저자: RumenIvens · 외국인
요약 보기
헤지펀드 Situational Awareness(Leopold Aschenbrenner)가 레버리지 AI 인프라 롱·소프트웨어 숏으로 고점 대비 약 45B→10B로 급락, 프라임브로커 마진콜로 Citadel Securities가 공개 포트폴리오를 할인 인수했다고 주장. 청산 압력 소멸로 엔비디아·퀄컴 급등, 대형 펀드 청산은 과거처럼 국지적 바닥을 만드는 경우가 많다고 해석.
다듬은 글
If you thought your portfolio had a rough week, take a deep breath because whatever losses you hold, they pale in comparison to one of Wall Street's biggest funds. Leopold Aschenbrenner, the 25-year-old OpenAI researcher who became famous for his AI manifesto, just experienced a textbook Wall Street blowup.
His hedge fund, Situational Awareness, just experienced a massive drawdown from about 45 billion to only 10. This is a brutal drawdown of about 77% in a matter of weeks. And the story about who broke him and who picked up the pieces is one of the most ruthless trades I have seen. To understand how a 45 billion fund goes up in smoke so fast, you have to look at how the fund was set up.
He wasn't just long AI, he was running massive leverage. His fund went all in on the AI infrastructure supply chain. He was [clears throat] heavily long hardware names and power names such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, Micron, Sandisk, and while at the same time shorting software stocks like Adobe. For the first half of the year, it obviously worked magic and it generated an astonishing amount of return around 400% through June, that is.
But of course, leverage is a double-edged sword and when tech started pulling back, those leverage bets turned against him fast. Nvidia dropped nearly 50% from its highs. Sandisk collapsed over 50% and prime brokers, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and so on, demanded cash for margin calls. So, Leopold was effectively trapped.
Now, here is where the plot thickens and where Citadel Securities enters the room. Just as Leopold's fund was on the edge, Citadel publicly stated that the Federal Reserve was going to hit the market with a surprise interest rate hike. And that single headline spooked the market. It was the exact final push needed to force prime brokers to pull the trigger on Leopold's margin calls.
And what happened next? Citadel Securities swooped right in. In a massive single trade negotiated behind closed doors, of course, Ken Griffin's Citadel Securities bought out Leopold's entire public stock portfolio at a lovely discount, as you can guess. So, they created the volatility, intensified the margin call, and then bought out the distressed assets at a discount.
While this is a personal catastrophe for Leopold, for the broader market, it is actually very bullish. Because when a giant leverage fund gets margin called, it creates artificial mechanical selling pressure. And Leopold wasn't obviously selling Nvidia or Micron because the fundamentals changed. He was selling because his brokers gave no other options.
And now that his public book has been cleared out, and therefore handed over to Citadel, that relentless selling pressure literally evaporated overnight. That is exactly why we saw stocks like Qualcomm and Nvidia jump over 20% in a single day. Right after the deal was announced. In financial history, major fund liquidations, as we have seen, often localize market bottoms.
And we have a few recent examples in 2021 with Archegos Archegos and FTX in late '22. Both of them were localized bottoms. The takeaway here is clear. Firstly, no matter how smart you are, leverage will eventually get you. Secondly, when giant institutions collide, it often creates generational buying opportunities.
But only for those that can see through the crap. Citadel obviously didn't buy those stocks from Leopold because they are generous. Quite frankly, it seems that they even assisted in the margin call by sharing the news like news. The big boys have placed their bets. Now it's time to see what happens next.
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