Ken Griffin and Sea Island Hedge Funds Short Sell Non-Existent Shares of Trump Stock to Drive Down Price

By Sundance

You know when Ken Griffin is doing sketchy anti-Trump stuff by the response from Ken Griffin. Remember, this is the vulture capitalist and Citadel hedge fund operator of horrible Robin Hood infamy who was going to lose billions because the Reddit community fought back against Griffin’s short position on GameStop.

In essence, what Griffin is doing now is shorting the Trump stock he doesn’t control or borrow against. He’s naked shorting the Trump media stock, which is illegal and seriously unethical.

Devin Nunes, CEO of Truth Social, has tracked the available stock and notes; there is no way for Citadel and others to sell short positions, because there is no stock available for borrowing. Nunes knows the scheme Ken Griffin is attempting.

“Data made available to us indicate that just four market participants have been responsible for over 60% of the extraordinary volume of DJT shares traded: Citadel Securities, VIRTU Americas, G1 Execution Services, and Jane Street Capital,” Nunes wrote.

Griffin and his Sea Island vulture capitalists are just repeating their previous moves.  Naked shorting was partially blamed for the GameStop “meme stock” phenomenon of 2021. During the two previous years, GameStop had posted big losses, leading to a large drop in its share prices.

This problem was noticed by hedge funds, which took out major short positions in the stock. In 2020, at least half of GameStop’s stock was borrowed for short positions. By 2021, 140% of GameStop shares were shorted, meaning 40% of the shares shorted weren’t really out there to trade on; that is, they were likely involved in naked short sales.

Online retail investors soon noticed this giant hedge, setting up the Reddit forum “r/WallStreetBets”, to implement a short squeeze and bid up the stock to counter the shorting of the hedge funds. As the share price increased, it wasn’t just the hedge funds that lost; short sellers who hadn’t borrowed the shares couldn’t deliver.  Ken Griffin went bananas and used his power with the Robin Hood trading platform to stop the buyers. You can tell Ken Griffin is yet again behind this short stock effort by his triggered reaction:

“Devin Nunes is the proverbial loser who tries to blame ‘naked short selling’ for his falling stock price. Nunes is exactly the type of person Donald Trump would have fired on ‘The Apprentice.’ If he worked for Citadel Securities, we would fire him, as ability and integrity are at the center of everything we do.” (link)

Now read that statement and tell me that expression doesn’t scream identical to the Ron DeSantis supporters. Is it any surprise Ken Griffin was Ron DeSantis’ biggest individual donor.