2026 · Evidence audit

Citadel Securities — institutional liquidity provider

Citadel Securities LLC is a licensed wholesale market maker based in Chicago. The firm serves institutional clients and retail brokers, with a significant market share in equity trading. Its claims of rapid growth and industry leadership are self-reported and not independently verified.

Citadel Securities LLC · Chicago, USA · last re-checked 2026-09 · evidence score 74/100

Licence, read on the register

Regulator	Licence number	Jurisdiction	Tier	Source
SEC/FINRA	CRD 116797 (SEC 8-53574)	USA	tier-1	open source ↗
SEC/FINRA	CRD 281102 (SEC 8-69663)	USA	tier-1	open source ↗

Tier classification follows the same scale as the retail register: tier-1 = FCA/ASIC/CFTC-class supervision, tier-2 = CySEC/FSC-Mauritius/MFSA-class, tier-3 = offshore registration. A tier-2 licence is genuine supervision without an investor compensation scheme — never misread it as tier-1 protection.

What the firm commits to

Claims specific enough to be falsified — and the ones that remain the venue's own measurement.

Testable claims

Global headquarters: 131 South Dearborn Street, Chicago, IL 60603 USA (firm's own locations page; verified via Wayback snapshot of citadelsecurities.com)
BrokerCheck register: Citadel Securities LLC, CRD 116797, SEC 8-53574, status ACTIVE (FINRA BrokerCheck JSON)
Firm timeline: electronic options market making launched 2002; #1 Designated Market Maker on the NYSE in 2016; institutional client base grew to over 1,000 in 2018
Site business lines: Equities (including Designated Market Maker), Options, Fixed Income & FX, Corporate Solutions

Claims we cannot verify from outside

'Becoming industry leader in 18 months' and market-share percentages are the firm's own timeline claims
Award claims (Risk Magazine, IFR, ETF.com) reference third-party publications not independently re-verified

Perimeter and coverage

Asset classes	Venues	Connectivity	Clients accepted	Explicitly refused
Equities, Options, Fixed Income, FX			Institutional clients (over 1,000 by 2018 per firm timeline), Retail brokers via equity wholesale market making (over 40% retail equity market share by 2018, per firm timeline)

A firm that publishes its own negative space — who it refuses, where it is not licensed — is materially easier to diligence than one that doesn't. The refusal list is treated here as a disclosure, not a defect.