XR Trading

XR Trading is a proprietary market-making firm founded in Chicago in 2002. It provides liquidity across a full range of financial instruments and asset classes, with a concentration in derivatives covering energy, equity indexes, foreign exchange, metals, treasuries and agricultural products.

The firm runs a number of independent trading teams supported by proprietary systems built entirely in house. XR credits its technology to an environment that dissolves conventional boundaries between strategists and technologists, with traders, software engineers and quantitative researchers collaborating closely on the same problems.

XR is unusually flexible on working arrangements for the sector, permitting traders, developers and technical staff to work remotely. It says this lets the firm recruit better talent globally while giving employees genuine flexibility, and stresses that its success rests on “talented individuals” contributing to “a unified team effort”.