April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., unbowed by the securities industry’s worst year since the Great Depression, increased its trading bets at the fastest rate on Wall Street.

Goldman Sachs’s so-called value-at-risk, the amount the New York-based bank estimates it could lose from trading in a day, jumped 22 percent to $240 million in the first quarter, twice what Morgan Stanley stands to lose, company reports show. VaR climbed 2.8 percent in the same period at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and dropped 14 percent at Credit Suisse Group AG.

Offense beat defense in the first three months of 2009 as Goldman Sachs reported record revenue of $9.4 billion, dwarfing Morgan Stanley’s $3.04 billion. Since Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two biggest U.S. securities firms, converted into banks in September, Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer John J. Mack has reduced proprietary trading and principal investing to focus on the firm&…