華爾街新巨頭：乘著ETF浪潮，簡街正成為最賺錢的交易商

原作者： 威爾·施密特 羅賓·維格斯沃斯

原文翻譯：TechFlow

簡街 posted net trading revenues of more than $10 billion for the fourth year in a row last year, according to investor documents obtained by the Financial Times. Its $21.9 billion in total trading revenues were equivalent to about one-seventh of the combined revenues from stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities trading at the world’s 12 largest investment banks last year, according to Coalition Greenwich.

“Their profits are almost staggering. That’s because they deal in a lot of financial instruments that other people won’t touch,” said Larry Tabb, a longtime analyst of the industry who now works for Bloomberg Intelligence. “That’s where the biggest profits are, but the biggest risks are too.”

There are no signs that Jane Street’s growth will slow. Its net trading revenue in the first half of 2024 increased 78% year-on-year to $8.4 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. If it can maintain that level in the second half of the year, Jane Street’s full-year trading revenue will exceed 規模較大的高盛 去年。

根據 LSEG 編制的分析師預測，如果能夠維持文件中揭露的 70% 利潤率，Jane Streets 今年的營收將輕鬆超過 Blackstone 或 BlackRock。

Jane Street 在債券市場表現尤為強勁，它迅速進入了一個長期由銀行主導、此前被認為獨立貿易公司無法進入的領域。

“You can think of the evolution of Jane Street as a process of automation, where we take on more complex tasks and then automate them,” Matt Berger, head of fixed income at Jane Street, told the Financial Times. “That’s the evolution of our business.”

然而，簡街也面臨許多內部和外部的挑戰。

Jane Street掀起ETF熱潮

這家曾經低調的貿易公司現在是業內最受關注的企業之一，這讓許多簡街員工感到不舒服。快速成長正在考驗其扁平化、學術化的組織結構。競爭對手正試圖挖走最優秀的員工。一些投資者擔心簡·斯特里特在迅速擴張的債券中扮演關鍵的中介角色 ETF 市場可能使其具有系統重要性。

Meanwhile, rivals are fighting back, with banks trying to block its expansion in fixed-income markets and Citadel Securities eyeing Jane Street’s success in corporate bonds.

“This is the classic innovator’s dilemma,” said one former Jane Street employee. “When they were the underdog, they moved fast and innovated in ways that no one else could. Now that they’re big, others are going to catch up.”

Jane Street 由來自 Susquehanna 的幾位交易員和一位前 IBM 開發人員於 2000 年創立。在成立的前二十年裡，它滿足於在 Virtu Financial 和 Citadel Securities 等老牌、知名交易公司後面默默無聞地成長。

It started out trading American depositary receipts — shares of foreign companies traded in the U.S. — in a small windowless office on the now-defunct American Stock Exchange. But it soon expanded into options and ETFs, the latter of which Amex had pioneered a few years earlier.

ETFs were still a niche market, with only about $70 billion in assets when Jane Street began trading. However, ETFs quickly became its main business, and over time it became a significant “authorized participant,” a market maker that could create and redeem ETF units in addition to trading them.

Jane Street excels particularly in the nonmainstream ETF space. Former and current executives say the firm’s love of puzzles — part of its sophisticated interview process — reflects its willingness to take on more challenging trading challenges, such as handling ETFs in less liquid markets such as corporate bonds, Chinese stocks or exotic derivatives.

這意味著速度在 Jane Street 並不像 Jump Trading、Citadel Securities、Virtu 或 Hudson River Trading 那樣重要，儘管該公司通常被歸類為高頻交易商。

On a spectrum from the intuitive traders at investment banks’ “proprietary trading desks” before 2008 to pure technology firms like Citadel Securities or Jump Trading, Jane Street is closer to the middle, according to insiders and competitors. The firm sometimes holds positions for days or even weeks.

“It’s an interesting combination of technology and street smarts,” said Gregory Peters, co-chief investment officer of PGIM Fixed Income.

Investing in ETFs has proven to be a smart move as the industry has enjoyed a long boom. ETF assets are now approaching $14 trillion, according to data provider ETGI. Jane Street has gradually gained favor with bright minds looking to earn good paychecks—one of the reasons it attracted a young MIT graduate, Sam Bankman-Fried, to the firm in 2013.

然而，即使在其行業內，它也因其對 OCaml 的獨特使用而聞名，OCaml 是一種用於構建幾乎所有系統的程式語言。對外界來說，這仍然是一個謎（簡街在紐約總部擁有一台原始的恩尼格瑪密碼機）。

該公司的匿名性如此之強，以至於四位聯合創始人中的三位在外界幾乎沒有註意到的情況下悄然退休，留下了最後一位聯合創始人羅布·格拉尼埃里(Rob Granieri )，他被內部人士稱為平等中的第一人。但 Jane Street 沒有首席執行官，在與投資者分享的貸款文件中，該公司將自己描述為由各種管理和風險委員會組成的職能組織結構。

每個交易部門和業務部門均由 40 名股東之一領導，他們總共擁有 1TP10-240 億的 Jane Street 股票。格拉涅裡更多地被視為一位低調的長髮矽谷演員，而不是億萬富翁貿易大亨，但簡街員工表示，重大決策是由更廣泛的集體領導小組做出的，這種結構促進協作並減少層級。

這反映在其薪酬結構中——Jane Street 並不將薪酬與個人交易利潤掛鉤，甚至與員工工作崗位的收入掛鉤。該公司長期以來也避免使用正式頭銜，儘管這可能會在公司外部造成一些混亂。

彭博塔布回憶道，早期，當你把這些人聚集在一個房間裡時，他們不會給你名片，他們都穿著短褲和 T 卹，你不知道自己在和誰說話。

However, Jane Street’s low-key image 2020年開始改變 由於其在冠狀病毒動蕩的市場中獲得的巨額利潤成為頭條新聞。

Its profits even surpassed those of Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities, drawing widespread attention, and rumors of huge payouts sparked jealousy on Wall Street. Marking its debut on the biggest stage, in September 2020 the Federal Reserve added Jane Street to its list of acceptable counterparties for its crisis response, alongside Wall Street stalwarts like JPMorgan.

Jane Street subsequently received widespread attention for being the place where Bankman-Fried began his trading career before founding the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX. This publicity unnerved many at Jane Street, especially since Bankman-Fried’s risk-taking and compliance-focused approach, which landed him in jail, was seen by many insiders and outsiders as antithetical to Jane Street’s ultra-cautious style.

In addition to having a 14-person central risk center that continuously monitors all of its volatile exposures, Jane Street also maintains an additional “liquidity buffer” of about 15% of trading capital.

該儲備基金在其主要經紀商之外持有，旨在確保即使市場受到干擾，Jane Street 也能維持其頭寸。此外，該公司廣泛利用衍生性商品來對沖可能影響單一交易櫃檯的小型特殊衝擊和可能動搖整個公司的廣泛金融危機。

今年早些時候，簡街再次成為人們關注的焦點。 它起訴了兩名前交易員 他於二月跳槽到對沖基金 Millennium Management。 Jane Street 在法庭文件中表示，由於交易員據稱奪走的印度期權策略出現問題，該公司每天損失超過 $1000 萬美元。從那時起，兩家公司一直在打一場法律戰，以確定誰需要提供哪些文件。

Still, the attention hasn’t slowed Jane Street’s growth. Its rapid growth in trading revenue shows its growing influence in the stock and options markets. In the coming year, the company plans to expand further in government bonds and currency trading, and significantly increase the scope and ambition of its machine learning efforts in terms of staff, infrastructure, and computing power, according to Berger.

簡街利潤成長提升了公司價值

However, Jane Street’s core business remains ETFs. Last year, Jane Street accounted for 14% of ETF trading in the U.S. and 20% in Europe, according to documents the company shared with lenders. In the bond ETF space, Jane Street estimates it accounts for 41% of all creation and redemption transactions.

這種市場主導地位使 Jane Street 能夠進入傳統上由銀行主導的基礎債券市場，這是與同行的關鍵區別。

“Technology companies that can price in real time and react quickly will make more money,” said Alexander Morris, chief investment officer at F/m Investments, which uses Jane Street as a market maker for its bond ETFs. “Because they are faster and provide fairer prices, their goal is to close the trade quickly and move on to the next one, not to get paid extra for delaying the trade.”

然而，在經歷了幾年的豐收之後，簡街似乎面臨更大的壓力。

Many banks have been investing aggressively in technology and restructuring their trading teams to counter competition from firms like Jane Street, both in equities and bonds. Those efforts are starting to pay off. “They’ve closed a lot of the gaps,” he said.

Adam Gould, global head of equities at Tradeweb, said. Meanwhile, Citadel Securities — already a big player in the government bond market — is also starting to get involved in the corporate debt market. “Competition has definitely increased, and I think that’s good for the overall market environment and for investors,” Berger said.

Jane Street’s biggest challenge, however, may be internal. Maintaining a collaborative, nonhierarchical culture was relatively easy when all employees could work on one floor in New York. But as of the end of last year, the company had 2,631 full-time employees, nearly half of whom were spread across offices from Singapore to Amsterdam.

This is one reason why Millennium’s poaching has attracted attention. As Jane Street grows in size and becomes less cohesive, it could lose more employees and increase the risk of its strategy being leaked, a challenge for a company that has historically performed well.

一位前簡街員工指出：即使在經濟不景氣的年份，簡街仍然支付員工豐厚的薪水。但當時公司只有100-200人。現在公司已支援近3000人。

如果Jane Street今年表現不佳，將對公司產生重大影響。如果今年表現平平，那麼公司就會遇到很大的麻煩，使公司陷入岌岌可危的境地。

本文源自網路：華爾街新巨頭：乘著ETF浪潮，簡街正成為最賺錢的交易者

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