저자: JimCramer · 외국인
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전설적 헤지펀드 매니저 Leopold Aschenbrenner 펀드의 과도한 레버리지(투자액 대비 3배 차입)가 반도체·데이터센터주 급락을 촉발했다고 설명. 마진콜 강제청산이 Intel 등 주가를 18포인트 하락시켰다고 분석. 반면 Microsoft·Amazon 실적은 호조, Apple은 기대에 못 미쳐 하락. 마진 레버리지 축소를 반복 권고하며 강제매도가 기회라고 주장.
다듬은 글
Leopold Ashbrenner, but the collapse of this hedge fund shook the entire complex. The tech sector fell sharply because of this. The boy wonder is no longer in the game. His sale of shares and the actions of the firms that lent him money have caused a huge drop in quotes over the past few days, which should not have happened.
Many have come alive today and, I must say, because they were so depressed, I think they have room to grow further. How does this happen? I mean , really. How can something that happens behind the scenes just happen like that? As a former hedge fund manager, I can tell you how it goes. Because I was involved in it myself.
I saw it. You see, brokers really want your business. One way to achieve this is to lend you money. This happened to me. They say, " Here, Jim, take the millions." Imagine that this fund was very successful at first. And when you're on the horse, investors themselves shower you with money. And brokers are always eager to lend money to new superstars.
This fund could obviously borrow a huge amount of cash, recklessly, in my opinion: $3 for every $1 invested . This certainly makes your stocks go up, but it's the kiss of death when they start to fall. In this case, they fell hard—a real kiss of death. I've been hearing about this fund for months, and I've heard that it can't be wrong.
Absolutely no mistakes. Everything he touched turned to gold. He mostly chose stocks of semiconductor companies, memory and storage manufacturers, and also loved cloud technologies. Oh, and he despised software. He bought shares of memory manufacturers with the same fervor with which he played for a decline in software.
At some point this year, I thought that this guy's opinion was the only thing that mattered to big players and small speculators. When you're as good as Ashbrenner, you get a lot of imitators. This guy had a whole crowd of followers who also managed billions of dollars and borrowed a lot of money too.
Many other foundations simply copied it, as did many individuals. They didn't want to be left behind. As is often the case with a young manager who is incredibly lucky, Ashbrenner probably did not believe that anything could go wrong in his actions. He didn't seem to realize that when stocks fall and you bought them with margin funds, brokers aren't going to lose money on you.
You either pay them or they forcefully sell the shares you bought with the borrowed money. Find the money to pay? Or they will sell them without your knowledge. This is cruel. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So when things go wrong, they go catastrophically wrong. Ashton Brenner and his followers bought up shares of large semiconductor manufacturers: Micron, Sandisk, Intel.
He favored companies that built data centers, not Corning or Lam Research. Additionally, he had a soft spot for Bloom Energy, which produces hydrogen fuel cells to power these centers. Now you need to know a few things. Many of those who bought these stocks did n't really know anything about them, except that this guy had them.
They just knew that Ashen Brenner was an ace, and since he had been a loser for so long, well, they had to jump on that bandwagon. The irony is that when the tech sector experienced a slight downturn, very slight, Ashen Brenner seems to have lost almost all the money he managed, despite the excellent earnings performance of the companies themselves.
That's why I say they diverge. The good news is simply that they stopped converting into higher stock prices for a number of reasons. Maybe because the stakes were rising, maybe because not every company was successful, or because they fell out of fashion in the Wall Street "fashion show ," or because buyers turned to other types of technology, as I said.
In addition, these stocks tend to trade together. Consider it a contagion that I think we didn't fully think about or were too young to realize. The contagion has not spared almost any of these companies' stocks, even though their fundamentals remained very, very strong. At the same time, Ashen Brenner was a serious shorter and bet against enterprise software companies as if there was no tomorrow.
Adobe, Workday, Salesforce. So, again we got a self-fulfilling prophecy because it was constantly imitated. When the market turned around, he obviously didn't take the emergency measures that needed to be taken. The same ones I've been telling you about for weeks. He did not sell data center assets or exit margin trading.
Instead, on July 24, six days ago, he wrote to his investors that it was a great time to give him more money. So what happened? Well, they definitely didn't give him any money , I'll tell you that. Consider a campaign that, if you're a member of the club, you know, caused me immense anxiety. Consider Intel.
We got Intel's financial report last Thursday night, and it was simply excellent. Not only was it flawless, but Lip-Bu Tan, CEO , CFO, and I talked at length about the incredible long-term history of demand for Intel processors. Intel's foundry business is great. He will be wonderful. I like Intel's semiconductor packaging division.
We told CNBC Investing Club members that this was a great buying opportunity, and I know we reported that on Thursday night. The stock soared from the 90-something mark where it was trading to 110 in after- hours trading when the earnings news came out. I was delighted. We hit the target. Of course, I didn't think they would stop at 110.
I thought the next stop would be 120. But the next day, to our surprise, the big investors received that letter from Aschenbrenner asking for money from Best to cover margin requirements. From the very beginning, Intel shares could not even grow a little. They just fell, fell , fell and fell. It was simply astonishing to those of us who knew how good the fundamentals were , including the influential people in the company.
Behind the scenes, everything looked great. However, Aschenbrenner's fund was frantically selling Intel to raise funds. And the brokers to whom he owed this money did the same. The imitators, of course, also fled from Intel. It didn't matter how good the quarter was for Intel. As a result, the stock broke through the $100 level and didn't stop until it fell to a level just above 90, which meant an 18- point swing, although I expected the opposite.
I thought they would rise by 18 points, not fall. I couldn't believe I could be so wrong. It turned out that it wasn't. Asher Bitton and his cronies didn't want to sell, but the margin clerks forced him to , and it destroyed the stock. The collapse of his fund created an amazing opportunity to buy Intel.
It looks like the sales have stopped for now. I think it will continue to be like this , because the only ones who really wanted to get rid of these shares were his people. Now that Asher Bitton is out of the game, we can return to analyzing stocks as shares of the companies they represent. Last night, for example, Microsoft reported a stunning quarter and their stock skyrocketed.
Meta is not working at full capacity. Tonight we heard news from Amazon and Apple. Amazon was simply amazed by the results. It was like Microsoft last night. The company reported a significant revenue beat, with a stunning operating profit that rose 43% year-over-year, or nearly $4 billion more than expected.
I usually talk about profits, but this time they include the huge return on Amazon's investment in Anthropic. So it's not entirely correct to compare them. The most important thing here is that Amazon Web Services showed almost 37% growth, which is a significant acceleration compared to 26% last quarter.
I remember a few quarters ago it was below 20. Wow, their margins were just amazing . They make big money on artificial intelligence. This is the same type of cloud infrastructure business that made Microsoft a fortune, and it's why Amazon shares soared in after-market trading . It's not a huge increase, and I don't think that's all.
As for Apple, after a wild ride through most of July, the company reported slightly better-than- expected earnings , excluding the impact of tax breaks, and slightly better-than-expected revenue, but shares still fell. Despite strong iPhone sales, their service division has been weaker than expected, as has the US market, and they don't look confident about recovering their margins due to, well, memory prices.
It seems like... well, let's put it this way. They are doing well, but not well enough after such a stock rally. Apple was growing steadily for most of July. So the shares became too expensive. I expect profit-taking to be greater than what we saw even tonight. Still, let's not forget about the big picture.
You know that there is a huge conclusion to be drawn from what happened here . I've been telling you to close margin positions for 2 weeks now. For 2 weeks I come out here every night and repeat this. Stop using borrowed funds. I didn't want you to fall into the trap of what some overly leveraged hedge funds did.
I didn't want you to be taken off the market. In conclusion, I want you to remember what happened here. Understand that while Ashton Kutcher's failure is spectacular, these things happen in real life. I don't want this to happen to you. And I don't want you to be misled by that . This business is already quite complicated.
You don't need a margin to make it more complicated. Given this, margin selling has now created huge opportunities .
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