A marketmaker is someone who stands ready to both buy and sell at some published price.
They're aggregating a deal which they are then reselling. That's more like a broker-dealer, I guess. Taking principal risk in what might eventually IPO is more of an underwriter.
Actual marketmakers tend to try to go home with no risk on the books, because they have no interest in exposing themselves to gap risk.
I think lots of people have casual understandings of what financial terms mean and then just sort of guess the rest of it (much like people think SecondMarket is the secondary market; it's not.)
All I'll say in direct response to this is that Chicago is not a trading backwater, especially at the small-scale entrepreneurial level. I'd put money on him passing the Joshua Schacter Trading 101 exam. (Seriously, it sounds like a fun bet.)
They're aggregating a deal which they are then reselling. That's more like a broker-dealer, I guess. Taking principal risk in what might eventually IPO is more of an underwriter.
Actual marketmakers tend to try to go home with no risk on the books, because they have no interest in exposing themselves to gap risk.
I think lots of people have casual understandings of what financial terms mean and then just sort of guess the rest of it (much like people think SecondMarket is the secondary market; it's not.)