Citadel Connect uncovered – Are dark pools being used to hide volume data?

Citadel Connect uncovered – Are dark pools being used to hide volume data?

Over the weekend, the new talking point in the Ape community seems to be Citadel Connect, which could be best described as a method used by Citadel Securities to reroute orders to their dark pool, which appears to give them some ability to influence the price of the stock, and particularly of importance to us, the price of AMC amongst others.

Back in May 2021, Reddit user Nomes2424 posted about how Citadel (and others) had over 2 Billion shares of AMC in the Dark pool (Some 4x the total amount of the AMC float). Further investigation seems to suggest that these were shares which had been traded back and forth, not necessarily that they were in fact 2 Billion naked shorts, and it’s incumbent upon us to clear that information up because we don’t want to be adding to any HYPE or FUD, simply presenting the facts.

Citadel Connect uncovered - Are dark pools being used to hide volume data?

Nonetheless, it did raise some interesting questions about Citadel, and over the last few days, a number of people have been looking into Citadel Connect, which is definitively NOT anything tin-foil-hat, as it actually appears on their own website.

As @taraBull808 succinctly put it on Twitter: 47% of retail orders get sent through Citadel who then routes them through CItadel Connect, where volume is not tracked by FINRA.

Citadel Connect first reared its ugly hedgie head more than 6 years ago, with Reuters publishing an article on how Citadel planned to shut down their Apogee dark pool so as to focus on their latest off-exchange trading venue Citadel Connect. Dark pools are a huge problem, because they appear to have been used to mask from both the authorities and investors in general the trading interests and patterns of the users.

Of course, retail investors are not invited to participate in these dark pools, and so it’s another great example of how the worlds biggest Market Maker has the ability to manipulate the price, and the need for more stringent oversight and regulation on the practises of these Wall Street giants. And let’s face it, surely if we are going to pretend we have a free and open stock market, accessible to all on a level playing field, that Dark Pools should be consigned to the dustbin of history, along with all the discarded Banana skins?

Watch this video from the Masked Investor on Citadel Connect

A quick shout out to the Masked Investor, who is thankfully back from YouTube jail for, well, nobody is quite sure what really, but it really looked like his very abrupt Yeeting towards the end of last week did seem to come from the fact he was talking about the memestocks… YouTube made it clear that they were gunning for financial channels (but we think it’s safe money to assume they really mean Ape channels).

As the Masked Investor said, Citadel Connect seem to require a bit more DD to uncover if there is even more hedgefuckery which is being perpetuated by the DMM. But it’s clear to say that this isn’t random conspiracy theory nonsense, as all of this information seems to be available on the Citadel’s own website.

We are sure that Wes Christian is already all over this in his investigation into the dodgy and illegal practises in the financial markets.