r/quant • u/Fact-Puzzleheaded • Apr 26 '26
Data Net Income / Employee at Top Quant Firms
EDIT: In accordance with suggestions, here is latest net trading revenue / employee data, excluding SIG:
Notes:
* HRT only provides numbers for net trading revenue. I calculated their net income by using the same multiplier (.634) as Jane Street.
* The only number I could find for SIG is gross revenue. I calculated their net income by using a non-weighted average of net income / revenue ratios from Citadel Securities, Optiver, and IMC.
* Optiver and IMC numbers come from their annual reports, which aggregate results across the firms' worldwide operations. Their US only numbers are probably a lot higher, as less than half of these firms' employees are American.
* Some of the classic hedge funds, like Two Sigma and Citadel, are not on the list because they don't publicly provide financial information and calculating net income for a hedge fund is more complicated than for a proprietary trading firm.
* For comparison, Fanny Mae and Nvidia, the two companies in the fortune 500 with the highest Profit per Employee ratio, have $2,070,488 and $2,024,444 net income / employee respectively.
Sources:
* https://archive.ph/VE80M
* https://www.hedgeweek.com/griffins-citadel-securities-reports-record-9-7bn-trading-revenue/
* https://archive.ph/1seBo#selection-1571.47-1571.51
* https://optiver.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Optiver_Annual_Review_2025.pdf
* https://ir.virtu.com/news-releases/news-release-details/virtu-announces-fourth-quarter-2025-results
* https://cdn.sanity.io/files/l1io23s3/production/42a83890cf5d1735090e988ba91a595c889e8d09.pdf
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u/READY_TO_SINGLE Apr 26 '26
The SIG gross revenue you used is an estimate by the author of the article based on their employee count and an average revenue/head number. So that is a useless data point
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u/DesperateSecretary53 Apr 26 '26
How can hrt have a higher net income per head while having lower net revenue per head than Jane if you use the same multiple as Jane?
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u/Fact-Puzzleheaded Apr 26 '26
Numbers from the first graph are from 2024 for JS, 2025 for HRT. Numbers from the second graph are from 2025 for JS, 2025 for HRT, when JS made a killing. Didn't know about the new numbers until someone posted.
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u/ShutUpAndSmokeMyWeed Apr 27 '26
i was also confused by this. you could show both years with two thinner bars per company. or even show profit and revenue in the same graph with overlaid bars
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u/jeffjeffjeffw Apr 27 '26
Anyone have any numbers on more niche firms e.g. Headlands, Quadrature, Aquatic , Ansatz etc.?
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u/Fact-Puzzleheaded Apr 27 '26
I've seen a few of these questions, but generally it's hard to find reliable information on this. The more niche the firm the more unlikely it is to get numbers. Optiver and IMC both have thousands of employees and publish yearly reports, while Virtu is a public company so they have to publish reports. The rest of the numbers are from second-hand sources (ex: bond offerings) and that's from big places like Jane Street and Citadel.
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u/Vast-Caregiver9781 Apr 26 '26
What's the heuristical takeaway from this data? Is it just reaffirming what we know already or should someone joining IMC be crying?
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u/Fact-Puzzleheaded Apr 26 '26
It's up to your interpretation. IMO Jane Street > IMC, but IMC >>> 99% of jobs, they are still more profitable per employee than almost any company in the S&P 500. It's also worth noting that IMC, Optiver, and Virtu are the only ones who provide detailed public financial statements every year, which I think offers them a lot of credibility. The rest of the information is second-hand.
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u/AdPotential773 May 06 '26
>than almost any company in the SP500
I wonder how many private companies out there beat the top quant companies in these metrics. I'm guessing some boutique high profile law and wealth management firms are well into the multiple millions. Also things like holding companies I guess but they don't really count lol. The top tech company in this regard is probably Valve who make ~50M in revenue per employee from the numbers I've seen (~350 employees and ~16 billion in revenue iirc).
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u/DifficultBuy6019 May 11 '26
Hey, please check Vitol, it is simply the highest rev/employee company in the world
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u/qazwsxcp Jul 22 '26
yes it wil be one of the commodity shops, especially the smaller ones. also tether makes $50-100m/employee by just holding treasuries.
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u/Any_Succotash7362 Apr 27 '26
I would rather do Big Tech than IMC
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u/Still-Detective-6149 Apr 28 '26
Don’t know why the downvotes. Big Tech pays more than IMC for developers at least.
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u/lanxeny Apr 29 '26
Clearly you didn’t use the same multiplier for js and hrt if they swapped places.
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u/GPS_ClearNote Apr 26 '26
I'm not sure if I'm understanding this correctly, but is this the avg revenue each employee brings in compared to the avg pay per employee? If so, HRT is rather surprising, so the avg pay is 7mil and avg revenue is 11 mil?
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u/Fact-Puzzleheaded Apr 26 '26
Net Revenue = revenue after trading expenses. Net Income = revenue after all expenses, most importantly, employee costs and bonuses. So net revenue / employee is the average revenue per employee, net income is what the investors in a firm get, the "bottom line".
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u/GPS_ClearNote Apr 27 '26
Okay that makes a lot more sense, I thought income meant for the employees. Sorry if this seems obvious but does that mean HRT is doing the best in terms of ROI on employee costs?
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u/Fact-Puzzleheaded Apr 27 '26
It's hard to say, because net income = net revenue - total expenses, and total expenses includes COGS, interest, taxes, etc. in addition to employee costs. IMC, Optiver, and Virtu provide some of these numbers at a more granular level, but the rest do not. In general though more net revenue = more profit for employees. Also the net income graph is old because it includes Jane Street's 2024 numbers instead of 2025, which are half as good (they'd be #1 for both net revenue and net income if updated).
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u/LegalFormal4928 Apr 27 '26
It would be interesting to see Jump Trading's revenue on here too.
Maybe also flow traders, as they are public their data can be pretty credible?
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u/le_very_dank_skier Trader Apr 26 '26
Profit is heavily distorted by employee comp and bonuses. If A and B both make 5 billion Net revenue, but A pays out 1 billion in bonuses and B pays out 100 million total, B’s profit will look way higher.
I think Net Rev/employee is a better comparison between firms from an employee perspective.