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Katie Martin
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Robin Wigglesworth
Pushkin.
Katie Martin
Now if you keep half an eye on the nerdier bits of financial markets, then you will have heard about a spicy little scandal in Indian stocks. Earlier this month the regulator there tore a strip out of a trading firm called Jane street, accusing it of a quotes sinister, a scheme to manipulate the market. It also impounded over half a billion dollars of what it called illegal gains over the matter. Now Jane street, as you might imagine, has denied all this very firmly, saying it is beyond disappointed with what the regulator has said. It is all very much the talk of the town. And I mean sure this is a relatively small stock market, but today on the show we we're going to ask what if anything, does this episode say about how shiny new style trading firms operate and where could it all lead? This is Unhedged, the Markets and Finance podcast from the Financial Times and Pushkin. I'm Katie Martin, a markets columnist here at FT Towers in London where it's very much Sun's out, guns out. This is a hot country now and we need to get used to it. Now joining me in the studio is a special guest all the way from Oslo, Robin Wigglesworth, editor of FT Alphaville and one of the authors of a recent FT Big read on the Jane street snafu. Robin, this sort of stuff is like your entire personality, right? You love this sort of nerdy stuff.
Robin Wigglesworth
Yeah, I mean if we could have a title at the FT that was Chief Nerdy Finance Correspondent, then I think that would be my dream job.
Katie Martin
So this is just like Christmas come early for you from a random pocket of finance.
Robin Wigglesworth
I mean this is my birthday. I mean this is stuff that I look forward to. I go to work dreaming of situations exactly like this.
Katie Martin
Listen, in Norway this is the sort of thing that passes for like high excitement. So tell the masses what is going on here. First of all, a lot of people won't have heard of Jane Street. What is Jane Street?
Robin Wigglesworth
Well, it's a street in New York is the 16th answer. It's a trading firm that essentially acts as what we call a market maker mostly. So whenever you buy and sell a stock in markets, there's usually like somebody who Kind of buys and sells it to you. If you want to buy a stock, then they'll find it for you and deliver it. And if you sell one, they'll find a buy for you.
Katie Martin
For a lot of people, the only reason they will ever have heard of Jane street is because this is where Sam Bankman Fried got his start in finance, right before he ended up running the big crypto exchange FTX and then going to prison. So this is like a story that is high finance in quite a kind of quirky little pocket that a lot of people haven't heard of. Massive stakes, huge amounts of money. What's going on here? If you can sum it up?
Robin Wigglesworth
Well, Jane street has been accused of market manipulation by the Indian stock market regulator. And that has frankly opened up a whole can of worms about what stock market manipulation is when it happens. It has thrust a light on these incredibly successful trading firms that most people don't know, but you know are making more money than the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan stand in markets. And kind of raises questions about like how resilient markets might be to one of these major new powerhouses coming in trouble. And now we're going to find out the answer to all that.
Katie Martin
We certainly are. There's a few of these, like, fancy pants trading firms out there. So normally if you think of trading, you think of a big trading floor either at an exchange or at a big investment bank. Lots of people are sort of shouting at each other and waving their arms around or like staring at massive banks of screens and pressing buttons. You know how like Airbnb is the world's biggest hotel company that doesn't have any hotels and Uber is the world's biggest taxi company that doesn't actually have any taxis. These firms are like the world's biggest trading firms that don't have any human traders or have very few comparatively actual human traders doing this stuff.
Robin Wigglesworth
Well, I mean, Jane street has fewer traders than let's say a Goldman Sachs or a Morgan Stanley. These kind of banks we associate with the trading of yore. But what does differentiate Jane street from a lot of these other sort of classic high frequency trading firms that like all technology and Algos essentially is that they do have traders, hundreds of traders though they sit generally in shorts and T shirts and they whisper very quietly whilst they do mental puzzles and math olympiads in their spare time.
Katie Martin
Yes, as do we.
Robin Wigglesworth
Oh, obviously, obviously that's a Thursday night for me.
Katie Martin
Yes. But these are not the kind of human intensive operations that you might think of and they're not the general population. If you think of trading, you don't think of a fir like Jane Street. But these guys are massive, right?
Robin Wigglesworth
They're huge. I mean they've been successful for a long time, but I'd say in the last half decade they've gone gangbusters. Yeah, I mean they went from around $2 billion of trading revenue, let's say sort of in 2018, 19 to now. Last year they raked in over $20 billion net trading revenues in a year.
Katie Martin
That's a fair amount.
Robin Wigglesworth
That's right. The equivalent of most major banks in the world. It's not far short of a Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. In the first quarter of this year, in fact, Jane street made more money in markets than Morgan Stanley and within touching distance of Goldman, which has frankly been the powerhouse of financial markets for several generations now.
Katie Martin
Yeah, so it just goes to show if you can inject yourself into just the right bit of the plumbing behind markets, there is money in them there hills.
Robin Wigglesworth
Yeah, I mean they've been smart and kind of successful for a while. They started off trading something called American Depository Receipts or something called the old American Stock Exchange literally don't exist anymore. They branched out into this new product called at the time exchange traded funds. And obviously that became a huge successful.
Katie Martin
Which is another thing you can nerd out on all day long listeners, we're going to spare you. I can tell he's about to go. Robin, reel it in. Come on, man.
Robin Wigglesworth
No index funds, I promise.
Katie Martin
But so Jane street has been like riding this incredible wave for a few years and then all of a sudden it's really stumbled into something in India. One of the things that was really interesting to me from the piece that you were involved in that ran the other day, listeners, you really should check it out if you're even remotely interested in this stuff is that the regulator's been sending it warnings for a little while, right? Saying hey, knock it off. Like knock what off?
Robin Wigglesworth
I mean, it gets obviously quite legally sensitive and Jane street, we should again stress, like denied that the regulator ever told them to knock it off and that they didn't do it. They say they've been trying desperately to engage with the regulator, the Indian regulator for quite some time and I've just received radio silence. But what the Indian regulator is basically alleging is that in India there's a stock market, but there's also this massive thing called the derivatives market which is big elsewhere as well, but in India it's like the eighth wonder of the modern world. It is Insane. It is an options market so big you could see it from space. It is the great wall of of options trading. It is bigger than every other market in the world combined times a factor of three, I think almost.
Katie Martin
Is it bigger than like your ego and Rob Armstrong's ego put together?
Robin Wigglesworth
Maybe one and a half. Robin and Rob and maybe. But it's big. It's big.
Katie Martin
But it's pretty big.
Robin Wigglesworth
Let's not get overboard. It is big.
Katie Martin
So the deal with derivatives, right, so just in the stock market you can buy a stock and then, you know, you're effectively betting that the stock is going to go up and you hope you're going to make some money out of it. With derivatives, you can sort of bet on what the stock is going to do without necessarily owning the stock. And there are lots of good reasons why you might want to do that. If you're like hedging yourself against risks, it can just be like a conservative, normal thing to do. But you can use derivatives to make wild bets. Right. And this has just been phenomenally popular in India.
Robin Wigglesworth
I mean it's been popular for a while, but frankly, since 2020 it just went. I mean it is not even parabolic, it is incredible. If you have a chance to see a chart, it is gobsmacking. And we've talked about obviously like how people embrace trading, retail trading in the US and Europe since in the lockdowns. But India just took it and just.
Katie Martin
Went to town to a whole new.
Robin Wigglesworth
And for a market maker, a trading firm like Jane Street. I mean that's not just catnip, that's gold mine stuff. Yeah, they went crazy. They thought this was incredible. Because also, dare I say it, like ordinary traders are not the most risk sensitive, mathematically inclined, careful people in the world, certainly anywhere in the world. And that's frankly especially true in India. Around the world, I think 80% of people lose money trading options very quickly. In India, even the regulator says it's close to 90%.
Katie Martin
Wow.
Robin Wigglesworth
But somebody has to sit on the other side. So who's going to make the money? Well, that was to a large extent Chain Street.
Katie Martin
Yeah. So like clever nerds doing math Olympiads, right. I can't even say it. That's how far I am from doing a Maths Olympiad. But when they see like charts where you have a share price going in one direction and derivatives that are based on that share price just massively exceeding moves in the underlying asset, that is a gap that you can insert yourself in and make money. Right?
Robin Wigglesworth
Yeah. So a lot of what these guys do is something called arbitrage. They see two prices that should be linked, that are less linked than they should be. So you buy one security and you sell the other one. And in theory, over time, you know, if they should be worth the same thing, you'll make money on that. And what the regulator says that Jane street did in India was essentially they went long, bought lots of Indian bank stocks, shorted Indian bank derivatives, especially options. And then once they had a massive position in options on Indian bank stocks, they then dumped all the Indian bank stocks. And because the Indian stock market is actually not very healthy, it's not very liquid, that made the value of the far larger options position much more worth. So yeah, they lost money on buying and selling the Indian backed stocks, but they made way more money on those options on the other side.
Katie Martin
There's lots of things in risk management at trading firms or at banks that if you really wanted to, you could say, well, that looks and smells like market manipulation. But they would say, look, this is just either exploiting an opportunity that's open to literally anybody, or actually us providing a public service in helping prices to converge and help markets to function more smoothly. I guess that's the territory that we're in here. Right? So like Jane street, as you were saying, right at the top are saying, wait, what? We haven't been manipulating anything. This is like a really gray area.
Robin Wigglesworth
Well, it's all trading normally has an impact on the market. Are you manipulating that market? If I buy a stock of Apple, like realistically, it's going to have a very small impact. If I'm a big hedge fund and I buy $1 billion worth of Apple stock, it's probably going to push the price of Apple up a little bit by am I manipulating Apple's share price? It's kind of, it gets fuzzy actually, quite quickly. I always call these duck rabbits, like the, the classic illusion that, like, is it a duck or is it a rabbit? Jane street is saying that actually what they did was what they call index arbitrage. They took advantage of the fact that you had this massive, highly traded options market and this frankly, slightly decrepit, crappy actual stock market. And they made sure that those prices were more closely linked and they happened to make lots of money doing so.
Katie Martin
I don't think they use the word crappy, but still, that's the gist here, right?
Robin Wigglesworth
That's my favorite technical word for it, at least.
Katie Martin
Now then, what are other people in the industry saying about this?
Robin Wigglesworth
Well, they're shocked, like There's a whole new generation of new trading firms like Citadel Securities, Hudson River Trading, Jump Trading, Virtu, xtx, imc. I mean, these firms are very successful.
Katie Martin
You love this stuff.
Robin Wigglesworth
I love this stuff. But they're fascinating. They are kind of the ascendant force in markets today. And not everybody appreciates that. And Jane street was kind of the best of the best in the same way that maybe Goldman Sachs for was for so long, kind of the apogee of Wall Street. Jane street is where the smartest people aspire to work. It's just having a Jane street internship on your CV is a cool, sexy thing to have these days. Whatever you want to do in the future. It's considered like the ultimate imprimatur of being a very smart person.
Katie Martin
Yes.
Robin Wigglesworth
Like, they pay their interns more than the US government pays the chair of the Federal Reserve. Like, interns make the equivalent of $250,000 a year.
Katie Martin
Crikey.
Robin Wigglesworth
Oh, and that's more than Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the UK as well. I found out.
Katie Martin
I feel like I should have paid more attention in maths.
Robin Wigglesworth
Yeah, no, I definitely should have done better in my Math Olympiads. But the thing is, Jane street also had a pretty good reputation. Like, I've been writing about them and their rivals, and nobody, even the rivals, ever had any bad words to say about them, except, we hate those guys. They're doing too well. It's annoying us.
Katie Martin
Also, the origin of this scandal is kind of interesting to me, Right. Because it comes from the fact that Jane street, correct me when I get this wrong, but they were taking a couple of former employees to court, saying that they had given away secrets of Jane street trading strategies when they went to another employer. That's broadly right. Yeah.
Robin Wigglesworth
Yeah. So one of the ultimate flexes and illustrations of how kind of badass Jane street was at their peak, or are now, is that they didn't have non competes like most people in the finance industry, tie people up in all sorts of very difficult contracts. So you can't just easily leave for a rival. But they were so cool and they paid so well in such a great place. They just, as a flex, didn't really have this. But as they've grown, they have occasionally had people retire. Jane street partners were famous for retiring in their 30s because they had generational wealth. I know. But they actually had somebody leave them for a hedge fund, Millennium Management. And apparently James Fried alleged that they took with them the secrets to this very profitable Indian options trade. And they sued Millennium and then it emerged in the lawsuit that this was around in Indian options and that was what made the Indian regulator sit up and take notice.
Katie Martin
Well, I bet they're regretting trying to sue those guys, right?
Robin Wigglesworth
Yes. I think this is quite possibly the most expensive, crazy, barbarous riesand effect I've ever seen. Essentially.
Katie Martin
What does this all mean and where does it lead? Does it put other high speed trading shops or sort of new style trading shops off being active in, in India or in arbitrage strategies?
Robin Wigglesworth
Not arbitrage strategies overall. Everybody says, you know, with a mix of disbelief and schadenfreude, that, you know, we can't believe what James street did here. We won't condemn them, they're smart people, but this looks bad.
Katie Martin
Do you think they're thinking this could be us tomorrow? It's possible that you run a rule over a whole bunch of stuff that we do that we think is benign or even helpful and a regulator on a mission could try and describe it as manipulation.
Robin Wigglesworth
Yeah. Well, the thing is, because it is a duck rabbit situation in many cases, I mean this one frankly doesn't look great. We'll see Jane Street's defense eventually, I suspect. But they all say we don't do this. We're not worried about that. But 20 years ago, trading firms, especially high frequenc trading firms, it became this popular bogeyman. They were the flash boys and they'd finally kind of gotten over like a basically decade of being blamed for everything that went wrong in markets.
Katie Martin
Yeah.
Robin Wigglesworth
So yeah, people are kind of maybe happy seeing a big rival like James Fre getting humbled. But some of them are also wary that this might lead to a broader sort of regulatory scrutiny. They're all very confident that they won't find anything bad on their patch and what they're doing. But obviously regulators crawling up every crevice is not a fun thing.
Katie Martin
No. Do normal people need to worry about this? What are the chances that this could lead to dislocations in markets, do you think?
Robin Wigglesworth
Well, it's a good question. Just because Jane street is so humongous. I mean they trade trillions of dollars a day almost. But like, I mean they are one of the biggest market makers in the United States. Like 1 in 10 of every share that trades in the United States is traded by Jane Street. There's only one firm begging them, that's Citadel Securities. They are huge in Europe. They're huge in exchange traded funds. They're even big in bonds these days. They're big in almost Every market. So I don't want to be sound too dismissive of the risk, but I think like, given that this would be a very sort of idiosyncratic downfall if it ever came to that, there are enough rivals that would gladly see the back of Jane street that would step in and pick up everything. So actually this wouldn't be a downfall happened by big financial catastrophe.
Katie Martin
No.
Robin Wigglesworth
So I think this is something that, touch wood, probably won't lead to any sort of major issues if it leads to major issues at James street, which obviously is still very unclear.
Katie Martin
So in the meantime, it's just kind of like Real Housewives of, of, of downtown Manhattan. Right. It's just kind of the most kind of glorious popcorn filled kind of soap opera that you can possibly imagine in just to restate a very nerdy part of finance.
Robin Wigglesworth
Yeah, but it's. Yeah, very nerdy, but insanely successful. I mean these guys were making more money than God. I mean Jane street made more money than Citadel. They are the, the highest earners and I think that's why there's so much interest. Right. I mean everybody likes really smart, successful people occasionally face plant, right. It's, it's just highly amusing even if you have no bone in the fight. And it's just for a nerd like me, it's just really interesting because it does go to the heart of what these firms are, how they operate, what they do. What are the gray zones, how might regulators respond and what could the fallout from that be more broadly. And we're finally going to maybe see that now in real life.
Katie Martin
So for you, Robin, like you live and breathe this stuff, you love this stuff. Is this going to be your favorite story of the year, hands down?
Robin Wigglesworth
Well, we had the old tragic comedy around Liberation Day, right? Liquidation Day. Some people call it the Penguins. The poor penguins getting sanctioned. That was pretty amazing. But this one is up there at least top three and we'll see how, how the year goes.
Katie Martin
Good stuff, listeners. I hope you have enjoyed this immersion in the world of Robin Wigglesworth. We are going to be back in one second with Longshot. Okie dokie. It's time for Long Short. That part of the show where we go long a thing we love or short a thing we hate. Robin, had you remembered that this is a part of the show I have now. Okay, let me go first. I am Short bedbugs. So somebody who I know very well, I'm not going to say who it is, was staying in a hotel last night and they were like in bed and Then they were like, oh, what's that over there? Oh, what's that over there? Bedbugs. No, I just. I think they should burn everything they own and not take it back to their home. But it's been like a highly unpleasant drama. Let's hope it's a one off. What have you got?
Robin Wigglesworth
I'm tempted. I. I had once bedbugs in New York. And I am still traumatized. You said this now. And I literally brought. I mean, it's cold. Shivers almost. It was. Maybe I've been. I had a very lucky, sheltered life, but that was one of the most traumatic experiences. Also with a newborn baby.
Katie Martin
Oh, no, no.
Robin Wigglesworth
So. But I can't go double short that. Of course. So, yes, I guess I'm feeling in a short frame of mind. So I guess microstrategy. I'm sure it's been short on the.
Katie Martin
Heaven knows I've tried this before. Robin, did you not know the whole story?
Robin Wigglesworth
Yeah, but eventually I'll get proven right, or some of one of us will. And maybe I'm the one that kind of finally manifests this into reality.
Katie Martin
Listen, learn from me. Like, betting against this company that just buys bitcoin and that's all that it does. Like, the doubters never win, man.
Robin Wigglesworth
But now they're literally issuing the reason why for me, my latest sort of short thesis here. They're literally borrowing money to pay. Like the money on some of the other money they've borrowed earlier. Like, obviously, because it's like a bitcoin buying machine built on a crappy software company that doesn't really generate any money. They've borrowed all this money. They have to pay on that. So they have to borrow more money to pay the early investors. And I'm not going to say what that is normally called, but like, I mean, at some point this.
Katie Martin
Robin, the music has to stop here to tell you, I got thoroughly humiliated trying to short this thing. So I am. I'm just out of microstrategy, or strategy, as it's called now. But you do you and listeners, if you've got thoughts about strategy and you'd like to tell Robin, he's an idiot. Robin.wiggleswortht.com, fill your boots now. We're going to be back in your ears in just a couple of days, so listen up then. Unhedged is produced by Jake Harper and edited by Bryant Urstadt. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. We had additional help from Topher Forges. Cheryl Brumley is the FT FT's global head of audio. Special thanks to Laura Clark, Alistair Mackey, Greta Cohn and Natalie Sadler. FT Premium subscribers can get the Unhedged newsletter for free. A 30 day free trial is available to everyone else. Just go to ft.com unhedged offer. I'm Katie Martin. Thanks for listening. The FT Weekend Festival returns on September 6th at Kenwood House Gardens in London. Register today for debates, tastings, Q&As and more. Speakers include Stephen Fry, David Bedeel, Nikolai Tangent, Nick Clegg, Tim Harford, and many, many more. Plus your favorite FT writers and editors. Register now and claim 10% off using the code FTPodcasts.
Unhedged Podcast Episode Summary: "The Secret Giant of Finance"
Release Date: July 11, 2025
Hosted by Katie Martin and Robin Wigglesworth of the Financial Times & Pushkin Industries
In the July 11, 2025 episode of Unhedged, hosted by Katie Martin and Robin Wigglesworth, the conversation delves into a recent scandal involving Jane Street—a prominent yet lesser-known trading firm. This episode unpacks the allegations of market manipulation in the Indian stock market, explores the inner workings of modern trading firms, and examines the broader implications for global financial markets.
Katie Martin introduces Jane Street, highlighting its role and stature within the financial markets. Unlike traditional trading floors bustling with human activity, Jane Street operates with a minimal number of human traders, relying heavily on technology and algorithms.
"[...] these firms are like the world's biggest trading firms that don't have any human traders or have very few comparatively actual human traders doing this stuff." (04:41)
Robin Wigglesworth elaborates on Jane Street's operations, describing it as a market maker that facilitates buying and selling in the stock markets. He emphasizes the firm's significant growth, noting that its trading revenue soared from approximately $2 billion in 2018-19 to over $20 billion in the previous year.
"In the first quarter of this year, in fact, Jane Street made more money in markets than Morgan Stanley and within touching distance of Goldman, which has frankly been the powerhouse of financial markets for several generations now." (05:44)
The core of the episode revolves around allegations made by the Indian stock market regulator against Jane Street. The regulator accused the firm of engaging in a sinister scheme to manipulate the market, resulting in the impounding of over half a billion dollars in what they termed as illegal gains.
Robin Wigglesworth provides context, explaining that Jane Street was accused of market manipulation through index arbitrage. The firm reportedly took large positions in Indian bank stocks and simultaneously shorted derivatives, particularly options. By dumping the stocks in a less liquid market, they artificially inflated the value of their substantial options positions, leading to significant profits.
"They took advantage of the fact that you had this massive, highly traded options market and this frankly, slightly decrepit, crappy actual stock market. And they made sure that those prices were more closely linked and they happened to make lots of money doing so." (12:24)
Notable Quote:
"It's all trading normally has an impact on the market. Are you manipulating that market? If I buy a stock of Apple, like realistically, it's going to have a very small impact." – Robin Wigglesworth (11:38)
The scandal shines a spotlight on the evolving landscape of trading firms. Robin Wigglesworth discusses how firms like Jane Street, Citadel Securities, Hudson River Trading, and others have become dominant forces in global markets, often surpassing traditional giants like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in trading revenue.
He highlights the intellectual allure of these firms, noting that internships at Jane Street are highly coveted and considered a mark of exceptional intelligence and prowess in the financial sector.
"Jane Street is the best of the best [...] having a Jane Street internship on your CV is a cool, sexy thing to have these days." (13:21)
The allegations have sparked a debate on the thin line between sophisticated trading strategies and market manipulation. Robin Wigglesworth points out the gray areas inherent in trading practices, where actions taken to exploit market inefficiencies can sometimes be misconstrued as manipulative.
There is concern within the industry that this case might lead regulators to scrutinize other high-frequency and algorithmic trading firms more closely. While Jane Street maintains its innocence, the episode underscores the potential for increased regulatory interventions in the trading sphere.
"It's all a duck-rabbit situation [...] What they did was what they call index arbitrage." – Robin Wigglesworth (12:24)
Despite the significant role Jane Street plays in global markets, Robin Wigglesworth believes that even if Jane Street were to face severe repercussions, the presence of other large trading firms would prevent any catastrophic disruptions in the financial markets.
"There are enough rivals that would gladly see the back of Jane Street that would step in and pick up everything. So actually this wouldn't be a downfall happened by big financial catastrophe." (17:43)
The episode of Unhedged titled "The Secret Giant of Finance" provides an in-depth analysis of Jane Street's alleged market manipulation in India, shedding light on the complexities and challenges of regulating modern trading firms. Through engaging dialogue and expert insights, Katie Martin and Robin Wigglesworth navigate the intricate balance between innovative trading strategies and the ethical boundaries that govern financial markets.
Robin Wigglesworth on Arbitrage:
"A lot of what these guys do is something called arbitrage. They see two prices that should be linked, that are less linked than they should be. So you buy one security and you sell the other one." (10:01)
Katie Martin on Market Manipulation Gray Areas:
"There's lots of things in risk management at trading firms or at banks that if you really wanted to, you could say, well, that looks and smells like market manipulation." (11:01)
Robin Wigglesworth on Regulatory Impact:
"We'll see Jane Street's defense eventually, I suspect. But they all say we don't do this." (15:09)
For more insights into the world of finance and markets, tune into future episodes of Unhedged. Stay informed about the latest developments, scandals, and innovations shaping the global financial landscape.
Note: This summary excludes promotional segments, advertisements, and non-content sections to focus solely on the substantive discussions of the episode.