Hudson River Trading generates $6.4bn in first-quarter trading revenue
Volatile markets fuelled by Iran war help to propel proprietary trading firm
Hudson River Trading brought in $6.4bn in trading revenues in the first quarter of the year as the ascendant rival to market leader Jane Street seized on turbulent markets.
Hudson River made $4.2bn in net profit on those revenues, according to a person familiar with the matter. Wider volatility in markets contributed to the results at the New York-based firm, which employs about 1,000 people and uses quantitative and algorithmic technology as a market maker across global assets.
The US war in Iran has fuelled large swings in the price of oil as most ships are blocked from passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial transport channel for commodities. The fallout has spread to other financial markets such as Treasuries and currencies as investors grapple with longer-term consequences to the global economy.
Volatile markets are ripe environments for market-makers, which profit from differences in price as they buy and sell assets. Proprietary firms such as Jane Street and Hudson River have posted record-breaking results over the past year to become dominant players in that business.
In 2025, Jane Street, Hudson River and Citadel Securities made more than $60bn in trading revenues.
These secretive firms have often outstripped comparable desks at major banks. Hudson River’s net trading revenue in the first quarter was greater than that of Bank of America or Wells Fargo in the same period.
Meanwhile, Jane Street made record revenues of $16.1bn in the first three months of the year, with net income of $10.3bn. Those results beat the trading desks at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, which also benefited from whipsawing in markets.
Jane Street’s latest results were also driven in part by a private portfolio of stakes in businesses such as AI lab Anthropic and Thinking Machines Lab, which has contributed to record earnings as the valuations of the AI groups surge.
Hudson River was founded in 2002 by partners with a speciality in mathematics and computer programming. The firm uses automated algorithms to price across many global markets and it has recently made big investments in AI and the computational resources required for trading models.
Hudson River declined to comment. Bloomberg News first reported the results.