Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Understanding Jane Street

thediff.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 392 posts

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#271

Post by the_watcher »

benreesman wrote: post #60

I find this stuff fascinating, and this article is way above average for online posts about proprietary/algorithmic/quantitative/low-latency trading (very leaky Venn diagram there). I have a few nitpicks but overall it's informative and it's an interesting format: viewing an industry through the lens of a particular firm, especially one as fascinating as Jane. Anything that develops literacy in modern finance amongst…

The Diff is easily one of the best value’s I get despite being >$200/year. I’m not sure how I’d rank it relative to Stratechery, I personally enjoy The Diff more but Stratechery is more relevant to my work and is also excellent. Byrne churns out an all-timer like this every other month or so, and his average posts still consistently include the best sentences I read of the day. It’s one of the only newsletters that, if I get behind on reading it, I make sure I catch up on every missed issue.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#272

Post by wahnfrieden »

silverlake wrote: post #241
keepquestioning wrote: post #4

My greatest regret is not getting into this firm

I interviewed at Jane Street a long time ago. Halfway thru they gave me an office tour. All employees were packed together on one side of the floor, screens everywhere, no personal space at all. I couldn’t see myself sitting there for 10 hrs/day. I limped thru the rest of the interview. Other firms and banks pay well too. The work is always boring though.

companies are big on culture fit because of wanting people happy with being forced to spend their waking hours in those conditions inflexibly

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#273

Post by md_ »

thw09j9m wrote: post #270
md_ wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't electronic front running take money from regular folks? Perhaps not from retail trades, but from mutual/index funds, pension funds, etc.

Front running is illegal. However, making a better price prediction than the rest of the market and trading on it is not the same thing as front running. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/frontrunning.asp#:~:tex... .

Hmm, I don't think that answers the question. See https://www.nyujlb.org/single-post/2017/11/27/high-frequency... (which is EU-specific). I think https://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/03/high-frequency-traders-cant-... is suggesting that this is similarly legal in the US.

Again, not an expert.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#274

Post by sudosysgen »

nickparker wrote: post #239
fiprofessor wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense to me. But, in light of that, the ones who do go to Jane Street are relatively more likely to be interested in their tech stack and OCaml, as opposed to wanting to "test themselves" in the "adversarial setting" that the post I quoted describes. In contrast, the couple of people I know who went to HRT or Jump Street are much more like that description. They deliberately targeted HFT work, whereas Jane…

Jane Street recruits silly hard from Cornell’s CS dept because part of our required curriculum is functional programming w OCaml. They definitely introduce a lot of math/cs kids to the idea that finance can be a meaningful technical challenge instead of just Dyson bros in spreadsheets. Then again I think one of the founders or top execs is an alum, so it’s possible Cornell has that course in that language because of…

There are a lot of universities doing functional programming in either Haskell or OCaml as part of their curriculum right now, so I don't know if that's really the reason.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#275

Post by wahnfrieden »

david_allison wrote: post #179
md_ wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fifteen years ago I had a job offer from Jane St sitting in my inbox, and I turned it down to work in tech. Could I have made more money at Jane St? No idea. Probably? But money isn't exactly holding me back right now. Would I have felt like I was working on interesting problems? For me, personally, I don't think so. I don't find abstract problems as interesting as I do practical ones, and, practically, working at Ja…

In my experience, retention in quant finance is much higher than in tech (barring a few firms) People don't leave.

a high wage is a kind of golden handcuff

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#276

Post by thw09j9m »

md_ wrote: post #273
thw09j9m wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Front running is illegal. However, making a better price prediction than the rest of the market and trading on it is not the same thing as front running. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/frontrunning.asp#:~:tex... .

Hmm, I don't think that answers the question. See https://www.nyujlb.org/single-post/2017/11/27/high-frequency... (which is EU-specific). I think https://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/03/high-frequency-traders-cant-... is suggesting that this is similarly legal in the US. Again, not an expert.

Generally, illegal trading resolves around the idea of trading on non-public information. And front running falls under that category (access to order data that other participants do not).

However, HFT's do not trade on non-public information. Every participant has access to the same market data. I could start my own "HFT firm" tomorrow; I would just be incredibly unsuccessful at it because I don't have the finances or computing resources to execute.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#278

Post by md_ »

thw09j9m wrote: post #276
md_ wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I don't think that answers the question. See https://www.nyujlb.org/single-post/2017/11/27/high-frequency... (which is EU-specific). I think https://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/03/high-frequency-traders-cant-... is suggesting that this is similarly legal in the US. Again, not an expert.

Generally, illegal trading resolves around the idea of trading on non-public information. And front running falls under that category (access to order data that other participants do not). However, HFT's do not trade on non-public information. Every participant has access to the same market data. I could start my own "HFT firm" tomorrow; I would just be incredibly unsuccessful at it because I don't have the finances…

Right. I think we're saying the same thing?

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#279

Post by logicchains »

JackFr wrote: post #214

> it's hard to argue with success: Jane Street earned $6.3bn in the first half of 2020, up more than 10x from the year before ($, FT). It’s actually quite easy to argue with that. It’s 1 (or 2 at best) data points. 6.3bn is meaningless without knowing the capital put to work to achieve that. And finally if your 10x YoY it’s just as likely you had a bad year before as a good one this year.

Apparently most of that came from arbitraging bond ETFs and bonds. The spreads started to diverge in early 2020 when covid was just coming out, and Jane Street had the balls (and cash) to hold until the spreads converged. Helped significantly by the US fed pumping a bunch of money into the market.

Re: Understanding Jane Street

#280

Post by thw09j9m »

md_ wrote: post #278
thw09j9m wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, illegal trading resolves around the idea of trading on non-public information. And front running falls under that category (access to order data that other participants do not). However, HFT's do not trade on non-public information. Every participant has access to the same market data. I could start my own "HFT firm" tomorrow; I would just be incredibly unsuccessful at it because I don't have the finances…

Right. I think we're saying the same thing?

I think I'm missing the connection between how HFT's trade and how it takes money away from regular people.
Post reply on HN