Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus • Hacker News Board

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#171

Post by justin66 » Thu, May 02, 2024, 2:23 PM UTC

peeters wrote: post #163

justin66 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who knew? But that article indicates America has used the short scale (base ten) forever and the UK has used it since 1974, so let's just assume that FT (an English language paper) is not worried about confusion regarding the meaning of 'billion' and there's a different norm at work here.

> the UK has used it since 1974, so let's just assume that FT (an English language paper) is not worried about confusion Anyone aged around 60 or older would have been learning these numbers before 1974, and that's a significant overlap with FT's audience. You are dismissing this as if it's Middle English. It's an entirely reasonable explanation, at least one that shouldn't be dismissed.

Fair point.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#172

Post by datadrivenangel » Thu, May 02, 2024, 2:23 PM UTC

ragebol wrote: post #128

lambdaxyzw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a good question. Why? We have nanometets, picometers, centimeters, decimeters, kilometers, why not megameters?

I wonder why too. Same for weights: why have a ton (1000/kilo kilograms) if you can have a megagram (which is the weight of 1 cubic meter of water at the right conditions) The only 'commonly' used unit of measure larger than a kilometer is a light year, at least that I can think of. Maybe a Astronomical Unit, but not 'common' I suppose.

The mile is larger than a kilometer.

But it shouldn't be common.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#173

Post by calgoo » Thu, May 02, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

ragebol wrote: post #128

lambdaxyzw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a good question. Why? We have nanometets, picometers, centimeters, decimeters, kilometers, why not megameters?

I wonder why too. Same for weights: why have a ton (1000/kilo kilograms) if you can have a megagram (which is the weight of 1 cubic meter of water at the right conditions) The only 'commonly' used unit of measure larger than a kilometer is a light year, at least that I can think of. Maybe a Astronomical Unit, but not 'common' I suppose.

In Sweden, a mile is 10km, not 1.6… so there are other measures that exist, just not in all countries.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#174

Post by 999900000999 » Thu, May 02, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

drgiggles wrote: post #148

I work in quantitative finance and have wanted to to start using OCaml at work for years. I just find that unless you are at a shop like Jane Street with a well developed proprietary code base, internally developed tooling, etc, there just isn't the ecosystem available for me to be nearly as productive as I can be in other well accepted languages in the quant dev space...which is a bummer. It's been a little while si…

Any tips for getting a first quant job ?

Is learning C++ a must?

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#175

Post by xen0 » Thu, May 02, 2024, 2:28 PM UTC

queuebert wrote: post #154

syntaxing wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made 10B net in 2023 (supposedly)…that’s a ballpark of 4M net revenue per employee. What mid size company makes 4M net per employee?!

GOOG, which has a reputation of being slightly bloated, made $138 billion in revenue across 140,000 employees. That's $2.3 million per employee.

More like 180,000 full time employees, and probably at least that number again in external and temporary contractors etc.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#176

Post by Chris2048 » Thu, May 02, 2024, 2:28 PM UTC

llm_trw wrote: post #25

belinder wrote: post #20

Why do they say 179,000 million instead of 179 billion? Is that common in their industry?

Why do we say 17,000 kilometers instead of 17 megameters?

perhaps we should use kilo-millions?

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#177

Post by djaouen » Thu, May 02, 2024, 2:29 PM UTC

I have to give it to them, choosing OCaml was excellent bait. Gives them an aura of intelligence while they milk Wall Street dry ;)

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#178

Post by darkwater » Thu, May 02, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

walthamstow wrote: post #70

mort96 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want us to start using megameters. And gigameters. And instead of (metric) tons, I want megagrams. No kilotons; gigagrams.

Brewers introduced me to this with hectolitres

Hectolitres and hectograms are used fairly often (the latter, daily) in Italian, for example.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#179

Post by Majromax » Thu, May 02, 2024, 2:31 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #135

> net trading revenues of $4.4bn in the first quarter That's a lot of money for someone who is essentially a middle-man. What a grift, about 13 dollars for each average American lost out to them a quarter.

First, their trading's global, so "for each average American" isn't the right denominator, nor is it obvious to divide things on a per capita basis rather than a wealth-weighted one.

Second, it's not at all obvious that market-making is a zero-sum game, where profits to the market maker are "lost out" to someone else. Market-making profits from the bid/ask spread, but a new market maker tends to reduce that spread. Ordinary people tend to invest as price-takers, and thus they benefit from a reduced bid/ask spread.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#180

Post by bena » Thu, May 02, 2024, 2:34 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #161

bena wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that doesn't exist. Any gathering of people are going to have political institutions whether they are codified or not. Similarly, there's going to be someone or some group of people who the others look to for direction. And whether or not it is codified, those people will form a layer of hierarchy for your "non" government. Because people seem to think it's "politics" and "government" that are the problem. It's…

> whether they are codified or not Was it an intentional rhetorical device to brush past the important distinction? Yes, there will always be more powerful cliques. This is Jo Freeman's The Tyranny of Structurelessness . But the point is specifically whether those cliques and hierarchies are encoded into formal committees or whether they remain fluid based on the desires of the group at any given moment. If we avoid…

You are describing an ideal, not what happens.

What really happens is that important information and resources get hoarded because that lets you control things. The only people "held responsible" are those you can convince others to punish arbitrarily. You'll create an entire shadow government the majority of the group has no knowledge of.

And showing how it worked within a group of 4 to 5 people is kind of useless. Lots of things work on small scales. The minute you scale to the point where you can't keep track of everyone, you're going to need an actual system in place to deal with everyone.