice. Fee schedules and venue rules change frequently — always verify against official documentation (Chapter 19 collects the references).

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