A Look at Citadel's Strategy in a Wobbly January Market

Ken Griffin's Citadel isn't messing around, not even in a tricky market. In January, the hedge fund’s main strategy fund made a 1. 4%. looks pretty good when you're dealing with all five of its strategies - commodities, equities, fixed income, credit, and quantitative. 56-year-old Citadel's founder Kenny Griffin thinks about these things a lot. Ever since the beginning of the year, the Miami-based firm had a total of $65 billion under its belt. Now that's a lot of cash! Citadel's tactical trading fund and its equities fund, which uses a long/short strategy, both climbed 2. 7% in January. Meanwhile, Citadel's global fixed income fund secured a 1. 9% return. Nice! The 2024 year was a big year in Citadel's history. They made a 15. 1% gain. Wow! The markets are like a crazy rollercoaster last month. There were big price changes as politicians worried about protectionist policies. At the end of the month, an artificial intelligence competitor out of China called DeepSeek caused a massive sell-off in Nvidia and upended other megacap tech stocks. There was a lot of worry and fear in the marketplace. As of now, the S&P 500 climbed a huge 2. 7% in January 2025 and is up 1. 9% this year following a stellar two-year run in 2023 and 2024. The equity benchmark scored a second consecutive annual gain above 20% last year, and the two-year gain of 53% is the best since the 1997 and 1998 when it jumped nearly 66%. Very impressive! Ken Griffin has been worried about these policies. Before the new administration took office on Jan. 20, Griffin criticized the steep tariffs Trump vowed to implement, saying it could result in crony capitalism. Griffin said that short-term tariffs could benefit domestic companies by weakening their competitors. Longer term, however, tariffs do more harm to corporate America and the economy as companies lose competitiveness and productivity. Tariffs only seem to make things worse in the long run.