Jane Street more than doubled its Nvidia stake last quarter, filings reveal

Detailed summary

The quant trading shop’s Nvidia holdings grew ahead of Jensen Huang’s resignation. Whether Jane Street actually lost money is another question.

Jane Street, one of Wall Street’s leading quantitative trading firms, more than doubled its Nvidia holdings in the third quarter, according to regulatory filings released Thursday and reviewed by Fortune. The securities filings show the firm’s positions as of Sept. 30—just over six weeks before Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia CEO following reports of extramarital affairs, including one with a woman U.S. authorities suspect of spying for China. The scandal has led Nvidia shares to fall nearly 13% over the past five days, reaching a 17-month low intraday Thursday.

The market maker held 23.8 million shares worth about $5.44 billion at $228.38 at quarter end, according to the 13F. That’s over double the 11.8 million shares held, worth $2.4 billion, in the second quarter. Nvidia was its second-largest holding behind SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust. Jane Street did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

The filings show what Jane Street held in late September, not what it owns now, and leave out short positions. Jane Street traders could, in theory, have shorted Nvidia after the reporting period ended and made money from the subsequent decline. The filings alone cannot tell us whether they did, though.

Options add another layer of complexity to this. The 13F also discloses that Jane Street holds a large amount of puts and calls, which are reported using the value of the underlying shares, rather than the market value of the options themselves. Those notional figures can make positions look far larger than the sums actually invested, while revealing little about the firm’s overall exposure once offsetting trades are taken into account. A large reported position, in other words, is not necessarily a huge directional bet.

Huang stepped down on Thursday after more than three decades at the helm of the company he cofounded in 1993. In his place, Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress was named interim CEO.

In a message to employees on Sunday, Huang admitted that he had…

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