Ken Griffin’s Citadel has once again found itself at the center of a WallStreetBets drama, this time about the firm’s silver stakes.
The precious metal has become a popular buying target for retail investors who want to cause losses in hedge funds after publications on WallStreetBets stated that the market was ready for a small squeeze. Others on the Reddit forum have responded with pleas to avoid the trade, saying Citadel will benefit as the main holder of the largest silver trading fund.
“CITADEL IS SLV’S 5ND LARGEST OWNER”, a WallStreetBets The user wrote on Sunday, referring to the ticker symbol of the iShares trust. “IT’S IMPERATIVE THAT WE DON’T APPRECIATE IT.”
Ciutadella Advisors LLC owned about 6 million shares of iShares Silver Trust as of September 30, equivalent to a 0.93% stake, the data compiled by Bloomberg are displayed. The firm also owned shares in at least 17 other silver and ETF companies.
While WallStreetBets users have surprised the world by teaming up to feed epic gains on very short stocks, including GameStop Corp., the debate over silver reveals that forum traders are far from one homogeneous group. Investors have been watching the concentration of the metal to gain clues about the permanence power of a David-vs.-Waiting for Goliath purchase that extends to growing targets.
Silver jumped more than 10% on Monday, but gains so far are tiny in relation to GameStop’s 16-fold increase since mid-January.
Read more: Silver Spikes as retail investors swarm their biggest target to date
A phone call to the Citadel office in Chicago outside of normal business hours went unanswered. It is unclear whether the holdings of the firm iShares Silver Trust or other silver-related securities have changed since September. Tickets to the iShares trust rose Friday to a record $ 944 million as trading on the ETF skyrocketed.
Citadel manages one of the largest hedge funds and one of the world’s leading market makers. The firm sparked anger from the WallStreetBets crowd last month after injecting cash into hedge fund Melvin Capital, which it lost about 53% in January after being hit by a small stock squeeze, including GameStop.
Read: The Citadel Link: What Ken Griffin has to do with GameStop
Anger at Citadel among WallStreetBets users only increased after Robinhood Markets imposed a restriction on GameStop trading last week. Some claimed that Griffin, whose firm helps execute orders from Robinhood clients, could be behind an attempt to eradicate the rebellion of individual investors. Citadel and Robinhood denied the billionaire’s involvement in the decision.