After a short foray at Citadel, 2 senior traders are back at Goldman Sachs in one the hottest corners of the market

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From Goldman Sachs, to Citadel, and back again.

• Two top equity-derivatives traders have returned to Goldman Sachs after a short stint as portfolio managers at Citadel.
• Chad Barrs and Travis Chmelka left Citadel around August after a year and half and rejoined Goldman in November as managing directors in single-stock volatility trading, according to people familiar with the matter.
• The return of volatility in 2018 led to huge gains on Wall Street equities desks and made equity derivatives one of the fiercest talent battlegrounds.

In early 2017, two long-time Goldman Sachs traders moved to the buy-side, joining hedge-fund behemoth Citadel as portfolio managers. Now they're back at Goldman as managing directors in equity derivatives - one of the hottest markets on Wall Street in 2018.

Goldman traders Chad Barrs and Travis Chmelka spent about a year and a half as equity-derivatives focused portfolio managers at Citadel before leaving around August. They rejoined Goldman in November as managing directors on the single-stock volatility desk, according to FINRA records, their LinkedIn profiles, and people familiar with the matter.

Both Barrs and Chmelka joined Goldman out of college in the mid-2000s and have spent most of their careers trading stock derivatives for the firm, outside of the brief foray at Citadel, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

Representatives from Goldman Sachs and Citadel declined to comment.

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As volatility surged back into the markets in 2018 and revived Wall Street stock-trading desks, equity derivatives became a fierce battleground for talent.

After a dismal 2017, the big five US banks each saw significant increases in equities sales and trading last year, collectively growing revenues 17% to $31.8 billion, according to publicly available data. Goldman increased equities revenues 15% to $7.6 billion.

Through the first three quarters of 2018, derivatives revenues posted the most significant gains within equities at Wall Street's top banks, up 26% compared with 2017, according to industry consultant Coalition.

• Read more:
• 'I've never seen it like this in 10 years': How the VIX blow-up led to a talent raid on Wall Street trading floors
• Morgan Stanley just promoted 145 new managing directors - we got a peek at an internal memo with all the names
• The David Solomon era at Goldman Sachs kicked off with 43 words Lloyd Blankfein would never say

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