Ken Griffin
Lucy Nicholson | Reuters
Ken Griffin, the billionaire CEO of hedge fund Citadel, last month defended his $ 2 billion investment in Melvin Capital, short seller Gabe Plotkin, amid the GameStop mania.
“No, I think Gabe Plotkin is one of the best investors of his generation,” Griffin told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin during the Squawk Box on Friday.
The comment was in response to a question from Sorkin as to whether Griffin’s investment was a mistake because it raised questions about Griffin’s motivation to support Plotkin, amid his fight against the retail Reddit retailers that the shares of GameStop pumped.
“If I had to run my business about the possibility of an insane conspiracy theory emerging at any given time, I would have had no case,” Griffin said.
In addition to the hedge fund Citadel, Griffin is the founder of the dominant market maker Citadel Securities, which handles approximately 40% of U.S. stock flows in retail, including brokers such as the Robinhood app.
After the news of Citadel and Point72’s investment came out, there was speculation on social media platforms about Griffin’s possible role in the unfolding drama. In a tweet that has now been removed, co-founder Justin Kan told Justin Kan that he had received a fee that Griffin may have been involved in Robinhood’s attempt to restrict access to GameStop bulls.
Robinhood later explained that it was his clearinghouse, a market player called the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, that had pledged billions of dollars in collateral to support GameStop transactions, forcing brokers to reduce access to its users until it could raise capital. .
In the comprehensive interview, Griffin also said that there is ‘no doubt’ that the volume of short sales will decrease thanks to the power that Reddit-powered retailers have shown with GameStop.