저자: Kevin · 외국인
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Situational Awareness 헤지펀드(레오폴드 아셴브레너 운영 추정)가 레버리지 과다로 청산됐다고 주장. 과거 블록딜 메커니즘과 아카고스 사태(2021)를 유사 사례로 설명. 해당 펀드가 공개 주식·옵션을 모두 처분하고 Anthropic 비공개 지분 담보 대출을 시도하는 것으로 보인다고 언급. 시장은 이 청산이 바닥을 형성하며 회복 국면에 들어갈 수 있다고 전망하고 개인 투자자에게 레버리지 경계를 강조. 방송 내 자산별 가격 예측은 제한적.
다듬은 글
Oh my god, this just happened. $46 billion turned into almost nothing. We've just actually had another Argos-like moment. And we'll talk about how Liverpool, that German guy who was supposed to be the next great genius of the AI movement and who ironically called his foundation "situational awareness," turned out to be unaware that he had no fall protection whatsoever.
who was just liquidated, and he literally hit rock bottom for us yesterday. That same day, I released a video called and we literally said in the video, " Wow, you know, there are opportunities to buy on a dip." That's right. This also coincides with the alpha report we had this morning, especially regarding AMD.
That's right. If you are not yet a member, go to meetkevin.com. So, what happened? The hedge fund, which was worth a potential $46 billion at its peak, was liquidated. They had to sell all their shares and options that were freely tradable. And it looks like they are now using leverage on their existing stake in Anthropic to bail themselves out, and are also trying to raise funds from some of their existing investors to help bail themselves out as well.
We have something to learn from this. To me, this is the true definition of reckless, unbridled greed, and, in fact, meanness, which is why such people should never be able to raise another dollar on Wall Street. Sorry. I get very, very defensive about individual investors who lose money by investing in these clowns because these clowns take other people's money, use leverage, lose everything and say, "Oh, it's not my fault." This is the market, this is the market.
That's because a memory company in China went public with a 5x increase and grabbed all the attention. Oh, it's because SpaceX sucks , or Google raised money, or Meta raised money, or Kevin Warsh was a " hawk," or, you know, whatever. Well, you know, they make DUV lithographers in China. Oh no. Which are not even close to as important as EUV from ASML, but yes, China is probably stealing our technology.
But the point is , we'll be pointing the finger at something else because, you see, they got too heavily in debt, then they burned out, were liquidated, and lost a lot of their investors' money. I find this despicable. I think these investors who go viral and then use leverage shouldn't have access to it at all .
There must be fuses. But I wo n't be too pedantic here just yet. We'll leave that for later in the video. Let's actually talk about what just happened. So, what happened is actually very similar to the situation with Archagos in March 2021. You may remember Bill Hwang and Archos Capital Management. They literally lost $20 billion in the asset sell-off .
And part of that happened because they went to the banks and tricked them into saying, "Hey, we have all this public stock . Can we get a loan against it?" So, essentially, imagine you have $10 billion . You go to Bank of America and ask, " Can I get a loan from them?" And they say, "Sure, we'll give you a margin line of $3 billion." But then you turn around and go to JP Morgan and say, " Hey, can I get a loan on these assets?" They are unaware of the debt to Bank of America.
So they also give you a $3 billion line of credit. I'm just giving these examples with these banks. I don't know if it was these banks, but the gist of the Archagos situation is that the guy was significantly overleveraged , probably 8-20 times. And then when there were a few bad days in March 2021 , if I remember correctly, it was about the third week of March 2021.
Banks had to sell about $20 billion of its shares through block deals, effectively wiping out $35 billion in value. In my opinion, this is remarkably similar to what happened yesterday. You might be asking yourself, "Kevin, how did $20 billion in block deals cause $35 billion in value to be lost or destroyed ?" This is because usually the big successful players bet all-in on one topic, one sector, one concentrated bet , to, you know, essentially go viral and gain popularity , because when the bet works temporarily , even through memes or fundamentals—of course, semiconductors have their own fundamentals.
I'm not trying to criticize the semiconductor sector, but when everything is so concentrated, you have no defense. Then, when for some reason sentiment changes or there is a sharp decline, stocks fall. As stocks fall, you have to sell positions because not only do you have a lot of stocks, but you also have a lot of options that are rapidly losing money.
Then the stock falls even more because now you are selling those underlying stocks, which leads to margin calls that cause the stock to fall even more. And then the banks come in and literally block your deal when they essentially say, "Hey, JP Morgan, I need to sell a billion dollars worth of assets, let's say SKH Highex, Coreweave, and Enbis combined." As an example, you wouldn't place this order on Weeble, because if you did, you would literally walk all over the stock market , taking out all the orders one by one, and the stock would fall to a dollar because you would completely empty the order book.
This is a lesson worth learning. A stock market is simply a list of publicly traded securities for which there are ready, willing, and able buyers. When you do a block trade, you call the bank and say, "Hey, I need to sell." At what price can I interest you in buying these shares? And the bank looks and says: " Okay, well, let's see ." Intel stock, uh, you know, I don't know.
Let's open Intel shares for example. Uh, today they are up 13%. Because "the pig ran away", right? But anyway, yesterday, uh, morning, or you know, we'll come back another day. Let's take Tuesday. They were trading at $86. So JP Morgan says, "Look, you know, they're trading at $86." If this volume hits the market, you will crash the price to $70.
We are ready to buy them for $78. As an example, uh , we will act as a buyer. So, they actually join the order book so that you don't affect the real exchange glass completely. Of course, something still ends up in the order book, but the main idea is that if you have a big deal, you don't want to go to the general glass because you'll get destroyed there.
You can still be destroyed even with a block deal. But because you're creating a new buyer, because you're asking the bank to act as the buyer at a predetermined discount, the bank feels like they can lock in a profit because then they'll start selling off some of the stock, right? JPM buys them at $78.
They might hold them for a day or two, but they'll start trying to sell them right away. So if the stock is trading at 86, they buy it at 78. They can guarantee themselves a profit. So, they start dropping it. And of course, the price is getting tighter, right? And so it happened. The price fell to $82, and then, lo and behold, it jumped back up the next day when the selling pressure eased a bit .
Okay, that's the essence of block trading. And this is very important to understand, because when such people are liquidated, we must remember that this is not the same as simply placing an order on Webull. They are liquidated through banks and pre-agreed agreements. And this is not some sinister "dark pool ".
I'm not saying that this does n't happen. They would simply be in an even worse position if they simply threw this order out into the market. In any case, this is exactly what we have been observing in recent days. I think you understand the scale of this guy's positions: as of March 31, he had $879 million in Bloom Energy and $55 million in call options.
This stock fell 52% to its low. SanDisk: 724 million in shares, 389 million in call options. Keep in mind, we don't know if these are 30-day, 90-day, or two-year "in-the-money" call options. We don't know. So that $389 million could have evaporated when SanDisk fell 56% to its lowest point. Coreweave—556 million plus 141 million in call options, down 56% to a low.
Iron— fall by 56% to a minimum. Core Scientific—38% to a minimum. Apply Digital— 52% to a minimum. Riot Platforms—36% to a minimum. CleanSpark—36% to a minimum. Call options on Intel worth $459 million , down 42% to their lows, meaning these options have obviously depreciated much more. And I think this is where people need to remember how leverage is created .
They say this guy was up 400, you know, 38% or even 439% from the beginning of the year to the end of June. So how can you get liquidated with such a profit? You get liquidations at these levels because these geniuses keep building up positions while the stock becomes a meme. It's like , how would you put it, it's a little like Michael Saylor saying, "Oh my God, my fundamental thesis works." Bitcoin at $127,000 or whatever.
“And they buy even more. And then, you know what? Let's come up with credit funds to maintain buying pressure. They don't even realize that they themselves are the buying pressure that ultimately creates this marginal increase in value. This no longer has a fundamental basis. This translates into an upward momentum , which of course could change to a downward momentum.
Rumor has it that this guy was " deeply leveraged" at his peak, around 4x. And interestingly , this 4x peak leverage included any leverage he had on his options. So let's try to make this clearer for a moment. Oh, for many people, this is still a relatively incomprehensible number. I understand, but it's much clearer than billions of dollars.
Let's say one day you have or currently have $100,000. Now you multiply that by 4x with leverage at TD Ameritrade or somewhere else. You now have 400,000 purchasing power. Okay, it's not just stocks. Again, that could be spent on 90-day call options on SanDisk, right? You think you're safe because you have all this underlying exposure to stocks, but then you actually become even more credit-exposed through options.
Because you are using debt to buy options, your effective leverage in the portfolio can be as high as 8-10 times. Here's how it potentially works. SanDisk shares fall 30%. I wrote this down so that the calculations would be correct. SanDisk shares fall, let's say, by 30%. Of course, if you had just held the stock, you would have lost $120,000.
A long-term investor with a portfolio of 400 thousand, having lost 120 thousand, will say: "Damn, this sucks, right?" "But they weren't liquidated." They are not destroyed. They are still in the game. They say, "So what?" If my long-term thesis is still valid, I will buy more. "And you just average the cost over time." And your long-term goal is to make a profit in 10 years.
The main condition is not to be destroyed in the process. Anyway, now let's assume you lost more than just 120k because of this 30% drop. You actually lost a lot more due to leverage from options. So, you probably lost between $240,000 and $300,000 on that $400,000 position that you essentially bought on margin.
This is because you are “in the black” with margin and options, but if you buy options when the market is rising rapidly and volatility is rising, you are actually paying an even higher premium for those options. Eventually, volatility calms down after a major crash like what we saw yesterday. And, you know, the discounts at which you probably had to dump these options because the underwriters assume that the volatility on them will drop.
they will cost even less. You were probably almost forced to give up your options contracts. But in any case, this is an assumption. This example is speculation. But the point is, you could literally have a $400,000 portfolio and lose $300,000. So now you are really in a deep hole. And then you say: well, I mean the company also had some put options.
True, they had put options , but some of them were on companies like Adobe, which over the last 30 days, while your semiconductors were falling and your, you know , um, computing infrastructure investments were plummeting, actually went up 36 % over the last 20 days. So now your protective shorts have failed, and your longs have failed too.
Also, while there were supposedly protective shorts, say, in positions like Nvidia or others, we don't know what the value of those put options was. You see, the media calls this $8.4 billion in protective gear he has as "oh, he's so smart." He is protecting his portfolio. But they use the face value of what those put options could represent in the stock.
Real investors know that this means he could literally spend only $80 million of his $46 billion fund on protective put options. This is not enough to help you. And he also had put options on stocks that went in the wrong direction. Plus, guess what's not being disclosed? Not disclosed in these 13F reports, SEC reports, are put options sold.
So, if he sold the bullish options, right? Sold put options—they are not disclosed. The swaps that destroyed Bill Hwang are not disclosed. Short sales, not disclosed. Ford's holdings are not disclosed. And the debts are not disclosed. So, not surprisingly, 6 days ago he released a letter saying, "We haven't been left out of this AI meltdown, have we ?
Because now you too are essentially destroyed." Uh, just a few hours ago, this morning , we initially heard that they were in talks to raise capital, but the latest information we have is that they sold all of their public securities, which is kind of like setting a bottom for the stock market, and that's great.
You know, timely alpha report, timely videos. If you want to see the alpha reports, remember that you get lifetime access to them at meetke.com. We have a coupon that expires tomorrow, so join us. But what I really want to talk about here, what's most important in all of this , is this guy, look at his story.
So, the guy became the top college graduate at 19, which is impressive. That's why people consider him a genius. Eventually, he gets hired at FTX and runs a club called "effective altruism" at Columbia University, which is somewhat related to Sam Benkman-Fried's nonsense. The guy was literally an insider .
He knew about the machinations that were taking place and tried to protect himself, although, being inside, he probably participated in them. We do n't know this for sure. Don't sue me, friend . It's entirely possible that the guy was inside and knew about the scam, which you and I, being outside, didn't even suspect.
So, we are outside. And he is inside FTX, trying to pretend he wasn't involved in the collapse. The guy is fired from FTX on the same day the company files for bankruptcy. So he can put on his resume: "I left FTX before bankruptcy." He conveniently keeps quiet about the fact that he left on the same day the bankruptcy filing was filed .
So this is how he can look like a genius for leaving FTX. He joins OpenAI and then gets fired for leaking internal metrics and information about how OpenAI works, vulnerabilities, and more. The guy has a serious disregard for rules, for respect, maybe even for the law. We do n't know that. And it's almost karmic justice to see someone like that fail.
I just feel sorry for all the investors who trusted this " genius" and then ended up with nothing. Many people say, "But Kevin, you raised money for HouseHack." Well, we're not raising funds right now, but it's important to know about HouseHack, and that's what I built the company on —we intentionally, I would even say—myself.
I'm purposefully building this company so that we can survive a recession, a depression, anything. We owe nothing to the banks, zero dollars in bank debt, because the banks will fool and cheat you. For example, I feel that JPM—and this is one of the reasons why I hate JPM, I don't want to get too off topic, but you know, I was "processed" at JPM for a long time .
You know, they take me on boats, take me to dinners, breakfasts, treat me to champagne, caviar, you know, fancy platinum cards, a $10 million credit card and stuff, all that crap, right? And then these: "Hey, do you want to give out a real estate loan?" Oh, well, we need these conditions. And I'm like, "Are you seriously kidding me?" » This is a terrible deal for me .
Anyone who agrees to this is an idiot. Or: “How about a loan for an airplane?” “What?” Are you going to write an annual margin request for an airplane that is known to lose value every year, and you are making such a margin provision? Well, you. So, there were many feasts and fancy dinners, but all the real business contracts were concluded in favor of the bank.
So, to me, it was all a wolf in sheep's clothing. They will flatter you. They will make you feel safe. And if you don't have the courage to come to these banks and say: "You go. " No, I will not be your slave. I will not submit to your conditions. You will eventually destroy all your investors' money.
And that's what I want...I mean, "hack" the system now. Apparently , if you look at, if the facility that we are currently building is completed, and add the value of this finished project to all our real estate, cash, or anything else that we have, the market value of the company exceeds a hundred million.
This is real capital, right ? In my opinion, this is very good. And this, you know , just to be clear, because I don't want to give the wrong signals or get into trouble. This assumes we enter, well, early next year. Let's say our bonds are converted and construction is completed because we have convertible securities with some investors, right?
But we don't owe anything to the banks. And I think that's a lesson for those who get caught up in...I wouldn't call him a victim, but he was a victim of his own stupidity because he didn't realize how vulnerable he really was, so it's ironic that his company was called Situational Awareness. He was not situationally aware.
And I feel like a guy who literally runs away from the company, from a sinking ship, right before it sinks—it's like, well, who was the captain of the Costa Concordia? He did not stay on the ship to make sure people were saved and survived. The guy jumps into a lifeboat to escape, finds himself on shore, and the Italian coast guard shouts at him, "Run back to your ship." It's perhaps ironic that I'm saying this while on a cruise ship.
But, be that as it may, there are a few lessons for me in this . First, you need to understand how vulnerable you may be to banks. This is very dangerous. Almost everything they do is aimed at setting you up. And it happens much faster than people think. Therefore, in my opinion, it is worth taking out loans only on your own terms.
Here is my opinion on this matter. OK. Then you should see it as a positive moment, an event that clears the market. Now that this guy is gone, you have an opportunity to recover the market. My vacation is coming to an end. So, perhaps everything was well planned and it was meant to happen that way.
I think we are in for good growth. You know, I released a video about the purchase yesterday. A very convenient moment. I think the markets can recover once we get past the Apple and Amazon reporting phase and we can, you know, gradually get back into recovery mode, which is just fantastic. I hope that ultimately, while we certainly have geopolitical issues, the disappearance of this person is great for the markets because it reduces volatility when these clowns go, because they make these stocks more expensive for you when they go up , and then they dump you when they go down.
So I'm glad that someone like that seems to be leaving the game, and I hope they leave completely. I hope they can't raise any more money because they are making the markets worse with their leverage and all-or- nothing rates of billions of dollars. Now what we're going to do, because people seem to like it at the end of the video, to make it as simple as possible, we're going to do a new version of "Pro" and break down some of the components of what's going on here.
OK. So, the newbie says, “A genius investor like Leo from Situational Awareness can’t go bankrupt. The guy earned 439% by the end of June. This is a brilliant 19-year-old graduate who became the best in his class, and now a brilliant guy in his twenties. He can only make money by betting on the future." The professional looks and says the guy probably had 4–10 times the risk, debt for every dollar of equity they had.
So when the markets finally turned around, his core stocks, his long positions, fell 40-50%. His 400% year-to-date return, sustained on leverage, has likely been completely wiped out. So it's no surprise that they have now exited all of their public bets on stocks and options. And it seems like they have to take out loans against their illiquid Anthropic assets just to survive.
This shows that expectations do not always match reality. People who brag about their successes one month may be deep in credit , only to lose everything the next month. Okay. Let's do another one. Let's take, uh, yes. Okay. I think it would be interesting to do a "novice vs. pro" comparison regarding block deals.
Good. Good. So, let's talk about block deals. The novice says that block deals are illegal and fraudulent mechanisms that exist in the market so that dealers can profit from you. The pro says you're right. The dealers are trying to cash in not on you, but on really stupid, highly leveraged hedge fund managers like that guy from Situational Awareness who just got wiped out.
They get panicked calls: "Yo, I'm getting margin calls . I need to liquidate a billion dollars worth of stock." The pro knows you won't place such an order on Webull. You call the bank and say, "Can I sell you these shares over-the-counter?" essentially, with a 10% discount. The bank is like this: "I'll take it with a 10% discount." Of course.
They are rescued from a margin position , and then the bank slowly puts this junk back into the market. This takes time to clean and creates a bottom. These "credit" people create buying opportunities, and the pros know it. Okay, fine. So, that's interesting. Next, we figured out how much credit he had and explained block deals.
We should touch on this guy's history a little and do a general "rookie vs. pro" review of him. So how can a guy who at the peak of his hedge fund could be worth $46 billion potentially go bankrupt? Well, that just happened to a company called Situational Awareness. The newbie says, "No, man. He'll raise money.
He'll come back." The pro looks at it and says it was a young guy who just didn't know how bad leverage could be . Used 4-8x leverage, exited FTX the day they filed for bankruptcy to make it look like he was going bankrupt. Was fired from OpenAI. He made an all-in bet on AI, which worked great until 6 weeks of market hell began and his leverage destroyed the firm.
The company has reportedly already sold all of its public assets in the form of shares and securities. It appears that they are leveraging their private assets and trying to raise new capital just to stay afloat. The professionals won't give this guy another dollar. They don't understand risk management, even if it hit them in the face, and they just got hit in the face.
So, with all that said, I'm back to enjoying the cruise. I hope you enjoyed this video, .
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