Jane Street gets into mobile gaming

Stay informed with free updates

Look, we know we write a lot about Jane Street, but it’s a fascinating place, and people seem interested in it. So it was hard to resist writing about the trading shop entering the mobile phone game space (kinda).

Back in 2013 Jane Street developed a card game called “Figgie”, which it made to simulate open outcry trading, teach trading nous, and generally burnish its reputation for quirkiness — de rigueur in the industry.

All you need are 40 cards from a normal deck, and the rules have been public for a while. During Covid, Jane Street made a virtual version for remote interns. Now it’s a mobile game that’s publicly available on the official Apple and Google app stores. Really:

HT Sujeet Indap for the spot. The app first went live in Apple’s app store three weeks ago and at pixel time it is ranked #27 in the card game charts — narrowly beaten by the Wizard of Oz Slots, Phase 10: World Tour and Solitaire Grand Harvest. It enjoys a unanimous five-star rating from the three people who graded it.

Its Google Play page shows “500+ downloads”, no reviews, and an extensive list of device permissions required:

These kinds of novelties aren’t unheard of in the quant trading space, where many players try to compete for talent with more than thick paychecks (obscene comp is tablestakes these days, even for fresh grads).

Making Figgie public is clearly an HR thing. There’s an APPLY TO JANE STREET button slapped right next to one that takes you to the Figgie tutorial, as well as in the app itself.

Other firms have pursued similar tacks. WorldQuant runs a “World Cup” for quants, for example, while Two Sigma published four iterations of an online computer game it called Halite, where the players code the behaviour of spaceship fleets that mine resources and fight for territory. It looks like it’s dead though (maybe a victim of founder feuding/paralysis).

It’s easy to be cynical about guerilla marketing when it’s on behalf of a giant, obsessively secretive trading firm. In general, though, the approach is more interesting than the generic McMarketing stuff that most financial companies churn out (even if the latter is a more reliable employment option for former journalists).

We’ve downloaded Figgie and will add our own

Communications, Energy Are 2024’s Sector Leaders For US Stocks

The upside momentum in the US stock market so far this year continues to be led by rallies in communications services and energy shares, based on a set of ETFs through Monday’s close (May 6). Both sectors are outperforming the broad market and their counterparts.

Communication Services Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLC) and Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE) are tied for first place in 2024’s performance run. Each fund is posting a 12.2% year-to-date return. The gains reflect moderate premiums over the broad market’s 9.0% increase this year, based on SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY).

All but one of the primary equity sectors are sitting on year-to-gain gains — increases either match the broad market’s rally via SPY or fall short. The downside outlier for sector performance: real estate, which continues to post a steep year-to-date loss.

Property shares, which are prized for their relatively high payouts, have been hurt by the rise in Treasury yields. The stronger competition in risk-free government bonds is considered a factor in the slide for real estate investment trusts.

Real Estate Select Sector SPDR (XLRE), which has fallen 6.9% year to date, currently yields 3.69% on a trailing 12-month basis, according to Mornignstar.com. By comparison, the 10-year US Treasury yield is substantially higher at 4.49%, as of May 6.

For some analysts, the slide in property shares represents a buying opportunity, despite recent delays in expectations for rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. “From where listed REITs are currently priced, I don’t believe the market needs to expect rate cuts for REITs to deliver solid performance,” says Janus Henderson Investors’ Gregory Kuhl. “If the market reaches a solid consensus that rate hikes are off the table, that may be enough to get REITs going. It did seem like Powell took rate hikes off the table [at last week’s Fed meeting], which I think is a positive for REITs.”

Yield differentials may be a factor in REITs’ weak performance, but it’s notable that the utilities sector (XLU), which is also interest-rate sensitive, has rallied lately while XLRE has barely moved. XLU is up 9.5% year to date, a gap that suggests sentiment for property shares suffers from more than concerns about competitive Treasury yields.

Partners Group expands ELTIF line-up with evergreen private equity strategy

The Partners Group Private Equity Evergreen fund has the typical evergreen features, such as monthly redemptions and a minimum investment of $10,000, while the ELTIF structure provides another layer of protection and simplified administration. Individual investors in the fund, including retail clients that are not considered professional investors, will invest strictly in parallel with institutional investors through the firm’s pro rata allocation policy.  Partners Group launches two open-ended private markets funds for individual investors The fund is available to individual inves…

PineBridge Investments hires UK head of intermediary sales

At Robeco, he was most recently global wholesale and financial institutions manager. Before that, he worked as a business development executive for Robeco’s UK Wholesale side of the business, and was later promoted to business development manager.  In his new role, Quinn will be charged with maintaining and developing relationships with key UK intermediary investors. Alongside Quinn, Mick Schneider was appointed head of Switzerland for the firm, and Olivia Zaidi as senior client relations associate in the Swiss team. PineBridge Investments names intermediary distribution boss for E…

Woodside faces tough balancing act after investor revolt over climate

Stay informed with free updates

This article is an on-site version of our Energy Source newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every Tuesday and Thursday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters

Hello and welcome to Energy Source, coming to you today from Sydney, Australia and New York.

Global policymakers are slapping taxes on electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids as the shift away from combustion engines threatens to blow a $110bn hole in government revenues.

The UK, New Zealand, Israel and the majority of US states are among jurisdictions introducing tax changes and charges on EVs to compensate for declines in petrol and diesel excise taxes. My colleague Amanda Chu and I take a look at the reforms, which range from road usage charges based on distance travelled to taxes on EV public charging points.

The tax changes come at a tricky time for EV adoption, as declining profit margins and slower growth cause carmakers such as Tesla to pump the brakes on their electrification plans. Will this slow the transition to EVs? Write to energy.source@ft.com and let us know what you think.

In today’s newsletter we take a look at the investment climate Down Under, where Australian oil and gas operator Woodside is coming under mounting pressure over its climate strategy.

Thanks for reading — Jamie

Woodside struggles to balance E&P and ESG

“The world is not prepared to live without energy.” That’s according to Jakob Stausholm, chief executive of Rio Tinto, who was addressing the mining company’s shareholders at its annual meeting in Brisbane last week.

Rio Tinto is one of the world’s largest producers of copper, iron ore and aluminium but Stausholm spent a fair chunk of his time on stage talking about deals it has struck this year to buy renewable power from the Bungaban wind energy farm and the Upper Calliope solar farms to supply its operations in the state of Queensland. “We’re no longer just setting targets,” Stausholm said of the deals that will both support the development of renewable energy in Australia while also showing how it plans to deliver on its decarbonisation plan.

And when asked about Rio Tinto’s commitment to achieve net zero by 2050, he responded that the company was “not in coal, not in oil and gas”. It was a telling comment for Australian shareholders.

The

Home REIT continues search for new lender as Scottish Widows ups loan repayment pressure

In a shareholder update today (7 May), the former FTSE 250 trust said that it had been advised by the lender that “their objective is for repayment of the loan balance in the short term”. This is despite the board and investment adviser AEW’s efforts to “engage proactively and constructively” with the company and servicing interest payments in full as they fall, the trust said. Home REIT has been forced to sell more than a third of its portfolio at hefty discounts since August 2023 to repay its debts and improve cashflows. Since the sales began, a total of £79.9m of debt has been repa…