The Only Winner of the Hormuz War Never Fired a Shot — How Goldman Sachs and Jane Street Turn Chaos Into Billions
The Only Winner of the Hormuz War Never Fired a Single Shot
Market Makers in Crisis — How Goldman Sachs and Jane Street Profit From Chaos
Special Analytical Report · April 30, 2026 · 3-minute read
Key Players & Terms
| Name / Term | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Jane Street | The world's largest market maker — $39.6B in trading revenue in 2025 |
| Goldman Sachs | U.S. investment bank — $12.74B in trading revenue in Q1 2026 |
| Citadel Securities | Algorithmic trading firm — $12.2B in trading revenue in 2025 |
| David Solomon | CEO of Goldman Sachs |
| Market Maker | An entity that commits to buying and selling a financial asset at all times |
| Bid-Ask Spread | The gap between buy and sell prices — the market maker's core profit engine |
| VIX | Volatility Index — the U.S. market's "fear gauge" |
| Delta Neutral | A strategy to neutralize directional risk |
| HFT | High-Frequency Trading — algorithmic trading in microseconds |
| Order Flow | The stream of buy and sell orders — the real fuel of market maker profits |
Scene One — The Numbers That Stunned Wall Street
April 24, 2026. Reuters reveals a figure nobody had anticipated:
Jane Street — a firm most people have never heard of, with offices in New York, London, and Hong Kong — generated $39.6 billion in net trading revenue during 2025 alone.
That number surpasses JPMorgan Chase ($35.8 billion) and dethrones Goldman Sachs from its historic perch at the top.
And in Q1 2026 alone — in the middle of the Hormuz war, the naval blockade, and extreme oil and crypto volatility — Goldman CEO David Solomon said:
"Goldman Sachs delivered very strong performance for our shareholders this quarter, even as market conditions became more volatile."
More volatile? That is precisely what they want.
The Core Question — How Do They Profit From Chaos?
Before we understand the numbers, we need to understand the mechanism.
The Basic Idea: The Bid-Ask Spread
Imagine you want to sell an Apple share at $174.95. The market maker buys it from you at $174.95 and immediately sells it to another buyer at $175.05.
The difference: $0.10 per share.
Seems tiny? Multiply it by the billions of shares traded daily — and the picture transforms entirely.
The simple equation:
Market Maker Profit = Bid-Ask Spread × Trading Volume
Now add volatility: In calm markets: the spread is tight, competition is fierce, profits are modest. In crises: the spread multiplies, trading volume explodes, and profits detonate.
The Timeline — Numbers That Tell the Story
2024 ← Citadel Securities: $9.8B in trading revenue
2025 ← Citadel Securities: $12.2B (+25%) — courtesy of volatility
2025 ← Jane Street: $39.6B — surpasses all banks for the first time in history
2025 ← Hudson River Trading: $12.3B
Q1 2026 ← Goldman equities trading: $5.33B (+27% vs Q1 2025)
Q1 2026 ← Goldman Global Banking & Markets: $12.74B (+19%)
Q1 2026 ← Hormuz war creates highest oil volatility since 2020 ← market makers harvest
The Full Anatomy — Five Profit Mechanisms in a Crisis
Mechanism One: Spread Widening
In normal markets, the bid-ask spread on a large stock like Apple might be just $0.01.
On a crisis day — like April 18, 2026, when Iran closed Hormuz again and oil surged 7% in hours:
- Market makers widened the gap to $0.05 or $0.10
- Frightened investors are forced to accept whatever price is offered — no choice
- Trading volume doubled and tripled due to panic
The result: The same session in which an ordinary investor lost 3-5%, the market maker earned multiples of a typical day's profit.
Mechanism Two: Volume Explosion
Crisis = panic = multiplied trading volume.
When Trump announced the naval blockade of Iran (April 13):
- U.S. exchange volume exceeded 2.5x the daily average
- Every trade passes through market makers
- Every trade generates a small bid-ask spread
Billions of trades × tiny spread = billions of dollars.
Mechanism Three: Options and Derivatives Trading
This is where profits multiply further.
When the VIX (fear index) spikes, everyone rushes to buy protective put options.
The market maker sells these options — and in volatile markets:
- Prices them with a very elevated risk premium
- Hedges its exposure through Delta Neutral strategies (buying the underlying asset in calculated proportions)
- Pockets the difference between what the investor paid and the actual cost of the hedge
Jane Street built its empire primarily on ETF and options trading. Every time a frightened investor buys a put option to hedge — Jane Street is the counterparty.
Mechanism Four: High-Frequency Trading
Algorithms operate at microsecond speed — one millionth of a second.
During a crisis:
- An algorithm detects that Brent crude oil on Platform A is $0.003 higher than on Platform B
- It buys from B and sells on A in less than a millisecond
- It repeats this hundreds of thousands of times per second
No directional risk, no waiting — just a guaranteed spread, collected at machine speed.
Mechanism Five: Order Flow Intelligence
Major market makers see the flow of orders before they are executed.
When a massive sell order arrives from a large hedge fund — the market maker knows it and adjusts its prices to ensure its profit from the trade, before finishing execution for the client.
This information — even if it lasts fractions of a second — is worth billions in large markets.
Why Did Jane Street's Profits Explode Specifically?
Jane Street is not a bank — it accepts no deposits, grants no loans, issues no credit cards.
It does one thing only: provides you liquidity in exchange for a spread.
After the 2008 crisis, regulators imposed strict risk constraints on large banks. The result: banks pulled back from some market-making activities.
Who filled the void? Firms like Jane Street, Citadel Securities, and Hudson River Trading — without the same capital restrictions.
When the pandemic hit in 2020 and when the Hormuz war began in 2026 — these firms were positioned to absorb all the panic and convert it into profit.
The most staggering figure: Jane Street generated $11 million in revenue per employee in 2025. Compared to roughly $500,000 per employee at Goldman Sachs.
What This Means for You as an Investor
The uncomfortable truth: Every time you sell in a moment of panic — you donate part of your money to the market maker. Every time you buy a protective option at the peak of a crisis — you pay a massive premium to Jane Street or Citadel.
How to protect yourself:
- Do not trade during peak panic moments — the spread is at its widest
- If you must hedge with options — do it before the crisis, not during it
- Remember every trade happens in a market — there is always a counterparty profiting from what you pay
The big picture: Market makers are necessary — without them, sellers find no buyers and buyers find no sellers. But in crises they charge a much higher price for this service.
Conclusion — The Market Doesn't Disappear, It Just Changes Hands
On the worst days of the Hormuz war, when oil was jumping 7% in a day, Bitcoin was falling 4%, and investors were selling in panic:
Jane Street, Goldman Sachs, and Citadel were recording historic profits.
This is not a conspiracy — this is the nature of markets. A crisis does not destroy wealth, it redistributes it — from the frightened and hasty to the calm and prepared.
The question worth sitting with: if market makers always profit in crises — does the market reflect economic reality, or does it reflect the skill of whoever holds liquidity at the critical moment?
This report is based on: Reuters, Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs Q1 2026 Earnings, CNBC, Schwab, Charles Schwab Options Research, Wikipedia — April 30, 2026