Ken Griffin is the founder and CEO of the quantitative hedge fund Citadel. He also owns market maker Citadel Securities.
He started trading while studying Economics at Harvard, and is now worth an estimated $35 billion.
Here are 9 of Ken Griffin’s best quotes:
Lessons learned from 2008:
“Don’t act like a bank unless you are a bank. That was a really big lesson learned from 2008.”
Ken Griffin started trading on his own, in his dorm room at Harvard, but Citadel now employs over 2,600 people.
“I had to learn to trust people, and I realised that success was going to be born in hiring really bright people – very self-motivated, very able to make good judgment calls day in and day out.”
Is his success down to moving from being an individual trader to employing a huge team of specialists?
“You can’t succeed in the markets today unless you are part of a great team. The team is the essence of how you win.”
On specialising and using focus in investing and trading:
“We think that excellence in investing comes from focus.”
Here Ken Griffin talks about what makes an entrepreneur successful.
“I’ve often thought of successful entrepreneurs as individuals who have just the right expertise – at just the right moment – to solve the emerging problems of their time.”
What is the difference between gambling and speculation?
“Gambling is entertainment… Financial markets, what one often refers to as speculation, is really the force by which we move capital to the best and highest use.”
Ken Griffin was born in 1968, and has plenty of experience in the markets. Here he makes an amusing comment on the age and experience of most traders today.
“Walk across any of the trading floors – they are full of 29-year-old kids. The capital markets of America are controlled by a bunch of right-out-of-business-school young guys who haven’t really seen that much.”
Citadel carries out a huge amount of quantitative research, and employs specialists in a variety of fields. Needless to say, Ken Griffin believes in research.
“The key to our business, it’s a lot of research.”
Ken Griffin’s take on risk:
“In some industries, we refer to risk taking as ‘research and development.’ At financial institutions, we often take risk by investing in securities.”
An finally, his opinion on the best financial markets:
“Our financial markets work best when they are competitive, fair, and transparent.”
