In-Depth: Citadel Connect and Dark Pools Uncovered
MTim Fries, 20 July 2021
Before dark pools, institutional investors had to trade in blocks of shares outside trading hours to avoid upsetting the market. Now, the utility found within dark pools is so high that some market makers have embedded them within their operations. There are certainly some benefits here in terms of increased liquidity, but there’s another side of the coin as well.
Throughout 2021, retail traders have uncovered significant short positions held by hedge funds in a number of stocks. Naked short selling is suspected by many retail traders to be involved. At this point, hedge funds have collectively lost $12 billion—so far.
One of the latest developments in this saga is Citadel Connect, a dark pool operated by Citadel Securities.
Citadel Securities and Citadel Connect
If you haven’t been following the WallStreetBets saga across multiple Senate Banking Committee hearings, here is a brief recap. As the largest Designated Market Maker (DMM) on the NYSE, and accounting for 47% of US-based retail trading volume, Citadel Securities LLC also accounted for a significant portion of Robinhood’s Q1 2021 revenue thanks to Robinhood’s PFOF (payment for order flow) business model.
