Citadel Securities' profits rose nearly 70% to $1.7 billion in the first quarter as the high-speed trading company benefited from the surge in volatility in the financial markets as Donald Trump took office.
According to a filing in the Financial Times, the company reported net transaction revenue of $3.4 billion in the first three months of 2025, a 45% increase from the same period last year. Income and profit are records of market makers.
The boom in Citadel Securities deals founded by billionaire Ken Griffin, when Trump signed a series of execution orders after the opening of Jan. 20, sparking a rumble ball in the financial markets.
The group declined to comment.
Castle and privately owned rival Jane Street has become a major player in Wall Street options and stock trading as they gain market share from big banks.
Their rise was supported by the electronicization of technology investments and market transactions and reforms after the 2008 financial crisis, which prompted many banks to retreat from trading activities.
Miami-based Citadel Securities is named in stock trading and now processes a quarter of all stock trading in the United States. Now traditional banks such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are now primarily trying to handle the fees of less complex transactions for hedge funds and asset managers, while market makers such as Citadel rely on a large number of transactions that can be processed electronically.
One person familiar with the matter said that during a particularly turbulent period of trading activity leaps, castles tend to gain market share.
The company is also a key player in the U.S. fiscal market and has already identified its ambitious ambitions to expand to long-running bank-led turf. Its head of interest rate trading, Michael de Pass, told the UK Bank last year that the company hopes to become a "material player" in the European government bond market.
The company has listed traditional banks to help drive its growth, including last year’s hiring for Jim Esposito, an executive at Goldman Sachs, who has worked at the bank for nearly 30 years.
The first quarter of 2025 is marked by huge market volatility around announcements in the early months of the Trump administration. These turbulent markets often benefit banks and other trading companies as they get more buying and selling from their customers.
Wall Street's largest bank earned nearly $37 billion in transaction revenue in the first quarter, its best performance in more than a decade.
Citadel's marketing business generated revenues before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the first quarter, up 56% from the same period last year. Citadel revealed that this is the 21st consecutive quarter when the company traded more than $100 million.
The document shows that Citadel executed more than 20% of the total U.S. stock volume and said it was the first U.S. stock option expert in the first quarter. It also revealed that it is the second-largest active trading company in Treasury bonds, and the volume it executes on Bloomberg.
The result follows a record 2024 year in 2024, when it generated $9.7 billion in transaction revenue, according to people familiar with the matter.
Other reports by Ortenca Aliaj and Joshua Franklin