Ken Griffin’s Citadel once again found itself at the center of a WallStreetBets drama, this time because of the company’s silver assets.
The precious metal has become a popular buying target for retail investors who want to inflict losses on hedge funds after WallStreetBets posts said the market was ripe for a little squeeze. Others on the Reddit forum responded with calls to avoid trade, saying that Citadel benefits from being a major holder of the largest exchange-traded silver fund.
“CITADEL IS THE 5th LARGEST OWNER OF SLV,” a WallStreetBets the user wrote on Sunday, referring to the stock symbol of the iShares trust. “IT IS IMPERATIVE NOT TO ‘SQUEEZE IT’.”
Citadel Advisers LLC owned about 6 million shares of iShares Silver Trust on September 30, equivalent to a 0.93% stake, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The company also had shares in at least 17 other silver companies and ETFs.
Although WallStreetBets users have impressed the world by coming together to fuel epic gains in heavily sold stocks, including GameStop Corp., the silver debate highlights that traders on the forum are far from homogeneous group. Investors have been watching the metal rise for clues about a David’s resistancevs– Goliath buying spree that is spreading to bigger and bigger targets.
Silver jumped more than 10% on Monday, but the gains so far are minuscule compared to GameStop’s 16-fold increase since mid-January.
Read more: Silver grows as retail investors crowd as its biggest target
A call to the Citadel office in Chicago outside normal business hours was not answered. It is unclear whether the company’s holdings in the iShares Silver Trust or other silver-related securities have changed since September. Inflows to the iShares trust increased by a record $ 944 million on Friday as ETF negotiations skyrocketed.
Citadel manages one of the largest hedge funds and one of the largest market makers in the world. The company drew the ire of the WallStreetBets crowd last month after injecting money into the hedge fund Melvin Capital, which lost about 53% in January, after being hit by a small squeeze in stocks, including GameStop.
Read: The Citadel Link: What Ken Griffin has to do with GameStop
The anger towards Citadel among WallStreetBets users only increased after Robinhood Markets imposed restrictions on GameStop trading last week. Some have claimed that Griffin, whose company helps execute orders from Robinhood clients, may be behind an attempt to quell the rebellion of individual investors. Citadel and Robinhood denied any involvement by the billionaire in the decision.