Alex Gerko at XTX suggests Jane Street is employing "muppets" in its control functions
We suggested earlier that Alex Gerko, the unfathomably wealthy founder and CEO of electronic trading firm XTX might be tending his nature garden instead of posting on LinkedIn as Gerko's LinkedIn account appeared to have disappeared. Instead, we now realize that he has simply blocked us. This may have been going on for some time.
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XTX didn't respond to multiple requests to comment for this article, but for those who can see his posts, Gerko has been busy posting his opinions about the Jane Street Indian options trading scandal, which Jane Street is arguing is not a scandal at all.
Writing earlier this week, Gerko queried why Jane Street didn't notice that it had an issue, and questioned whether the firm's controls function is "intentionally staffed with muppets". - "The whole thing appears to stink very badly," Gerko declared, suggesting that 90% of Jane Street's Indian options trading revenues may have been derived from similar activities.
Jane Street's head of compliance and operations in India appears to be Shraddha Shah, who formerly worked for BNP Paribas and Barclays. However, there have been suggestions that Jane Street's Hong Kong, London and Singapore based staff may have been involved in the contested trades too.
The Financial Times says Jane Street is preparing a detailed point-by-point rebuttal of the Indian regulator's claims that it was engaged in market manipulation, which it says were simply “basic index arbitrage trading”. Gerko clearly thinks otherwise. In a subsequent post on his blocked [to us] account, he observes that Jane Street was effectively running a two leg trade in which the first leg lost money, but the second leg made a lot more money because the unwinding of leg 1 granted Jane Street perfect foresight on the direction of the market.
Gerko said XTX closed its own Indian options trading business in early 2025 after its Sharpe ratio went mysteriously from 10 to 0 overnight. Gerko said the big question now is whether Jane Street is engaged in similar activities elsewhere.
Jane Street didn't respond to a request to comment.
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