Rupak Ghose is formerly a financials research analyst at Credit Suisse and head of corporate strategy at ICAP/NEX. The latest spate of financial results illustrate a widening gap in the world of electronic market-making. Two firms that were once direct peers — Jane Street and Flow Traders — are now as far apart as Amazon and Poundland.
Scale is not merely a function of overall revenues. It also comes from market share in large, profitable verticals. There are many investment banks that have similar revenues to Jane Street but with a fraction of their profitability. These banks have the complexity of being in dozens of asset classes and products but without dominating any of them . As a result, Jane Street generates 30-45x more revenue than Flow Traders with 4x as much headcount.