Seeing a lot of talk about Jane Street on twitter after their big results last year. It’s an incredibly well fun firm, but the notion that everyone there is some unfathomable genius is so overblown.
Jane Street plays a volume game. Look at its strategies in India and Crypto. Without their current scale, their best strategies wouldn’t be nearly as effective. I think the fact that not even its own traders know how profitable they are is pretty telling
(Its founder’s story is somewhat amusing with this in mind. Granieri first got into Susquehanna by printing off a massive stack of CVs and handing them out everywhere. Volume works)
Jane Street’s biggest asset is its cult of personality. It seems to have monopolized the market of money-hungry math savants. Only Jane Street knows how valuable these kids are and how much money they’re really bringing in. They’re probably worth the investment by virtue of not contributing to a rival’s strategy.
Of course, a lot of its people are really, truly, brilliant. If you’ve spoken to someone from Jane Street, there’s a good chance that you consider them the smartest person you know. The strength of the machine is undoubtedly more than the sum of its parts though.