market folly

Ken Griffin's investment firm Citadel recently disclosed a new short position via regulatory filings in the UK. Per the disclosure, we see that Citadel Advisors has a short position in Legal & General Group Plc (LON: LGEN) to the tune of -0.4361% of the shares outstanding. This filing was due to activity on May 4th, 2010 and is a brand new short stake. Citadel isn't the only firm with a short position in this company either. Marshal Wace LLP also recently disclosed they are short -0.2% of LGEN shares as of the 4th of May.

Additionally, we recently saw last week that Ken Griffin's firm disclosed a 5.3% stake in Photronics (PLAB) with 2,966,579 shares. This is a massive increase in their position as they only owned a few thousand shares back on December 31st, 2009, the last time we saw a disclosure relating to this position. It's been a while since we last covered activity from Ken Griffin's firm, but last month we detailed Citadel's increased stake in Leap Wireless (LEAP) as well.

We've been detailing short disclosures from various hedge funds and prominent investors as of late and noted that Jim Rogers is short various indexes, London based Lansdowne Partners has been increasing their short in Prudential, and Whitney Tilson's T2 Partners has been short Lululemon Athletica. While short positions are typically kept closely guarded to the vest, it's a refreshing change for us to be able to present you these various disclosures.

Taken from Google Finance - "Legal & General Group Plc is a provider of risk, savings and investment management products in the United Kingdom. It operates in four segments: Risk, Savings, Investment management and International."

To learn more about Ken Griffin, we recommend checking out Scott Patterson's new book The Quants as Citadel's founder is featured in it.