By Anirban Sen
NEW YORK, May 8 (Reuters) – Jane Street pulled in a record haul of $16.1 billion in trading revenue for the first three months of the year, as the Wall Street market maker benefited from bouts of increased market volatility and a jump in the value of its stakes in top AI companies like Anthropic, according to people familiar with the matter.
During the quarter, the firm also more than doubled its profits to $10.3 billion, while its revenues were up more than 40% from the same period last year, the sources said, as it further cemented its position at the top of the world of high-frequency trading ahead of Wall Street’s top investment banks and market-making rivals like Citadel Securities and Hudson River Trading.
Jane Street’s latest performance was boosted by its medium-frequency trading strategies – which involve holding positions for longer-than-average time periods ranging from several minutes to days with the help of machines – while the firm was also buoyed by its stakes in several AI companies like Anthropic and Nvidia-backed cloud infrastructure provider CoreWeave.
In 2025, Jane Street shattered records as it generated $39.6 billion in net trading revenue, Reuters reported in April.
Market volatility tends to benefit trading desks at large banks and algorithmic trading firms as investors adjust portfolios to hedge against risks. Worries about the impact of artificial intelligence on software companies and the uncertain outcome of the Iran war have rattled financial markets in the first quarter, triggering repeated bouts of selloffs that kept trading desks busy.
Market jitters intensified in March following the outbreak of the U.S.–Israeli war with Iran. Concerns over oil supply disruptions from a blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, which carries one-fifth of global oil, stoked stagflation fears.
RIDING ON VOLATILITY
Jane Street, which has 3,500 employees and was launched in 2000, provides market liquidity by buying and selling a range of financial products, including ETFs, equities, bonds, options, commodities and currencies on exchanges and trading venues worldwide.
The firm, which to date has not taken on any outside capital, currently has direct market access to more than 200 trading venues across the globe. Jane Street’s capital structure allows the firm to take larger positions when providing liquidity and hold such positions through periods when such risks pay off.
Over the past few years, the market maker has gained market share rapidly against other trading firms, as it gained an edge through its real-time pricing tools that have been built over 25 years by leveraging data and research. The firm identifies and acts on opportunities across the full range of holding periods and risk profiles, from fleeting pricing inefficiencies in the market to committing capital to positions over a longer timeframe.
Jane Street’s latest quarterly trading haul comes as the largest U.S. banks also reported booming trading revenue during the March quarter. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and other top banks enjoyed big gains in their respective trading businesses.
(Reporting by Anirban Sen in New York; Editing by Michelle Price and Daniel Wallis)
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