His name isn’t as well known as Warren Buffett, but Ken Griffin — as he’s known — has become Wall Street’s highest-earning financier. According to Bloomberg, through his holding company Citadel Securities, he made $4.2 billion in trading profits in the first half of this year as markets first collapsed and then boomed on the war in Ukraine, which translates to $23.3 million Dollar totals day or $16,000 per minute. The tycoon had a streak of ten quarters, all with revenues in excess of $1 billion. Berkshire Hathaway did less well, Buffett’s holding lost almost 20 percent in the second quarter of 2022 at $64 billion: the portfolio actually shrank from $364 billion to $300 billion.
Over 27 billion in assets
Citadel, on the other hand, increased net sales by 23 percent for the half year compared to the same period last year. Certainly not enough to overtake Buffett in the Forbes billionaire rankings, where he ranks fifth with $118 billion, while Griffin is 53rd with $27.8 billion. But unlike the dean of America’s finance, who turned 92 on Aug. 30 and bases his gains on the securities portfolio, which includes about three-quarters of the stocks of five big names (Apple, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Chevron and American Express ) the 54-year-old tycoon earns more money.
Profit from online trading
Citadel Securities handles 40% of the volume of private stock trades in the United States
. In addition to providing liquidity, Citadel offers on its platforms the ability to transact both for retail customers (it received a $22.6 million fine from the SEC, Consob USA, in 2017 for misleading customers about the price of transactions) and to conduct transactions Institutions, also with automatic high-frequency trading. Online brokers send order flow. A controversial practice because intermediaries sell their orders to the highest bidder, not necessarily the one who guarantees best execution. And thanks to volatility, Citadel has increased revenue. And the more volatile the markets, the bigger the trade.
The young student is already a trader at Harvard
But who Kenneth C. Griffin? Born in 1968 in Daytona Beach, Florida, of Irish descent, he studied economics at Harvard
and in 1987, while still a student, young Ken started his first alternative investment fund in the campus room, with money from grandmother, friends and acquaintances, apparently with an antenna he had mounted on the dorm roof so he could – in fact – Online trade. In 1990, at just 22 years old, young Ken founded the Chicago hedge fund Citadel llc and then Citadel Securities, in which he now owns more than three-quarters of the capital. The billionaire has a passion for beautiful homes and art, less so for Donald Trump, despite being a staunch Republican, and in fact he didn’t fund his campaign. His private real estate fortune exceeds one billion dollars and his collection of paintings, which includes works by Czanne, Basquiat, Warhol, Pollock and Jasper Johns, is estimated at 800 million.
Philanthropist (gifted Blue Origin tickets)
But also a great philanthropist:
donated primarily to artistic institutions such as Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, but another donation garnered the most attention: after winning two tickets to Blue Origin that were auctioned off by Jeff Bezos (who instead is prospecting for nickel and cobalt in Greenland) . The financial tycoon paid $8 million and decided to leave the trip to space to two American teachers.