It's the start of a new month in what's still a new year, so it's time once again to speculate about a Citadel public offering. Did its founder Kenneth Griffin see his shadow Saturday morning or do we have six more months with no I.P.O.?

News that the firm spun off its options-trading unit from its fund business at the start of this year has renewed suspicion that it's laying the groundwork for an I.P.O. Bloomberg speculates that the move "may be a prelude to a public offering" because it removes any appearance of a conflict of interest in the eyes of public investors. It's one less obstacle on the road to Wall Street.

Rumors about Citadel's imminent I.P.O. have circulated for nearly three years. Indeed, Griffin himself told Condé Nast Portfolio nearly a year ago that an I.P.O. is "a strategic option we consider."

But while it's quite clear that the business media is itching for an offering, there's no indication the public markets are.

Look no further than the stock charts of alternative investment firms that took the plunge last year. Shares of Fortress Investment Group are trading for less than half of what they did on their debut last February. Investors in the Blackstone Group have been rewarded with a 40 percent drop in share price since its I.P.O. last summer. And Och-Ziff Capital Management Group has dropped 28 percent since its debut just three months ago.

Some argue that the shares in this group have fallen too far, and their stock is undervalued. Maybe so, but public investors would still be forced to measure Citadel's worth by comparing it to its public peers. "We think our competitors are undervalued" isn't exactly the kind of pitch a banker wants to take on an I.P.O. road show.

In fact, Barron's argues that there may still be room for shares of the Blackstone Group to fall further if certain deals fall through.

Couple this with the still shaky credit markets, an uncertain economy, and the increasing influence of sovereign wealth funds abroad, and it looks like a Citadel I.P.O. anytime soon would be a long shot.

Of course, Griffin isn't afraid of taking risks. He jumped at the chance to invest in E-Trade when it hit turbulent times last November. Its shares are down 20 percent since then.

About the only thing that Citadel did publicly disclose yesterday is that it took a 5.5 percent stake in the software firm MicroStrategy.

And how did the market like hearing that one? So much, evidently, that they sent its shares down more than 5 percent.