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Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

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Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#41

Post by SkipperCat »

znpy wrote: post #19
SkipperCat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its mostly done as a way to filter job applications into a smaller set. When Google was the 'hottest' job prospect (many years ago) they needed a way to reduce the set of applicants down to a number where hiring managers could handle the load. Setting criteria such as having an Ivy League degree or a CS degrees with GPA over 3.8 was a logical way to achieve this goal. That being said, if you went to a community colle…

> Setting criteria such as having an Ivy League degree or a CS degrees with GPA over 3.8 was a logical way to achieve this goal. It wasn't a "logical way", it was an "easy way". That's classist at the very least.

To a certain extent, you are correct. However, companies like Jane Street need to filter and doing so based on colleges is the most efficient when other factors are all equal. Top tier colleges strive to base their admittance on performance and strive to be racially and culturally diverse. This gives Jane Street the ability to say they filter on the same criteria.

I'm all ears if you have a better system that is more efficient. I'd also add that I went to a State college and my resume would have been tossed if I applied as a starting engineer too.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#42

Post by RockyMcNuts »

vintermann wrote: post #27
Ekaros wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would put that to 100%... You don't make that much money without breaking at least some laws from time to time.

Well, sometimes they only do stuff that should be illegal. Superfast arbitrage, which is Jane Street's main thing as far as I understand, doesn't really produce anything of value to humanity. Yeah, I guess the contributions to OCaml are worth something, but maybe not 10 billion?

well, running the financial system is overpaid work but it's the high-order bit in the current form of capitalism.

it's the operating system, some people might think it's a tax on everything, some people might think it provides the foundation to produce everything of value.

similarly, Google is the high-order-bit in the information or content economy, the creators get underpaid, the people who do ad optimization get overpaid.

no financial markets -> no IPOs -> no VC -> no Google and Silicon Valley as we know it.

the closer you are to the money and the transactions, and the high-order bit, the better the opportunities to redirect and organize to your advantage, and the more you get paid.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#43

Post by lambdaxyzw »

flipbrad wrote: post #35
belinder wrote: post #20

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

Billion has wildly different meanings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

I disagree, as a native speaker of a language where "bilion" means 10^12, it's clear to me that "billion" means 10^9 when used in English text. So I disagree that is ambiguous. But maybe that's wiem that way to make sure foreigners with poor understanding of English don't read it incorrectly, because I guess it gets confusing (even journalists sometimes make a mistake of translating that wrong).

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#44

Post by alpark3 »

vintermann wrote: post #27
Ekaros wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would put that to 100%... You don't make that much money without breaking at least some laws from time to time.

Well, sometimes they only do stuff that should be illegal. Superfast arbitrage, which is Jane Street's main thing as far as I understand, doesn't really produce anything of value to humanity. Yeah, I guess the contributions to OCaml are worth something, but maybe not 10 billion?

They're not that good at arb. Real arb doesn't even really exist anymore. Even when it does, it's not JS that closes it. They market make, which is different.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#45

Post by zmgsabst »

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.

They’re the same:

20% of 20% of 20% (or 0.8%) of people will hold 80% of 80% of 80% (or 51.2%) of the wealth.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#46

Post by lambdaxyzw »

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?

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

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#47

Post by dchftcs »

llm_trw wrote: post #23
Smaug123 wrote: post #13

> At the end of 2023, Jane Street employed 2631 people > About 80 per cent of the company's capital comes from employee equity, which has swelled to $21.3bn at the end of 2023 o.O

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).

It probably includes the founding partners, so it might be that ~0.15% hold more than half.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#48

Post by Galanwe »

vintermann wrote: post #27
Ekaros wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would put that to 100%... You don't make that much money without breaking at least some laws from time to time.

Well, sometimes they only do stuff that should be illegal. Superfast arbitrage, which is Jane Street's main thing as far as I understand, doesn't really produce anything of value to humanity. Yeah, I guess the contributions to OCaml are worth something, but maybe not 10 billion?

You don't make 10B returns on HFT alone.

The characteristics of short prediction horizon strategies like in HFT give you an amazing sharpe, but you're predicting small returns.

To scale returns you need to invest more, which means higher market impact, which means longer prediction horizon, on larger price moves.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#50

Post by llm_trw »

mort96 wrote: post #37
llm_trw wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Be the change you want to see.

I remember the first time I got those units out of gnu units on the command line scratching my head wondering why I'd never used them before and why it was using them at the same time.

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