Trading firms including Jane Street and Citadel Securities generated combined revenues of $114bn last year, underscoring their continued expansion into business lines traditionally dominated by global investment banks, according to a report by the Financial Times.
According to analysis from Crisil Coalition Greenwich, revenues across non-bank trading firms rose 45% year-on-year in 2025, reflecting strong market conditions, structural shifts in market liquidity, and increased activity across both proprietary trading and market-making businesses.
The strongest growth came from proprietary trading and investment activity, where firms deploy their own capital. This segment climbed almost 60% to $84.3bn, while market-making revenues increased 20% to $30.2bn, reaching $30.2bn over the period.
The expansion highlights how firms such as Citadel Securities, Jane Street and others have capitalised on post-financial crisis regulatory changes that curtailed risk-taking at traditional banks, enabling specialist trading firms to take greater market share in several asset classes.
Banks still recorded a larger overall trading revenue pool, generating $260.7bn in 2025, up 13% year-on-year, but their role has increasingly shifted toward structuring and executing complex institutional trades, while non-bank firms have expanded into retail flow, exchange-traded products and high-frequency market-making.
Industry participants note that improved market conditions, valuation gains on investments and ongoing evolution in market structure have all contributed to a favourable backdrop for specialist liquidity providers.
The momentum continued into early 2026, with Citadel Securities, Jane Street and Hudson River collectively generating around $27bn in trading revenue in the first quarter alone. Performance was supported by heightened volatility linked to geopolitical tensions and the ongoing rally in artificial intelligence-related equities.
However, analysts caution that the sustainability of recent performance remains uncertain, with Crisil Coalition Greenwich noting that it is unclear whether current revenue levels represent a structural shift or a cyclical peak driven by unusually supportive macroeconomic conditions.
While non-bank trading firms have increased their influence across global markets — particularly in US Treasuries, ETFs and retail execution — banks continue to dominate broader client service revenues due to their scale and diversified product offerings.
Some trading firms, notably Citadel Securities, have also begun expanding into more client-facing services in an effort to capture additional parts of the institutional trading ecosystem.
The report also highlighted that gains from venture-style investment positions have contributed meaningfully to revenue growth for certain firms, with Jane Street among those benefiting from mark-ups on private investments alongside core trading activity.
Overall, the data points to an accelerating shift in market structure, with specialist trading firms increasingly embedded in global liquidity provision, even as banks retain scale advantages across wider capital markets services.
