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Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

ft.com

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Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#331

Post by hibbelig »

justin66 wrote: post #169
Barrin92 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>let's just assume that FT (an English language paper) is not worried about confusion The FT has a big international audience. As a German reader where a "Billion" is still 10^12 it does sometimes trip me up a little. So I at least find it useful.

That's a decent point, but what I don't get is, when I do a Google Translate from English to German for "billion," I get "Milliarde." Is the concern that German readers, reading the article in translation to German, will be confused? It would seem like the German readers reading the English article would understand. Not trying to argue any point (I mean honestly...), just trying to understand the German POV here, whi…

You may not be aware that it's a false friend. The German word Billion exists, and it means trillion.

So the German reader will read the English article (in English, not auto-translated), see the word billion, think “oh that looks familiar” and might assume it means the same as the German word Billion.

Machine translation makes quite a few mistakes, so I think if you have some decent knowledge of a language, you might be better off reading the original rather than a machine translation. At least my point of view from a couple of years ago. But it's also possible that machine translation has gotten WAY better in the last couple of years, I'm not sure.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#332

Post by CooCooCaCha »

tasuki wrote: post #314
CooCooCaCha wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have fooled me because that is the same immature definition of voluntary and choice that libertarians espouse. Voluntary is not binary. If someone put a gun to your head and told you to eat shit you technically have a choice but it's not much of choice is it?

> If someone put a gun to your head [...] That would be a rather easy choice to make! We aren't entitled to a roof over head and food etc, that's all I'm saying. We should be grateful when we happen to luck into circumstances (such as a job) that allow us to have roof/food. It's not something everyone has. Saying we were involuntarily forced into having a job/roof/food feels very strange when compared with the people…

We are entitled to a roof and food and it’s a tragedy that some people don’t have those things.

You’re not being empathetic by saying the opposite, you’re giving assholes with power an excuse to take those things away or make it harder to provide them to people.

I don’t understand why you’d say we’re being forced to have food and shelter, that makes no sense. We need food and shelter, which is why employment isn’t voluntary.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#333

Post by NoobSaibot135 »

gruez wrote: post #40
llm_trw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works out to 8 million per person on average. I'd be interested to see if the Pareto distribution holds here as well, namely that 1% of employees (26) hold half the wealth ($10b).

I thought the Pareto distribution was most famously associated with 80-20? Of course you can change α to get whatever ratio you want but this is the first time I heard of the 50-1 ratio being used.

Seems like Pareto 80/20 law is not too dissimilar from powers of 2.

In binary, most significant(left most) bit is twice the magnitude of the previous bit. So that bit (or person) would contribute and get compensated accordingly.

Would also be similar to segment trees with each leaf node having a value of 1 with parents recursively summing the children?

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#334

Post by bboreham »

DrBazza wrote: post #208
cess11 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F# came out in 2005, and was quite limited compared to the language it became from 2010 onwards.

Betas were certainly around 2002-03. Though thanks for the reminder that .NET was in a beta around 2000, so 90s is wrong (that's when I started work so my memory is sketchy that far back). CSFB was always a big MS shop and often trialled software before public release. https://fsharp.org/history/hopl-final/hopl-fsharp.pdf

> CSFB was always a big MS shop

Hey, it's not massively relevant to your story, but this cracked a smile for me.

CSFB was a big Sun shop, up to and past the time they mounted a "SunSet" initiative around 1998. Scott McNealy came and gave talks to the engineers.

In CSFP, the derivatives arm, where the quants worked, there was more of a push to get onto Excel, build a relationship with Microsoft, which included getting onto the "Cool" program which turned into .NET.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#335

Post by cess11 »

bboreham wrote: post #334
DrBazza wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Betas were certainly around 2002-03. Though thanks for the reminder that .NET was in a beta around 2000, so 90s is wrong (that's when I started work so my memory is sketchy that far back). CSFB was always a big MS shop and often trialled software before public release. https://fsharp.org/history/hopl-final/hopl-fsharp.pdf

> CSFB was always a big MS shop Hey, it's not massively relevant to your story, but this cracked a smile for me. CSFB was a big Sun shop, up to and past the time they mounted a "SunSet" initiative around 1998. Scott McNealy came and gave talks to the engineers. In CSFP, the derivatives arm, where the quants worked, there was more of a push to get onto Excel, build a relationship with Microsoft, which included getting…

Interesting, thanks.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#336

Post by tasuki »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #332
tasuki wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone put a gun to your head [...] That would be a rather easy choice to make! We aren't entitled to a roof over head and food etc, that's all I'm saying. We should be grateful when we happen to luck into circumstances (such as a job) that allow us to have roof/food. It's not something everyone has. Saying we were involuntarily forced into having a job/roof/food feels very strange when compared with the people…

We are entitled to a roof and food and it’s a tragedy that some people don’t have those things. You’re not being empathetic by saying the opposite, you’re giving assholes with power an excuse to take those things away or make it harder to provide them to people. I don’t understand why you’d say we’re being forced to have food and shelter, that makes no sense. We need food and shelter, which is why employment isn’t vo…

> We are entitled to a roof and food

What does that mean even?

> it’s a tragedy that some people don’t have those things.

Agreed.

> I don’t understand why you’d say we’re being forced to have food and shelter, that makes no sense.

I was trying to take your position to the absurd extreme. You said employment was not voluntary, I took that to mean that you're forced to have food and shelter.

> We need food and shelter, which is why employment isn’t voluntary.

I don't know how else to explain this to you. As an objective fact, there are people who choose not to work. They do without. Some of them even manage to lead fulfilling lives. How can you pretend it's not a choice?

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#337

Post by EMM_386 »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #254
EMM_386 wrote: post #200

> Jane Street is stupidly profitable — net trading revenues of $4.4bn in the first quarter, after a $10.5bn haul in 2023, and a profit margin north of 70 per cent — but it bears repeating. That is the fourth straight year of net trading revenues exceeding $10bn. Gross revenues came at a record $21.9bn in 2023, up 34 per cent from 2022. Yes, I suppose this is all something to get all starry-eyed over, Jane Street encr…

> I see it another way. I see people's hard earned money being siphoned by enormous financially-engineered vacuums, never to be seen again. And not just in the US, globally. This won't stop at 30% of the US equity market. It won't stop until the music stops and the last chair breaks. Which may or may not be soon. It will certainly be coming at some point. Envious bullshit! The reason they are so profitable is that be…

> Envious bullshit!

No, no ... it's not.

First of all I don't care one iota about Jane Street or how much money Jane Street employees make.

The problem is that this money has to come from somewhere. And while you say it's due to the entire system becoming more efficient, that's not the full story. That $1 billion Indian options play came at the expense of Indian retail investors.

So yes, there is a siphoning of money out of the hands of the retail investors and into the vast pool growing under Jane Street and its employees, much as it has done under others like Citadel.

Who is that good for, except Jane Street?

If you look the per capita income from where it's leaving to where it's going, that's where I see a growing problem.

There may be a sucker born every minute, but that doesn't mean that this is all just about making markets more efficient.

And, of course, none of this would have been possible without the additional "liquidity" provided ... the clearly essential contribution that makes it all justified. "We provide liquidity!". Ok ... ?

There's some efficiency improvements too, but ... eh.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#338

Post by CooCooCaCha »

tasuki wrote: post #336
CooCooCaCha wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are entitled to a roof and food and it’s a tragedy that some people don’t have those things. You’re not being empathetic by saying the opposite, you’re giving assholes with power an excuse to take those things away or make it harder to provide them to people. I don’t understand why you’d say we’re being forced to have food and shelter, that makes no sense. We need food and shelter, which is why employment isn’t vo…

> We are entitled to a roof and food What does that mean even? > it’s a tragedy that some people don’t have those things. Agreed. > I don’t understand why you’d say we’re being forced to have food and shelter, that makes no sense. I was trying to take your position to the absurd extreme. You said employment was not voluntary, I took that to mean that you're forced to have food and shelter. > We need food and shelter,…

Seriously? You're really doubling down on this argument that technically there are people who choose not to work?

What a stupid, disingenuous fucking argument. You realize for the vast majority of people, food and shelter are top priority right? This is the foundation of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

> What does that mean even?

Since I apparently need to explain the basics to you, entitled means "believing oneself to be inherently deserving". So yes, I think every human is entitled to food and shelter.

If socialism was a club, I'd take away your membership. Jesus christ.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#339

Post by ethbr1 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #330
ethbr1 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik (not my field, but well-docunented) prop shops like Jane Street don't take outside money. So they're incentivized to allow as many of their employees to invest as possible.

I've no idea if they feel they need this or not. But I do know that if you want to buy a significant chunk of JS (which is the context of this) then you'll need to have a lot of money to do so.

They typical reason hedge funds set minimums (aside from regulatory restrictions) is that they don't like dealing with a ton of small investors. It's easier to deal with fewer, larger ones.

In contrast, if you're a prop shop that only accepts employee money, you're already dealing with your employees.

So there's no real reason for JS et al. to set large minimums, in contrast to non-prop hedge funds.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#340

Post by justin66 »

hibbelig wrote: post #331
justin66 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a decent point, but what I don't get is, when I do a Google Translate from English to German for "billion," I get "Milliarde." Is the concern that German readers, reading the article in translation to German, will be confused? It would seem like the German readers reading the English article would understand. Not trying to argue any point (I mean honestly...), just trying to understand the German POV here, whi…

You may not be aware that it's a false friend. The German word Billion exists, and it means trillion. So the German reader will read the English article (in English, not auto-translated), see the word billion, think “oh that looks familiar” and might assume it means the same as the German word Billion. Machine translation makes quite a few mistakes, so I think if you have some decent knowledge of a language, you migh…

Thanks. Interesting.
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