저자: MartinShkreli—소속미상 · 외국인
요약 보기
Situational Awareness LP의 대규모 보유 주식 청산 과정을 설명하며, 대형 포지션 매도가 어려운 이유(유동성·마켓메이커 개입·프라임브로커 압박)를 다룬다. 골드만삭스가 포지션을 일괄 처분하는 페이어 세일이 있었고 할인폭은 20~50%로 언급됐다. Citadel이 시장 상황에서 상대적으로 선방했다는 분석도 나온다. 향후 일부 대형 기술펀드도 큰 손실이 드러날 수 있다는 전망을 제시한다.
다듬은 글
Can you give me a little bit more insider baseball on what it takes to unwind a big position as a shareholder because a lot of people who are not inside the hedge fund world are sort of maybe confused around okay yeah you own $50 million of a $1 billion chip stock can't you just dump that on retail can't you just like sell market sell that on e-trade or Robinhood?
And in fact it's much more complicated when you're at this level even though it's public markets there's not just a big button can you walk us through what it actually takes to like sell a big position when you're at that level? Yeah there's there's lots that goes into it interestingly. So the first is you have this advertisement system.
So if you sell into the into the market you can try that and those that's called selling into the screens. The screens are the numbers on your screen. Anybody can buy and sell Robinhood whatever. Mhm. So you don't normally do that if you if you can help it. Selling on the screens is at least somewhat quiet you can just sort of trickle out.
There's always this conspiracy that as I'm selling on the screens there's some guy who's can see my screen and he's like this guy's got a VWAP market order sell 10 million shares that's not you know I'm going to tell somebody and that knowledge would be very very powerful and there's even some even crazier conspiracies out there that quants can actually use different all kinds of insane I you know ideas around what they can do to sort of sniff out that this is happening.
So there's people that are scared of that. Then you can pick up the phone and this is the way you normally do it and you you'd call you call Goldman and you say listen I need to sell five you know five million shares of of Microsoft or something like that and they say hmm you know should we take it or do we find a guy that wants to take it and they'll sort of try to decide.
Now Microsoft is easy if you're trying to sell share in AI a neo cloud in Australia that nobody wants That's a tough one. And you own like 10 days of volume. So if you try to hit the screens, you have 10 days of volume. You would you would have to be the entire volume for 10 days before you'd be out.
You'd probably take the stock down 50% or more. And you don't want to do that. So you try to you know, do this advertisement process. Um, you know, and you basically can post in the stock market that you were a a seller of a stock. And you can post that your your four-digit what's called market maker ID.
And and so Goldman's is GSCO. So GSCO would be a seller of say, you know, Nevius, which was one of his positions. And so you'd call up, you'd say, "Okay, Goldman, I'm a client too of Goldman. Uh, you know, what do you got on Nevius?" And and the guy will say, "Listen, we got a pretty big seller here." You know, and say, "How big?" You know, half a million shares?" And he's like, "A lot bigger." You know, and so you'd say, "Hmm, okay." Cuz they have to advertise that, you know, they're working your orders.
So they have to sort of tell people that there's a seller. Uh, they're they kind of are trying to be coy about how big, but they're not going to waste somebody's time either. So the guy who's heard that there's a big seller, well, he might turn around. He's not supposed to do this. He sort of might turn around and say, "You know, there's a huge seller of Nevius out there, and I'm just a little baby fish.
Maybe I could short 50,000 shares and get in front of this guy." If you're an actual interested buyer, you might also still be nervous cuz you'd say, "Well, if he's really got a ton of size, I might have to be judicious about about how I step in." And so if you combine that with the sort of like pressure in the market and you add it all up, and then usually what you do is you'd have say, "Oh, well, I know a guy that works there, and let's see if he's returning calls." And you know, when you hit up the guy and he's not on Bloomberg, he's hard to reach, it's kind of like, "Well, it sounds like it could be them selling." Uh, so it's not too many people that own that many shares of that security.
So you look at the holders list and you're sort of like, "Who could it be selling 10 million shares?" So, you call Fidelity and they say, "No, we're not selling." You call the next guy, "No, we're not selling." Next guy's an ETF, next guy's a index fund. You know, it's got to be them, you know? And so, if it's them and they're they're they're and then you start noticing all of their positions are down, it gets really hard.
So, ultimately the bank decides because you might say, you know, "I don't want to sell." The bank says, "I don't care what you want. We're selling regardless. And Goldman Sachs is not in the business of holding AI stocks. You know, we're going to sell at any price we can cuz our board would rather know for sure that we're down a billion and just take the rip the band-aid off than to wonder if we could lose 50.
And so, it's Goldman's position that we're just going to just cut cut this cut the arm off right now before it metastasizes. And so, they'll do a fire sale. And of course, Goldman's smart, they're going to reach out to a guy like Citadel or somebody else to place it carefully, but selling the whole portfolio in one shot was very smart move.
Now, again, we've we've heard the discount could have been as as big as you know, 20 to 50%, which is you know, mouth-watering discount to buy, you know, some quality companies at. But, to end it and have finality, what was really to answer the question finally, what you really needed to do is the buyer of these stocks has to have the liquidity to hold them for 5 years and do nothing.
Because the market guys like me and to very small extent, and guys to much bigger will sit there and say, "I don't think you can hold this." And they'll start shorting it and shorting it and shorting it and trying to make you cry uncle. Kyosha in Japan, one of Leopold Holdings, also one of mine, is trading at three times earnings.
You know, they basically force you you're forcing the guy to to really, you know, to sell. And if you're going to hold this stock, you have to make sure that you can hold it until it's two times earnings or one times earnings. And the only player big enough and more powerful enough to to sort of hold a hundred billion dollars and not blink is somebody like a Citadel.
And even still, some people There are rumors out there that there are people who are going to try to rush their Citadel, which I wouldn't advise. Uh you know, but something like that where, you know, maybe they'll have now have to suffer the same contagion. So, it's a very crazy time in the markets, and and I don't think we've seen everything yet, because I do think there are some large tech funds that have had the same trade on.
I do think liquidation is over, thankfully. But, I do think that there are some funds that are about to be found [clears throat] out to be down 30% or down 40% or something. through the mind of Ken Griffin like a couple weeks ago. There's this rumor that he was sort of like pushing or signaling that there might be a rate hike, but what I'm interested in is if you suspect that there's going to be a fire sale on X, Y, and Z companies, is there a world where you build the hedges before you acquire those assets, or is that too 4D chess?
Because that it it it if they if they wind up acquiring these for 50% 20% off, but they already have offsets, then they sort of come in market neutral. Is that possible? I don't think so. So, I'm familiar with the Citadel's performance uh for this month, which is surprisingly up. So, I don't think they're probably one of the only hedge funds in the world that's up this month.
It's up So, they are actually They were actually hedged is what you're saying. Yes. They have a diverse platform of different businesses, like a guy trading weather, a guy trading rates, a guy trading stocks, you know, about a thousand guys trading stocks. And they have a computer fund uh you know, called Citadel Securities that that is a market maker that trades a good chunk of the volume of every instrument in the world.
And ultimately, I think that the the prime brokers, the Goldmans and Bank of Americas, they do so much business with Citadel, and they've done this before where they know who to go to, just the same way the US government went to Warren Buffett when they wanted to shore up Goldman. Yeah. They know that the right person to call is Ken and he's really going out of his way to make himself the guy to call and I think that is a great brand because you may not need to be that guy more than once every decade.
But look, once a decade to make a free 5 billion or 10 billion is a great great guy to be and you know, it's it's sort of like he becomes a dependable trusted partner to these banks and if he wants something from the banks, he's helped them. Because without him, they might have had to sell that at a negative number.
In fact, some people think, I don't think this is what happened, but some people actually think that equity in Leopold's prime brokerage accounts went negative. Okay. Which I think is uh you know, something that again, Gold the Goldmans and Bank of America's try to stop you before you get there. Sure.
But you know, they also don't want to sell like I said, a share in AI which is an illiquid tough to sell security. Sure. You know, they'll sell out your Micron very fast or you'll sell it out before then, but if you're left holding this bag of like a liquid crap that you have 60 days of volume to get out of, it's pretty tough to to sit there and and tell your prime broker, don't worry.
Uh which is why again, I think he needed cash. Probably somebody on Monday or Tuesday tapped him on the shoulder and said your margin's looking a little thin, you know, can you can you add, you know, a couple billion here or more and things happened so quickly that there's just no time. And um yeah, it's I think I think Citadel learned about this at the 11th hour.
Yep. As every as you're supposed to, you know, the firm didn't leak out that they were hurting. Um they didn't have to my knowledge daily performance. In fact, from what I'm told, um situational awareness as a young hedge fund was not so great with communication, not surprising. Uh especially with what monthly and quarterly letters, could have been more timely in some of those.
So, it's small group of a couple of guys, so I don't think that this was the same where rewind what was it only a month ago that the or 13F was late. 13F was like late and everyone was questioning like did he work out did he work out some kind of deal to get it you know keep it confidential but it it sounded like he just like didn't get around to it.
They had other priorities maybe. Do you think he can uh Do you think he can rebuild a career as a venture investor? Because like in venture you just you're you're just like gig along always. Like it's like you know one of the few forms of investing where it's just so hard to get out of positions you
that's the thing. I mean, why become a hedge fund manager? This is the I I have a friend who wants to to start I have a friend who wants to start a hedge fund. I told him this is the most painful horrible business in the world. Uh why do this? And I if you start a newsletter business that makes a hundred million a year uh even fifty million a year of revenue, you've done better than almost every hedge fund on the planet.
Like you do not want to do this job. And the reason you know the the reason people do it and I did it too and I would never do it again is it's the sexiest thing in the world. You think you're you're You know you're the master of the universe. It's incredible. Yeah, you're the master of the universe.
And I had friends who wanted to quit really high profile jobs to to be a hedge fund. I was just like you're you're out of your mind. You don't know what what this job is. It's waking up at 3:00 a.m. checking Korean stock prices and you know waking up back up at 6:00, you know wondering what's what's happening in the world stuff like this and there's absolutely no productive thing you're doing, you know, you're providing capital.
You know, but other man, you know, you're really playing this high stakes crazy poker game and you know, it's it's certainly fun and interesting but when it's painful and and raw Yeah. you know, I hope he'll he'll do something You know, he's a brilliant person. Brilliant people like that I mean, look Peter Thiel had a hedge fund that
Clarium didn't quite have this level of liquidation or anything like that but it had a rough last few years and you know Thiel was able to obviously, not only continue his venture investing efforts, creating one of the biggest funds of all time, one of the most successful funds of all time, investing personally, doing amazing, also getting back into macro trading with Thiel macro, which supposedly has done well.
So, I do think there is this like period of a few years that that, you know, he can reset and take the learnings, take whatever talent and skill, and certainly genius that nobody denies, that he's a brilliant guy, and rebuild. I I don't think it's the end at all. And um I hope he's keeping like that even temperament about this because, you know, I I I think a lot of people respect him quite a lot, no matter how this turned out, you know, he'll be back and and successful.
But it is a little bit of a humiliation thing that I think most people on Twitter and other places are sort of saying, "Well, the market tends to humble you." And this is like a extremely humbling moment from being, you know, just 2 months separated from the biggest hedge fund on planet Earth and most successful to being forced to to sort of liquidate. That is quite a rapid sort of, you know, um reversal.
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