저자: 미상 · 한국인
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시타델 창업자 켄 그리핀의 생애와 투자 방식을 소개하는 영상. 2022년 시장 폭락기에 웰링턴 펀드가 수수료 차감 후 38.1% 수익을 냈고, 고객 순수익 약 240억 달러, 그리핀 개인 소득 약 41억 달러로 추정. 시타델 증권의 마켓메이킹 사업과 헤지펀드의 차이를 설명. 2026년 7월 상황인식(Situational Awareness) 펀드 청산 시 포트폴리오를 저가 인수한 사례 소개. 한국 시장에서 2017~2018년 알고리즘 거래로 과징금 118억 원이 부과됐으나 2025년 12월 1심에서 취소, 금융위가 항소한 상태. 정치 기부와 부동산·화석 구매 등 개인 행적도 다룸. 영상은 특정 자산의 가격 방향에 대한 예측을 제시하지 않음.
다듬은 글
Here is a person who single-handedly recorded an annual income above the 100,000 dollar mark during a market crash. The US stock market collapsed in 2022. The SMP 500 index fell by about 19%, and as stocks and bonds fluctuated simultaneously, numerous investors and funds suffered losses. However, there is a man who, in that very year, brought in a net profit of about $16 billion (approximately 24 trillion won) to his customers, even after deducting all commissions.
And the money this man earned personally was about $4.1 billion, or about 6 trillion won. According to figures from the beginning of 2023, this was the highest amount earned by a single hedge fund manager in a year at the time . Based on the average actual prize money for the first day of the Korean Lotto, this amount would require winning thousands of times—approximately 4,400 times—and would take about 85 years even if one won once a week.
In other words, it is an amount that can be accumulated by winning the lottery first prize every week since the Japanese colonial period and not spending a single penny of the money. In addition, it amounts to approximately 12,200 times the 5.51826 billion won disclosed by Korea Investment & Securities CEO Jeong Il-moon, which was the highest in the Korean securities industry in 2022.
What is even more surprising is that the average annual salary of office workers in Yeongdeungpo-gu, where Yeouido—the center of Korean finance—is equivalent to the combined annual salaries of approximately 123,000 people . In fact, one person named Griffin earned an amount of money close to the annual salaries of tens of thousands of employees in the entire Yeouido financial sector in just one year in 2022.
What is even more surprising is that Samsung Electronics' 2023 earnings, based on the year the survey was released, were approximately 15.48 trillion won. The approximately 6.15 trillion won estimated to have been earned by Ken Griffin alone in 2022 is nearly the same, and the investment returns of about 24 trillion won delivered by citats to customers were about 1.5 times greater than Samsung Electronics' 2023 ranking profit .
This person's name is Kenneth Cordell Griffin. He is the founder and chief executive of Citadel, commonly known as Ken Griffin . He founded not only the hedge fund Citadel but also Citadel Securities, the world's largest market-making firm. Although these two companies share the same founder, they are different businesses.
Citadel is a hedge fund that seeks profits by investing customer funds, and Citadel Securities is a market maker that provides liquidity and executes trades between buyers and sellers of stocks, bonds, options, etc. In the 2016 Bloomberg World's Richest People ranking, Ken Griffin was ranked 34th with a net worth of approximately $57.5 billion, or about 87.85 trillion won.
Along with Jim Simons and George Soros, Ken Griffin is considered one of the candidates for the world's best investor after Buffett . Ken Griffin was born in Florida, USA in 1968. During his high school years, he served as the president of the math club and was called a math prodigy. He showed an early interest in mathematics and the computer business, to the extent that he created and sold educational software in his bedroom while still a student .
After entering Harvard University in 1986, I majored in economics and graduated early with honors in 1989, completing my bachelor's degree in three years. His first famous investment was home shopping. As a college freshman, he read an analysis at Forbus stating that the stock price of the home shopping network was overvalued and bought put options .
As the stock price fell, he made his first profit of about $5,000. It wasn't a large sum of money, but it was a moment when I personally experienced the fact that it is possible to make a profit even from declining assets. In 1987, Idmaine took even bolder action . At that time, it was not an era where you could view real-time market prices with just a laptop or smartphone, as is the case today .
Griffin persuaded the school to install a satellite antenna on the roof of Keh House, a Harvard dormitory . He used this antenna to receive real-time financial information, analyzed it on his IBM computer, and effectively turned his dormitory room into a mini trading room. His fund survived the 1987 Black Monday crash that occurred a few days later and made a profit.
It is reported that by the time he graduated from college, the funds he was managing exceeded $1 million . It is approximately 1.5 billion won when simply converted at the current exchange rate . The fact that a single university student in the late 1980s was managing this amount of funds in a dormitory using a computer and a satellite antenna was itself very unusual.
After graduating, Griffin, supported by investor Frank Meyer, founded the predecessor of Sitas in 1990 at the young age of 22. The initial capital was about $4.6 million, and there were only a few employees, including Griffin. However, in 2003, at the age of 34, he made his first entry into Forbes Sabah with a net worth of approximately $650 million, becoming the youngest self-made member that year.
It was about 17 years after I started my first transaction in the dormitory . Ken Griffin's key is not finding a single stock and holding it for a long time. Citadel is a multi-strategy hedge fund that simultaneously operates various strategies including stocks, bonds, macroeconomics, commodities, credit, quant, convertibles, and relative value trading .
Numerous portfolio managers lead relatively independent teams, but risk management and capital allocation are strongly controlled centrally. It is a structure that allocates more capital to high-performing teams and quickly reduces risk for teams with mounting losses . Ken Griffin's greatest ability lies not in completing all trades himself, but in controlling risk by having numerous top-tier investors and researchers compete within a single system .
Citadel's assets under management are projected to reach approximately $71 billion in 2026, equivalent to 106.5 trillion won. The flagship fund Wellington is estimated to have recorded an average annual compound return of around 20% after deducting fees for about 35 years since 1990. The cumulative investor earnings generated by Citadel by the end of 2025 amount to approximately $90.4 billion, or about 135.6 trillion KRW.
This is the estimated profit left to clients after deducting both management fees and performance fees, and ranks third in the all-time hedge fund rankings . With Wellington's 2025 performance, Ken Griffin's personal annual income in 2025 was estimated at approximately $2.4 billion, or about 3.6 trillion won.
Citadel's flagship fund, Wellington, had a return of 38.1% after fees in 2022. It was 1%. Compared to the SMP 500 index falling by about 19%, this is a gap of about 57 percentage points. It was a year where I didn't just hit the jackpot by betting on a single specific stock, but rather most of my major strategies—including bonds, stocks, macroeconomics, and quants— generated profits simultaneously.
Wellington's 38.1% is the net return received by investors after deducting fees . The exact fee deduction and total return were not disclosed. Even assuming a simple performance fee of 20%, to make a net return of 38.1% equal to 1%, a total return of approximately 47.6% or more of 6% is required. If you also take into account Citadel's unique fixed-price structure and operating costs, it is possible that the profit margin after deducting fees has become 50% .
Citadel's hedge fund business recorded approximately $28 billion in revenue in 2022. Citadel Securities, a separate company, also generated approximately $7.5 billion in trading revenue in the same year . Since Ken Griffin is presumed to hold majority stakes in both the hedge fund manager and Citadel Securities, his [snor] economic gains may have been greater than the disclosed $4.1 billion .
Ken Griffin's actual income level was also revealed in his past tax records. According to U.S. Internal Revenue Service data obtained and analyzed by ProPublica, he reported an annual income of approximately $1.7 billion from 2013 to 2018, ranking fourth highest in the entire United States . Therefore, he is not a book-rich man whose only asset is the appreciation of his hard-to-cash stocks, but rather one of the very few entrepreneurs who generate billions of dollars in actual taxable income every year .
However, the data in question was personal information illegally leaked from the IRS, and the U.S. IRS later apologized regarding the leak. Ken Griffin spun off the market-making business in 2002 to create what is today Citadel Securities . What Citadel Securities does is different from investing for the long term by aligning with the market direction.
It is a business that proposes prices between buyers and sellers and repeatedly secures small price differences over a very short period of time . The author can also generate massive profits from a single transaction because the number and scale of transactions are overwhelmingly large . According to official data from Citadel Securities, the current average daily nominal transaction volume is approximately $836 billion, equivalent to about 1,254 trillion won.
It amounts to a nominal amount passing through Citadel Securities' system every day that far exceeds South Korea's annual national budget . Citadel Securities' trading earnings in 2025 were estimated at approximately $12.2 billion , and EBITDA at approximately $6.5 billion . If you simply divide the reported labor costs by the number of employees, the average annual salary per person is calculated to be about $2 million, or about 3 billion won .
Recently, a competition has been taking place between Wall Street and artificial intelligence companies to recruit math and computer talent in their 20s . For top talent at quant firms, there are also limits of over $1 million for the first year, and rarely $1.5 million, amounting to approximately 2.25 billion won .
In the recruitment announcements for stars, education in advanced quantitative fields such as mathematics, statistics, physics, and computer science repeatedly appears as a preferred qualification. It is said that in this world, one can earn enough money to last a lifetime by achieving outstanding results for just a few years .
As described in the past compensation explanation of Jane Street, a company in the same industry featured in Michael Lewis's book, it is said that if top- tier talent remains an ace for a long period, they earn tens of billions to over 100 billion won in annual salary. Among the former members of the Citadel is Luana Lopez, a former ballerina from Brazil .
She studied computer science at MIT and, after working at Breezewater and Citadel Securities, co-founded the prediction market platform Kalsi. As Kalsi's corporate value rose to $11 billion, she was assessed as the world's youngest self-made female billionaire with a net worth of approximately $1.3 billion by the age of 29 in 2025 .
This is an interesting example showing how Citadel attracts a dense pool of talent . Ken Griffin is also known as an executive who provides exceptional compensation and a favorable environment to outstanding employees . At the 25th anniversary event of Citadel, KT Perry, who was one of the world's top pop stars at the time, performed, and Maroon 8V appeared at a separate event held in New York .
According to reports, Griffin personally covered the performance expenses to celebrate the employees' achievements . On the other hand, it is said that the criteria for selecting talent are very cold-hearted. In a recruitment anecdote, he asked an applicant what they would like to do if they earned ten million dollars .
The story goes that when an applicant stated they would retire to enjoy traveling and hiking, the company withdrew its offer of employment, deeming them lacking a commitment to long-term challenges. While the exact details may have changed during the process of retelling, this anecdote is widely cited as an illustration of his talent philosophy, which favors individuals who continue to compete and grow even after achieving success .
The Citadel is not just home to traders and queens . Ben Berlanke, who served as Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014, joined Citadel as a senior officer in 2015. At the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, Ken Griffin, along with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, discussed the topic of whether the 2020s are the new 1920s .
There is also an amazing story related to the Korean market. Citadel, founded by Ken Griffin, also made a big impression in the Korean market. The Korea Exchange and domestic media at the time estimated that Citadel Securities conducted trading in Korean stocks worth approximately 80 trillion won using the Merrill Lynch Securities Seoul branch for about seven months from October 2017 to May 2018, and earned a trading profit of approximately 220 billion won .
The Korean financial authorities determined that high-intensity algorithmic orders made in 6,796 trading intervals across 264 stocks among these were acts of market order exchange and imposed a fine of 11.88 billion won. This was the first domestic case to impose a fine by applying market order bridge oil wells to high-level algorithmic trading.
However, Citadel Securities countered that the strategy was a normal algorithmic trading method that had already been used in several overseas markets for years and was not intended to manipulate prices. And in December 2025, a ruling was issued by the Seoul Administrative Court in the first instance to cancel the fine disposition .
Citadel won the case. However, this case has not yet been finalized because the Financial Services Commission appealed and submitted a written appeal in April 2026 . What is surprising is that, because there are almost no related industries in Korea, the ultra-fast algorithms created by Citadel's highly skilled professionals in mathematics, physics, statistics, and computer science generated very large-scale transactions and profits in the Korean market without most Korean market participants knowing.
From now on, this is not proven to be a fact, but an assumption. However, based on previously revealed estimates, it is estimated that Citadel is earning massive profits of over trillions of won annually in the Korean stock market alone, surpassing the hundreds of billions of won it earned in the past, in a market where the number of market participants, including individuals, has increased significantly and trading volume has become more active compared to about 10 years ago .
The most important characteristic that runs through Ken Griffin's investment life is that he acts more aggressively when other investors are forced to sell assets than when the market is calm . When the energy company Enron went bankrupt in 2001, it recruited related traders and analysts, and in 2006, it acquired the portfolio of Amaranth, which had collapsed due to failed natural gas investments .
In the early stages of the 2007 financial crisis, it took over the assets of the struggling Sowood Capital, and in the 2021 GameStop crisis, it invested $2.75 billion in Melvin Capital together with Point 72 . While it was a rescuer to some, for the Citadel it was an opportunity to secure assets and talent cheaply amidst the crisis .
And in July 2026, this strategy appeared once again. Situational Awareness, an AI-focused hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Asin Brenner, used massive leverage on AI and semiconductor stocks. Although it rose 439% from the beginning of the year by the end of June 2026, the portfolio value collapsed by about 67% as AI-related stock prices plummeted in July.
We were forced into a situation where we had to liquidate most of our listed stock portfolio, which was once valued at about $16 billion . As rumors circulated that there were problems in the market, Griffin called in key executives, including Citadel co-Chief Investment Officer Pablo Salam, Chief Operating Officer Gerald Witson, and Head of Equity Quant Research Paribasse, to analyze the portfolio and liquidity overnight.
Ultimately, it is reported that Citadel acquired a significant portion of the listed stock portfolio held by Situational Awareness through brokerage borrowing at a considerably low price. Regarding this incident, a conspiracy theory emerged online claiming that Citadel Securities amplified market fear by publicly raising the possibility of a surprise interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve, after which a hedge fund from the same group acquired the forced sell-off at a low price .
However, to date, no evidence has been confirmed that the report and the portfolio acquisitions of the fund collapse were linked in advance or that the market was intentionally manipulated . Furthermore, Citadel Securities, which issued the report, and the Citadel Hedge Fund, which acquired the assets, are legally and commercially distinct companies despite sharing the same founder.
What this transaction demonstrated is Citadel's speed rather than conspiracy theories. While competitors were reviewing, Griffin and key executives stayed up all night analyzing the risks and immediately acquired a large portfolio that only a handful of companies in the world could afford . The method Griffin has been repeating for decades.
It is to calculate whether you can handle the risk when other investors cannot tolerate it, and then make a bold purchase . Ken Griffin is the largest political donor representing the U.S. Republican Party. He invested approximately $67 million in politics in 2020 and over $68 million in 2022, and spent about $108 million in the 2024 election cycle, ranking fifth among all individual political donors in the United States .
Even ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, approximately $40 million was provided to Republican candidates and organizations by July. However, it is not accurate to view him as an unconditional supporter of Donald Trump . Griffin is a traditional Republican who prioritizes small government, fiscal soundness, low taxes, deregulation, and business-friendly policies .
Politically and culturally, it is close to the typical Westp-type established elite conservatism that emphasizes markets, institutions, and fiscal discipline. He is a figure closer to the existing Republican mainstream centered on Wall Street and corporations than to Magas-style elite populism . In fact, he supported Marco Rubio in 2016 and Nikki Haley in 2024, and publicly criticized Trump in 2021 .
In the summer of 2024, I had a private individual meeting with Trump. Now, the location was Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. However, a private meeting did not immediately mean support. Griffin stated that he did not directly donate to the Trump presidential campaign even after the meeting and that he did not endorse Trump as a presidential candidate in October 2024 .
However, he later voted for Trump in the actual presidential election and donated $1 million to the nomination committee, but criticized Trump's tariff policy as a huge policy mistake. Ultimately, Ken Griffin is not a Trump loyalist but an independent megadoner who supports Republican congressional power and the traditional pro- market fiscal conservative line .
Ken Griffin has set records in spending and donations as much as he earns money. In 2009, he purchased a four-story penthouse at 220 Central Park South in New York for $238 million . It is approximately 357 billion won. This transaction, known to be approximately 24,000 square feet in size, set the record for the highest price in U.S.
housing history, remains unbroken even in 2026, and is cited as the record for the most expensive home transaction in the U.S. In 2024, the Apex Stegosaurus fossil, dating back approximately 150 million years, was sold for $44.6 million (approximately 66.9 billion KRW). This was the highest price ever paid for a fossil at auction in the world at the time.
Griffin did not keep the fossils in his private warehouse but lent them to the American Museum of Natural History in New York for use in general exhibitions and scientific research. His cumulative donations exceed $2.5 billion (approximately 3.75 trillion won) based on official figures . In particular, the $ 150 million donated to Harvard University in 2014 was recorded as the largest single donation in the history of Harvard undergraduate financial aid and Harvard College.
In 2013, an additional $300 million was donated to the Harvard Graduate School of Physics, and the cumulative donation to Harvard exceeded $500 million. Ken Griffin married twice, and both marriages ended in divorce. My first spouse was Catherine Weingart, whom I had known since high school . The two married in 1991 and divorced in 1996.
In 2003, I met with Andyas, an investor who was a Harvard Business School graduate and NBA alumnus who had worked at Goldman Sachs and Soros Fund Management . The two had a new child, but began divorce proceedings in 2014 and reached a final settlement in 2015 . Then, who is Ken Griffin? He is not a traditional value investor who held a single stock for a lifetime, nor is he a mathematician who created a genius formula on his own and executed every trade himself.
The real product he created is not a specific stock or fund, but a system that combines top talent with data, technology, and risk management to continuously find new revenue streams . A 19-year-old student who installed a satellite antenna on a Harvard dormitory floor founded 22 S.T.A. University. And about 35 years later, it became the controlling shareholder of a market-making company that manages over 100 trillion won in capital, generates over 135 trillion won in cumulative investor net profit, and handles over 1,000 trillion won in transactions per day .
There are many investors who make money when the market rises . However, Ken Griffin's true competitiveness was revealed when the market collapsed and other investors were forced to dump their assets. In 2022, when the cotton market crashed, he earned about 24 trillion won for customers and about 6 trillion won for himself.
AI took over the portfolio of a major fund shaken by the stock market crash in just a few days . To him, a crisis is less an event to be avoided and more a moment where he can buy manageable risk at the lowest possible price . Of course, there is also criticism surrounding the controversy over massive political sponsorships, exorbitant compensation, and the concentration of wealth .
Therefore, rather than defining Ken Griffin as an unconditional hero or villain, it is more accurate to view him as a figure who demonstrates just how massive and sophisticated modern financial markets can become. The man who started in a Harvard dormitory and built the core infrastructure of the global financial market .
The man who recorded historical profits amidst a market crash . And regarding Wallen Buffett, he is one of the figures most strongly considered for the title of the world's best investor. He is Ken Griffin, the founder of the Sitas. If you found this video helpful, please subscribe and like . I consistently upload content made from verifiable sources.
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