Commish
831 posts
Ken Griffin had already made a Harvard senior a job offer at Citadel -- then he asked the kid what he would do if he made $10 million.
Griffin heard the answer, and told him to turn the offer down.
Today Griffin runs a $70 billion fund where the average equity portfolio manager is right on 53% of picks and one in three employees is a software engineer.
"I want to know your ambitions or aspirations. I want to know, what does success look like to you?"
"If you made $10 million, what would you do? And he goes, I would quit, and I would climb the highest peaks around the world."
"I said, okay. I said, I don't think this is the right firm for you. And he goes, well, you've already made an offer to me. I said, that's wonderful. I strongly urge you not to accept it."
"Because I don't want to hear from somebody who's 22 years old that there's some number that represents their magic number. If they made that much money, they're going to climb mountains around the world."
"I want to hear how they're going to climb the next mountain at Citadel."
He's been running that filter for 35 years. Ask him what he is proudest of building and he doesn't say the returns, he says the people who came through the firm.
Bookmark & watch ↓
Fireside Tapes@firesidetapes
In 2007, a rival fund called Ken Griffin on a Sunday needing to dump a $30 billion book before Monday's open to meet margin calls. The senior banker on the competing bid went to bed. Citadel owned all of it by 6AM. This is him telling the whole story -- the 50-person team assembled in hours, the all-nighter, and the banker on the competing bid who called from Greenwich to say he was going to bed: "And he said, look, it's getting late, this isn't gonna get done tonight. I'm heading off to bed, I'm telling my guys to go home, and we'll pick this up in the morning." "And I said, there will be nothing to pick up in the morning. We're going to get this done. he sort of laughed and hung up." "6AM before the opening of the markets, we bought that entire portfolio." The quote he lands it on, from President Lincoln: "Things may come to those who wait, but only those things left by those who hustle." Bookmark & watch ↓
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Another pulchritudinous call.
Down 25% since the epic call.
A further 40% to go.
The Great Martis@great_martis
🚨 You know you’re in a bubble when… A traditional cyclical value stock like Caterpillar goes parabolic and starts getting valued like an AI growth name. CAT the king of yellow diggers tied to construction and mining is surging on demand for its power generators, gas engines, and battery systems to fuel AI data centres. But insiders are cashing out aggressively: nearly $87 million sold in just three months. When senior executives bail at peak hype, the music stops. Froth inevitably collapses into a brutal mauling. Yours truly, The Great Martis✨
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Yemen attacking Saudi and Iran will attack Ukraine. But I’m supposed to believe Axios headlines. Am I doing this right?
Iran Observer@IranObserver0
⚡️BREAKING: Iran's Foriegn Minister has announced that Zelensky's Drone Strike on an Iranian Vessel in the Caspian Sea will receive a Response from Iran Russia and the European Union have been Notified
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@Mr_Derivatives So we rally on fake headlines (fake and temporary) and ignore actual news - bombing of Aramco facilities (real and lasting). When will we learn
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Futes should be pretty green and get back a good chunk of Friday’s losses.
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Yeah. Everyone already has one. And doesn’t need another one 20% higher in price with no upgrade in tech. Good luck. Haven’t innovated or grown in years. It’s a pure rotation trade. You wanna be levered long luxury consumer electronics into rare hikes and ww3 escalation be my guest
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First thing I think about in a recession is rushing to the safety of $2,000 iPhones and $3,000 MacBook pros
$AAPL
Not Jerome Powell@alifarhat79
What do you call this pattern?
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@Mr_Derivatives Still looking at 350 or so before I ever consider shorting this beast...next week earnings may get it there
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Another one you got called retarded for being bullish on.
$AAPL now the best performing megacap YTD.
Watcher.Guru@WatcherGuru
JUST IN: Apple $AAPL reaches new all-time high of $333, surpassing $4.9 trillion market cap.
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Commish retweetledi
Equities sell off? Tiny risk off bid in bonds, quickly reversed.
Low CPI? Tiny rally, quickly reversed.
Bullish Fed speak? Zero effect.
Meanwhile, real long term rates: ever higher.
Been trading bonds for 42 years: this won't end until there is an accident...
Bonds always end a trend with a spike: remember Oct 1987. You might hear all kind of reasons why Black Monday happened, but the main one was bonds.
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@TheProfInvestor Absolutely. Total generational buying opportunity 2% off the all time highs in SPX and 3% in IWM and Dow. I mean scorching value. Especially as we ramp the war back up and head into midterms.
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Right now is the best time to lock in and put together a list of stocks you’d love to own.
If the market pulls back further, you will get your wish.
The rocket returns for your portfolio come when you are ahead of everyone else and not scared to buy during corrections.
Get to work guys.
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For me $AAPL per gamma should go today or tomorrow to at least 325, and the worst would be 315.
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Commish retweetledi
The Jevon’s paradox cope on here is hilarious. There is $10T of paper asset value teetering on the OpenAI ponzi.
Nobody has a moat. Chinese models will be built on Chinese hardware at a fraction of the cost. AI becomes a public good. Nobody ever turns a profit.
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Because of massive position unwinds. There is no fundamental long thesis for aapl here in a standalone basis. They haven’t innovated in 15 years. The stock is benefiting from a gamma squeeze and a rotation out of overly levered semi names and back into aapl as hedge funds delever. Aapl was a cheap funding stock to short against momentum longs. Now those pair trades are closed out in size due to margin calls. The stock has no legitimate reason to be up from 277 to 337 in ten days. It’s purely technical. Conversely every long only manager in the world is overly long NVDA already because not to be in 2025 was career suicide and now you kinda have to be based on valuation. But there is no one left to buy if everyone is long.
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Commish retweetledi
Facts.
The reality is we’ve never recovered economically since 2008. All we’ve done is paper over all of the losses by printing money.
There’s no price discovery anymore. Nothing has recovered. QE just hid the losses.
It’s all been a giant con.
Roberto Rios@peruvian_bull
FINANCIAL GRAVITY: If we divide the S&P 500 by the fed’s balance sheet, the line is basically flat since 2008. The correlation coefficient between central bank quantitative easing and the price of stock indexes is nearly 1. The money printed by the Fed, because of the structure of the Open Market Operations, is plugged directly into the Treasury markets, and from there, flows into equities and derivatives. This has served to primarily enrich the asset owners, financial institutions, and wealthy elites who own the majority of the stock market anyways. The entire rally has been an illusion, financed by the Fed and maintained through QE.
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There is no fundamental story here. They haven’t innovated in 15 years. The stock is benefiting from a gamma squeeze and a rotation out of overly levered semi names and back into aapl as hedge funds delever. Aapl was a cheap funding stock to short against momentum longs. Now those pair trades are closed out in size due to margin calls. The stock has no legitimate reason to be up from 277 to 337 in ten days. It’s purely technical
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$AAPL keeps making new highs while the rest of tech gets smoked because they’re the least overleveraged and the most insulated from the AI spending frenzy.
Everyone else is doing offerings, reporting delays, and trying to convince investors their massive AI spend will eventually pay off.
Meanwhile $AAPL is doing what they’ve always done best…
Being patient
GIF
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There is no fundamental story here. They haven’t innovated in 15 years. The stock is benefiting from a gamma squeeze and a rotation out of overly levered semi names and back into aapl as hedge funds delever. Aapl was a cheap funding stock to short against momentum longs. Now those pair trades are closed out in size due to margin calls. The stock has no legitimate reason to be up from 277 to 337 in ten days. It’s purely technical
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There is no fundamental story here. They haven’t innovated in 15 years. The stock is benefiting from a gamma squeeze and a rotation out of overly levered semi names and back into aapl as hedge funds delever. Aapl was a cheap funding stock to short against momentum longs. Now those pair trades are closed out in size due to margin calls. The stock has no legitimate reason to be up from 277 to 337 in ten days. It’s purely technical
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This is true. But do you think current Apple users will bail because of increase in prices? They already cost a ton and have the largest user base in the world. I don’t think they will but of course it’s just my opinion and believe they are just getting started on AI. We will see but I am excited.
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@Gfilche I’m here for it. $AAPL is just getting started
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$AAPL being priced like nothings wrong- margins intact, no demand destruction
>I think the market is *delusional*. There will be margin impact AND demand destruction
The price increases they passed thru do not protect their margins, they only lessened the damage. And more price hikes are likely coming
Market is whistling past the graveyard
BuccoCapital Bloke@buccocapital
$MU -30% lol
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