Ken Griffin Quotes
102 Ken Griffin Quotes
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[In July 2014.] The better we are as traders, the more we're in a position to share with the customer that sends us the order.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014 on comments that it takes only two security badges to get to the desk to work at the Pentagon but at Citadel taking five badge swipes.] I read that passage in the book and thought how many card swipes does it take. One from the garage, the main floor, one to the turnstile, one to the elevator floor, and two to get to the desk, to the trading division. Again, the book is a great story. We obviously pay a lot of attention to protecting our intellectual property.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] Idea, thoughts and concepts expressed in computer code. And unfortunately, that intellectual property is readily moved, and it's very important for us to protect it.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014 on talking about his high frequency trading.] We're all very hesitant to say anything because our key concepts and key ideas really come down to a thought you can express in one or two sentences. These aren't necessarily complex insights. They are powerful insights, but because they're often very simple and straightforward, you have to be very careful about how you express those ideas.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] To win order flow in the marketplace from an Ameritrade, from a Fidelity, from a Scottrade, I have to really share my trading prowess and acumen with the retail investors. The retail investor has been a huge beneficiary of the unleashing of competition that's happened under regulation... And every day we have to compete for their orders. That's why about 80 percent of all the orders that we execute are executed within the spread as posted on the exchanges.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] I think we're definitely seeing transformation of the banking landscape, and we're seeing the banks take a step back and say which businesses can they be competitive in.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] What we're seeing is the banks really having to take a step back and go, which businesses do we have core competency in, where can we build competitive advantage, where should we focus our shareholders equity? This is a really important and healthy dialogue.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] I think trading has been, in a sense, a glamorous part of the universal banking model until 2008. Then you look at the losses that took place in 2008 within this glamorous business, look at the cost structure of this supposedly glamorous business, and take a step back and go what is the actual return to my shareholders in trade?
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] I think much of what we're seeing is the banks are saying, you know what, my retail business is such a great business, my lending business is a great business, I need to focus on my core strengths, and I don't need to be in a business just because it's glamorous.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] Going back to 2008, that was a couple very dark moment for us. As a firm, we had gone through almost 20 years of never experiencing a loss of even double digits. And as you're well aware in 2008, we lost about half our equity capital in 16 weeks. In fact, Steve… had the van parked outside our building trying to get the bankruptcy footage if we failed in 2008. So we are a long ways away from that dark moment at the peak of the financial crisis.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] The lending markets were forever changed in 2008.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] The key in the moment of crisis was to understand where the future was going to lie. We really felt the future for us was going to be in transparent liquid assets. We moved the entire business towards the trading of equities and fixed income government securities, foreign exchange, oil, natural gas in very liquid, very transparent markets, very low complexity in our business. There is an old acronym in the military, KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid. But we embraced those four letters because we thought they described distinctly where we were going to take Citadel in the years to come.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] By having a clear strategy and focusing on liquid markets, liquid products where we had a very long track record of success. By keeping our core team together and focused on moving forward, we were able to find the room that we needed to get back on our feet and prosper.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] There are two really important parts of our culture that are key to our success and key to us in a sense being where we are today in the marketplace as a leader in alternatives. First is, we have an incredible emphasis on hiring the best and brightest people in the world… Behind that is a very strong culture of compliance, which is we appreciate that we are part of a broader system.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] Do we have any rotten apples? I sure hope not.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] It's very difficult to halt a rate hike cycle in a sense mid cycle. You're much better off waiting before you raise rates than raising rates and having to stop or roll back that rate increase prematurely.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] The Fed is very apprehensive about moving too soon and throwing a wrench into the recovery that we're now enjoying, which is a better recovery than we've seen in a long time. We really appear to have some positive momentum in the labor market for the first time in several years.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] We trade industry products every day. It's very simple to trade, whether it's short term government bonds or euro dollars, to express views in the interstate markets. And we do that actively, and we do that in response to evolving economic news and economic data.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] In the stock market, we really try to avoid making the big macroeconomic calls. The heart of our business in stock selection is really understanding the businesses that we invest in cold.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] At Citadel, for example, we will do about 10,000 management meetings this year. We will sit down with management teams about 10,000 times around the world in 2014, trying to understand how the businesses that we invest in are evolving, how they are changing, how the products are doing in the marketplace, how the margins are being impacted by dynamics around the world. It's a very granular research process that drives our business.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] We are a country that competes with every single country in the world.
Ken Griffin
[In July 2014.] Never say never…
Ken Griffin
Bonus
If any firm is going to raise red flags, it is Citadel, because they are so smart and so aggressive. Ken has created the platinum standard in the hedge fund industry, but he doesn't win style points.
One former hedge fund manager
[On Ken Griffin.] Ken had two traits that I found impressive. He was well above average in pretty much everything he did, which is rare. And he had been an entrepreneur.
Frank Meyer (Founder of Glenwood Capital Investments)
[In September 2001 on Ken Griffin.] I've never known him to be interested in anything else.
Alexander Slusky (Harvard undergraduate friend now venture capitalist.)
If you had told me that I would stake my reputation on a 22-year-old, I would have said never. But then I met Ken Griffin.
Frank Meyer (Founder of Glenwood Capital Investments)
He was a micromanager. He would dig. He was always challenging people to do things better. He loves looking at everything from different perspectives.
Former Citadel employee
[On the importance of having working capital to take advantage of opportunities when investors are suddenly spooked into redemptions during a panic leading to selling during the panic rather than buying. Ken moved to have his money locked in generally for two year periods.] Ken hired me to expand his funding capabilities in June of 1998, and he locked up his capital 60 days before the biggest hedge fund blowup ever. When you're liquid with locked-up investors in that kind of environment, you can be very selective about when and what you're buying.
John DiRocco (Former Citadel CFO)
[On Ken Griffin poaching staff.] I find the disconnect between your self-proclaimed 'good to great, Jim Collins-esque' organization and the reality of the gulag you created quite laughable. You are surrounded by sycophants, but even you must know that the people who work for you despise and resent you. I assume you know this because I have read the employment agreements that you make people sign.
Daniel Loeb
[In September 2001 on Ken Griffin.] I would liken him much more to a broad institution than a boutique hedge fund. He's built an extraordinarily diverse organization, horizontally and vertically integrated. It's something with franchise value, which makes him different from 95 percent of the companies classified as hedge funds.
Paul Tudor Jones
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