Founder · AZTMM HLDGS LLC
Nikhil Kothari
Independent quantitative research on US equity options flow, dark pool positioning, and market regime — the quant research shop I wanted to read but couldn’t find at the retail tier.
Who I am
I started trading at 16. Curiosity-driven at first — equities — reading everything I could find about how markets actually work beneath the price tape. By 2018 I was trading options actively and building my own instruments to read institutional positioning.
Over the next several years the practice evolved into something more systematic: flow analysis, dark pool pattern recognition, regime detection via Hidden Markov Models, composite index construction. The gap between what retail-tier research publishes and what actually moves markets became obvious. AZTMM is my answer to that gap.
Mission
The retail trading publication landscape is stratified: hot-take newsletters on one end pushing “top picks” with no statistical context; institutional research on the other end locked behind $50K Bloomberg terminals. Between them is a void — no publication writing serious quant research for sophisticated individual traders at a free tier.
AZTMM exists to fill that void. Every report is research-grade, retrospective, numeric, and regime-aware. The methodology runs on end-of-session exchange data. The framework is disclosed in full — you can see the MPI weights, the HMM specification, the Conviction Score formula. No black boxes. No price targets. No top picks. No premium signals.
What AZTMM publishes
Four products, all free, all end-of-session retrospective research.
- Daily Pulse — every trading day, 6pm ET. Top 15 options flow + Top 15 dark pool prints, concordance scoring, regime context.
- Weekly Pulse — every Saturday, noon ET. Full retrospective with sector heatmap, Conviction Scores 1–10, confluence markers, and conditional signals to monitor.
- Pulse Lab — live MPI (9-signal composite, 0–100) and 3-mode HMM Regime Model, updated each market close.
- Trading Academy — 50+ textbook-quality lessons across 8 modules, free, no gating.
Methodology brief
- Flow data: BBS (Black Box Stocks) end-of-session feed for OPRA-routed unusual options activity and dark pool prints.
- Macro data: Yahoo Finance for index levels, FRED for rates and credit spreads, CBOE for VIX term structure and put/call ratios.
- Market Pulse Index (MPI): 9-signal composite scaled 0–100, weighted across breadth, volatility, credit, term structure, and flow concordance, scored against rolling 90-day baselines.
- Regime Model: 3-state Gaussian Hidden Markov Model (Bull / Chop / Crisis) fit via Baum-Welch EM, BIC-selected, with published transition matrix.
- Conviction Scores: retrospective 1–10 score per name, computed from five factors: notional rank, repeat flow, sector confluence, regime alignment, and dark pool concordance.
Legal posture
Who I’m writing for
Sophisticated individual traders who read. The Weekly Pulse is written for someone who understands what C/P ratio means, why a +2.9σ print matters, and what a Hidden Markov Model does. The Academy exists for readers who want to become that person.
If you’re looking for “buy this, target $X” content, AZTMM isn’t for you. If you’re looking for research that treats you like a thinking reader, welcome.
Contact
Questions, corrections, collaborations — contact form here or email hello@aztmm.com. I read everything and reply when I can. If you find a methodological error or data inconsistency in any published report, please flag it; I update the report with a visible change-log note.