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What's Ken Griffin Of Citadel Buying and Selling?

What's Ken Griffin Of Citadel Buying and Selling?

. 4 min read

Citadel Advisors just released their quarterly 13F filing with the SEC. Here's what the Billionaire hedge fund manager has been up to.


Citadel Advisors Latest Form 13F Filing

On February 9th, 2018, Ken Griffin's firm Citadel Advisors filed their quarterly Form 13F regulatory filing. I reviewed the 13F filing to review holdings in Citadel Advisors' large portfolio.

The hedge fund's stock portfolio totals $154.4 billion according to the latest filing. The list value of stock holdings is up 18.5% when compared to the last quarter. As a benchmark, the S&P 500 was up 6.1% over the same period. Not bad!

Quarter-over-Quarter Turnover (QoQ Turnover) measures the level of trading activity in a portfolio. Citadel Advisors's QoQ Turnover for the latest quarter was 33.5%, so the firm appears to trade a significant percent of its portfolio each quarter.


Citadel Advisors' Largest Holdings

The Ideas section of finbox.io tracks top investors and trending investment themes. You can get the latest data on the holdings discussed below at the Ken Griffin page. The following table summarizes his firm's largest holdings reported in the last filing:

Citadel Advisors Largest Holdings
Ticker Name Holding ($mil) % Of Portfolio
SPY SPDR S&P 500 ETF TR $18,032.1 11.7%
AMZN AMAZON COM INC $5,614.5 3.6%
FB FACEBOOK INC $3,109.6 2.0%
IWM ISHARES TR $2,821.5 1.8%
QQQ POWERSHARES QQQ ... $2,795.8 1.8%
GOOG ALPHABET INC $2,602.3 1.7%
BABA ALIBABA GROUP HL... $2,352.1 1.5%

The seven positions above represent 24.1% of the hedge fund's total portfolio.


Citadel Advisors' 7 Largest Purchases

I also used finbox.io to find Citadel Advisors's largest buys last quarter. Here's the list of the biggest stock purchases determined by comparing the last two filings:

Citadel Advisors 7 Largest Purchases
Ticker Name Purchased ($mil) % Of Portfolio
SPY SPDR S&P 500 ETF TR $6,112.8 11.7%
BABA ALIBABA GROUP HL... $1,143.3 1.5%
FB FACEBOOK INC $1,137.7 2.0%
BAC BANK AMER CORP $1,020.0 1.0%
CMCSA COMCAST CORP NEW $738.1 0.7%
AMZN AMAZON COM INC $699.8 3.6%
AVGO BROADCOM LTD $683.7 0.4%

Citadel Advisors' 7 Biggest Sells

Here's the list of biggest position reductions determined by comparing the last two filings:

Citadel Advisors 7 Biggest Sells
Ticker Name Sold ($mil) % Of Portfolio
GS GOLDMAN SACHS GR... $440.7 0.3%
AAPL APPLE INC $324.4 1.5%
FIS FIDELITY NATL IN... $284.5 0.0%
PANW PALO ALTO NETWOR... $277.9 0.2%
PFE PFIZER INC $250.7 0.1%
SWK STANLEY BLACK & ... $246.9 0.0%
VZ VERIZON COMMUNIC... $243.0 0.3%

Citadel Advisors's Recent Price Pull-Back Stocks

To find stocks in his portfolio that may be unpopular at the moment and trading at cheap valuations, I ranked his holdings by price pullbacks. The ranking table below lists the stocks in Citadel Advisors’ portfolio by stock price performance over the last 30 days.

Citadel Advisors Recent Price Pull-Back Stocks
Ticker Name Price 1-mo Ago Current Price % Change 1-mo
OGEN ORAGENICS INC $18.56 $2.20 -88.1%
BIOA BIOAMBER INC $0.39 $0.09 -77.6%
LPCN LIPOCINE INC NEW $3.46 $1.23 -64.5%
WLB WESTMORELAND COAL CO $1.47 $0.60 -59.4%
SMRT STEIN MART INC $1.16 $0.51 -56.0%
NYRT NEW YORK REIT INC $4.07 $1.99 -51.1%
HGT HUGOTON RTY TR TEX $1.48 $0.74 -50.1%

Managers with more than $100 million in qualifying assets under management are required to disclose their holdings to the SEC each quarter via 13F filings. Qualifying assets include long positions in U.S. equities and ADRs, call/put options, and convertible debt securities. Shorts, cash positions, foreign investments and other assets are not included. It is important to note that these filings are due 45 days after the quarter end date. Therefore, Citadel Advisors' holdings above represent positions held as of December 31st and not necessarily reflective of the fund's current stock holdings.

However, most can agree that with thousands of stocks traded on U.S. exchanges, doing thorough research on each one is nearly impossible for smaller investors. Leveraging the resources of the largest hedge funds on Wall Street can be a powerful way to narrow down the list.


Author: Matt Hogan

Expertise: Valuation, financial statement analysis

Matt Hogan is a co-founder of finbox.io. His expertise is in investment decision making. Prior to finbox.io, Matt worked for an investment banking group providing fairness opinions in connection to stock acquisitions. He spent much of his time building valuation models to help clients determine an asset’s fair value. He believes that these same valuation models should be used by all investors before buying or selling a stock.

His work is frequently published at InvestorPlace, Benzinga, ValueWalk, AAII, Barron's, Seeking Alpha and investing.com.

Matt can be reached at [email protected].

As of this writing, I did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities and this is not a buy or sell recommendation on any security mentioned.

Matt Hogan, finbox.io byline

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