DRWs

DRWs is an acronym that can refer to several distinct concepts, with the intended meaning usually determined by context. The two best-documented uses are in finance and in time-series modeling.

In finance, DRW typically refers to DRW Trading Group, a Chicago-based proprietary trading firm founded in the early 1990s by Donald R. Wilson. The firm engages in market making and trading across multiple asset classes, including futures, options, equities, and fixed income, and has expanded into technology ventures and fintech investments. The name is commonly understood to derive from the founder’s initials.

In astrophysics and statistics, DRW stands for damped random walk, a stochastic process used to model variability in time-series data such as quasar light curves. The model describes a process that tends to revert toward a long-term mean, with parameters governing a damping timescale and a characteristic amplitude of variability. In practice, DRW models are equivalent to the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process in continuous time and are applied to describe irregularly sampled observational data and quantify variability across timescales.

Because DRWs has multiple meanings across domains, correct interpretation relies on contextual cues—such as the field of discussion and surrounding terminology. In literature and academic contexts, DRWs often refers to the damped random walk model, while in industry contexts it may denote the DRW Trading Group.