Finance

Ken Griffin’s multistrategy hedge fund at Citadel rose 1.4% in volatile January

Published

3 months ago

February 4, 2025

Kenneth C. Griffin (R) speaks during The New York Times Dealbook Summit 2024 at Jazz at Lincoln Center on December 04, 2024 in New York City.

Eugene Gologursky | Getty Images

Billionaire investor Ken Griffin’s flagship hedge fund eked out a small gain in a volatile January, according to a person familiar with the returns.

Citadel’s multistrategy flagship Wellington fund climbed 1.4% in January, following a 15.1% gain in 2024, according to the person, who spoke anonymously because the performance numbers are private. All five strategies used in the fund — commodities, equities, fixed income, credit and quantitative — were positive for the month, the person said.

The Miami-based firm’s tactical trading fund gained 2.7% in January, while its equities fund, which uses a long/short strategy, also returned 2.7%, said the person. Meanwhile, Citadel’s global fixed income fund returned 1.9%.

Citadel, which had $65 billion in assets under management as the year began, declined to comment.

Markets experienced violent price swings last month as investors grew wary of President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies. At the end of the month, an artificial intelligence competitor out of China called DeepSeek caused a massive sell-off in Nvidia and upended other megacap tech stocks.

The S&P 500 climbed 2.7% in January and is up 1.9% in 2025 following a stellar two-year run in 2023 and 2024. The equity benchmark scored a second consecutive annual gain above 20% last year, and the two-year gain of 53% is the best since the 1997 and 1998 when it jumped nearly 66%.

Before the new administration took office on Jan. 20, Griffin criticized the steep tariffs Trump vowed to implement, saying it could result in crony capitalism.

The 56-year-old Citadel founder said domestic companies could enjoy a short-term benefit by having their competitors weakened. Longer term, however, tariffs do more harm to corporate America and the economy as companies lose competitiveness and productivity, Griffin said.

Finance

More Americans buy groceries with buy now, pay later loans

Published

4 hours ago

April 26, 2025

Business Finance News

People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.

Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.

The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.

In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.

Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.

Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.

“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”

“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.

He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.

“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”

The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.

“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”

Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.

Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.

Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.