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Understanding Jane Street

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Re: Understanding Jane Street

#121

Post by pyb »

j7ake wrote: post #77

Regarding the last point in working at Jane Street versus research on fusion/cancer: You could maximise more good by first working at Jane Street in your 20s, retire by 30, and then set up your own smal fusion/cancer research lab where you can do research without being tied to government funding and politics. By 30, many cancer researchers have barely finished their PhDs, so you won’t actually be that far behind scie…

By now, finance and FAANG have minted a very large number of tech millionaires. So, in practice, you have you ask yourself why ~nobody has actually done what you say. Personally I don't think it's because of a lack of funds.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#122

Post by serioussecurity »

uniqueuid wrote: post #82
j7ake wrote: post #77

Regarding the last point in working at Jane Street versus research on fusion/cancer: You could maximise more good by first working at Jane Street in your 20s, retire by 30, and then set up your own smal fusion/cancer research lab where you can do research without being tied to government funding and politics. By 30, many cancer researchers have barely finished their PhDs, so you won’t actually be that far behind scie…

That sounds as if you can jump into a field without spending 10-20 years of learning and do cutting-edge research. I'm not sure whether someone who has done quant finance can make meaningful contributions to the actual science. So if your role ends up spending money and doing top-level management, why not just fund companies that do and stay in finance? [edit] To add one prominent example - it's doable, as Jeff Hawki…

Hawkins is a notorious con artist with nothing to show for almost two decades of work.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#123

Post by mikaeln »

j7ake wrote: post #77

Regarding the last point in working at Jane Street versus research on fusion/cancer: You could maximise more good by first working at Jane Street in your 20s, retire by 30, and then set up your own smal fusion/cancer research lab where you can do research without being tied to government funding and politics. By 30, many cancer researchers have barely finished their PhDs, so you won’t actually be that far behind scie…

Very easy to plan in theory.In reality, if you've been at a place like Jane Street for 10 years you mostly likely will only leave if you are retiring.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#124

Post by j7ake »

TrackerFF wrote: post #106
j7ake wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re overestimating the technical skills needed to do cancer research: there’s a reason why many wet labs allow high school students to come and help with research. It’s mostly grunt work and whatever technical skills can be learned by a high school student over a summer. I would venture to say the average Jane street worker has done more good for society than the average cancer researcher or Alzheimer’s researcher…

> I would venture to say the average Jane street worker has done more good for society than the average cancer researcher or Alzheimer’s researcher. Might be one of the more arrogant things I've read. And I frequent WallStreetOasis.

Are you up to date with the current state of Alzheimer’s research ? Much of it has been shown to be fabricated ie average alzheimer researcher has probably made zero impact. https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabricatio...

Also I said the average researcher, meaning taken from the global population, ie not from a top institute. Jane Street is highly concentrated in talent that produce real results in the world.

The average cancer researcher has probably done more good than the average trading firm worker though.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#125

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

mgaunard wrote: post #111

Quite a few inaccuracies in there. The ones that jump at me: - OCaml does type inference, so you don't actually declare the types and have the compiler check them, as stated in the article. - Investors are not market-makers, the two words actually refer to the two types of opposed participants in the market. - OCaml is the language used for research, but they actually have a lot of developers working on the compiler…

Yes, it uses ML-style type inference, but that doesn't mean you are literally unable to annotate types, and the compiler is absolutely still doing type checking. I'm sure people like Jane Street annotate everything.

In addition, perhaps a small point relative to the first, but in Ocaml, the arithmetic operators perform no type inference; there's a separate operator for float-addition versus int-addition, and so on. This somewhat limits your exposure to potential automatic type conversions.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#126

Post by pyb »

TrackerFF wrote: post #106
j7ake wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re overestimating the technical skills needed to do cancer research: there’s a reason why many wet labs allow high school students to come and help with research. It’s mostly grunt work and whatever technical skills can be learned by a high school student over a summer. I would venture to say the average Jane street worker has done more good for society than the average cancer researcher or Alzheimer’s researcher…

> I would venture to say the average Jane street worker has done more good for society than the average cancer researcher or Alzheimer’s researcher. Might be one of the more arrogant things I've read. And I frequent WallStreetOasis.

I wonder if this is somewhat representative of what JS workers think, or not ?

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#127

Post by jaycroft »

esoterica wrote: post #100
spoonjim wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to hold AAPL longer than a quarter, then the tick vs. 1/8 doesn't matter, and if you're not, your trade doesn't need to happen to support the core goal of financial markets which is to finance companies.

If the only people who trade AAPL plan on holding it for 10 years then by the time they want to sell it there will be no one to buy it from them, since the probability that someone else will want to make their once-every-10-years trade at the exact same time is zero. In order for long term investors to function they need liquidity to enter and exit positions.

But it doesn't have to happen at the exact same time? Limit orders exist, no?

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#128

Post by drpixie »

julianeon wrote: post #32

Something I don’t understand: Why haven’t their gains been arbitraged away? Conceptually what they do seems simple enough; and presumably you just need capital to do it. Hell, their own former employees could theoretically compete against them - as could many traders who would pay to learn those strategies. So why are they still making so much? I don’t understand why their “advantage” hasn’t been arbitrated away into…

Like other investment options ... we tend to look at the successful few and assume that they know something special, or have something special. But over time, a few are just lucky and most are not, and we have no way of predicting luck :)

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#129

Post by nly »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #21

What tax do these type of companies pay? I'm gonna guess they aren't paying the "retail" short term capital gain tax.

They'll have their cost centers in places like NY and London incorporated separately, making consistent losses, and then the arm doing actual trading will be in Bermuda or somewhere with 0% business tax.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#130

Post by bob29 »

dang wrote: post #62
bob29 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Please stop trolling. I don't want to have to ban you. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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