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Comment by lz400 | Hacker News Reader

It's all so sketchy. Jane Street were investors in SA but presumably were much more sophisticated and savvy than Leopold. When SA got in trouble, 3 firms got into a bid war for the assets at fire sale prices: Citadel, Jane Street and a third I forgot. Citadel outbid the other 2, but it's all weird, like Jane Street wanted in on the popular boy's book that they knew was going to tank and just were waiting around in the water like sharks.

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Nothing about any of that is sketchy. It’s in their mutual interest to avoid a fire sale.

It’s sketchy to invest in a fund they probably knew full well had terrible risk practices and was likely going under on the first drawdown.

When Leopold went to pitch NY investors they all passed and thought he was full of it. He could only convince California tech guys. Savvy finance guys saw SA for what it was (leveraged beta trade). Jane street are finance guys, not California tech bros.

> like Jane Street wanted in on the popular boy's book that they knew was going to tank

This is completely illogical. If they knew it was going to tank, they wouldn’t invest.

As conspiracy theories go, this one doesn’t even have a leg to stand on.

One theory (I don’t necessarily believe it): Jane Street was after the private part of SA’s portfolio (Anthropic), which is difficult to come by. Losing a few million dollars investing and getting in that network was worth it for them to try to groom Leopold to eventually sell them the private stake

But the private stake was sold to the highest bidder and Jane Street didn’t get it. It was always going to be shopped around if this situation occurred.

is it unreasonable to say that Jane Street was simply paying a small price for some situational awareness?

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