u/rupak-007

QRT has its critics: too leveraged, too French, too much hiring but the growth story is pretty amazing.

$42bn of AUM and up strongly this year again. Big moves into mid frequency, 70 external allocations to new HFs and launching a bunch of discretionary strategies.

30% net returns pa over 7 years on their flagship fund albeit with more leverage and more volatility than some of US peers.

Main themes…https://open.substack.com/pub/rupakghose/p/the-rise-of-qrt?r=1qelrn&utm\_medium=ios

HRT’s Q1 2026 year-on-year revenue growth of 135% compared with a 58% increase for Virtu and an average increase for the equities divisions of the big 5 US banks of 25%. Although dwarfed in scale by the size of Jane Street’s revenues (which includes one-off VC gains), HRT’s Q1 2026 revenues are up 288% on Q1 2024, slightly above Jane Street’s 264% growth and ahead of the 114% growth for Virtu.

The other thing – like Jane Street – that is particularly impressive is just how profitable and lean the firm is. HRT’s EBITDA margins hit a record of 70% in Q1 2026 only to be beaten by Jane Street, which benefits from one-off gains from its tech VC bets. EBITDA margins rose from around 60% in the prior year quarter and around 63% for the whole of 2025.

HRT’s revenue per employee is only matched by the smaller XTX Markets and ahead of even Jane Street if you annualized the last quarter’s revenues. At $23.3m per employee that would compare with $18.3m for Jane Street, $3m for Virtu and above even top AI firms. No wonder HRT can pick and choose some of the best quant and computer science talents in the world.

https://open.substack.com/pub/rupakghose/p/hudson-river-trading-q1-revenues?r=1qelrn&utm\_medium=ios

Jane Street made 3x Goldman’s trading business!
Jane Street q1 revenues more than doubled to $16bn and net income of $10bn, reports Bloomberg. That is same as last quarter and more than CS or HRT make in a year!
https://open.substack.com/pub/rupakghose/p/is-jane-street-the-best-hedge-fund?r=1qelrn&utm\_medium=ios

A bunch of firms have emerged in Denmark’s university town Aarhus, trading energy market largely using data-driven approach and algorithms for execution. Power markets are more volatile given renewables and geopolitics.

In 2022 just 6 smallish Aarhus proprietary trading firms made more than $5bn of post tax profits which is the kind of profits that Citadel delivers in the space straddling physical and financial markets.

https://open.substack.com/pub/rupakghose/p/the-traders-of-aarhus?utm\_source=app-post-stats-page&r=1qelrn&utm\_medium=ios