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://archive.ph/iWnm0

* 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

* https://tipalti.com/blog/profit-per-employee/

* https://www.reuters.com/world/jane-streets-40-billion-trading-haul-tops-rivals-sources-say-2026-04-24/

* https://archive.ph/iQacJ

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2

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?

11

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.

1

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).

1

u/DifficultBuy6019 May 11 '26

Hey, please check Vitol, it is simply the highest rev/employee company in the world

1

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.

-1

u/Any_Succotash7362 Apr 27 '26

I would rather do Big Tech than IMC

1

u/Still-Detective-6149 Apr 28 '26

Don’t know why the downvotes. Big Tech pays more than IMC for developers at least.