A 28-year-old Goldman Sachs MD is quietly a big star at Hudson River Trading

What goes on in Hudson River Trading (HRT) stays in Hudson River Trading. Even by the standards of secretive electronic trading houses like Jane Street, HRT is unusually covert.

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For this reason, changes that occur at the organization often go unnoticed. As we reported earlier this year, Oaz Nir, one of the firm's three original partners, quietly departed in January 2025, leaving two remaining partners, Prashant Lal and Jason Carroll behind. Since then, sources at the firm say a few things have changed.

In one change, Jesse Cohen, a former Goldman Sachs managing director whom Hudson River poached in 2018, is understood to have become a big star. HRT isn't commenting, but multiple insiders say Cohen is now running the algorithmic trading team there. 

Now aged in his mid-30s, Cohen made managing director at Goldman Sachs aged 28 just six years after joining the firm's strats team to work on programmatic trading. He has a bachelor's degree in computer science from Harvard and an MPhil in computational biology from Cambridge University. HRT poached him from Goldman a year after he made MD.

As Cohen's star has risen, insiders claim that some of the teams latterly assembled by Niaz have shrunk. These are thought to include mid-frequency teams and some teams in fixed income options trading. HRT hasn't validated this, though. 

Speaking to the Financial Times earlier this month, Giuseppe Paleologo, head of quantitative research at Balyasny Asset Management and a former head of risk management at HRT, said the fund is "fundamentally a technology company" where technologists are "true first class citizens." 

Algo engineers like Cohen are at the top of the tree at HRT, said Paleologo, adding that Jason Carroll - who he said is the only remaining hands-on partner - was "a core developer of legendary skill." 

HRT insiders have long praised its culture, which they say is collaborative and inclusive. There are suggestions that this has changed for the worse since the ingestion of talent from Two Sigma, however. On the plus side, HRT often pays bonuses on a quarterly basis, making it easier to leave than at funds like QRT, where people complain of being locked-in for years. Paleology has also suggested that HRT has the best snacks. 

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