Quite the funny headline. It initially made me think that someone had come up with some sort of quantitative measure of the situational awareness of traders, and was claiming that there was an increase in traders making dumb trades that misread the situation or something.
Ironically, I would describe this selloff as an increase in situational awareness.
Well, effectively that is kinda what it is saying, although it's the situational awareness of one particular trader it's referring to. The situational awareness of Citadel who scooped up their portfolio at fire sale prices seems quite good!
When I read a title it helps me to determine whether I want to read it or not. This one is tricky and confusing because the company name is stupid and was probably picked for the clickbait potential. This is absolutely one where I read the comments before the link.
> Aschenbrenner party blamed short sellers who targeted the firm’s positions for exacerbating the fund’s losses, the letter said. The letter compared Situational’s experience to a bank run.
4 years ago, it was SBF blaming Changpeng Zhao for shorting FTT and triggering a run on FTX.
Now another EA has followed the path of making a lot of money relatively quickly and losing it just as fast, using the exact same arguments for why it happened.
>Now another EA has followed the path of making a lot of money relatively quickly and losing it just as fast, using the exact same arguments for why it happened.
I would be very interested to know what he did with the management and performance fees (and how much they were) he gathered over the last 3 years. Just the perf fees from 2025 are probably enough to set him up for life. If he reinvested not so great.
> I would be very interested to know what he did with the management and performance fees
I mean, I'm pretty sure he pocketed the money and got richer. Most hedge fund compensation structure has always (ironically, I'd add, given the name "hedge" fund) incentivized volatility over long term performance.
>Now another EA has followed the path of making a lot of money relatively quickly and losing it just as fast
let's be clear here - he didn't actually "lose" a ton of money. he was up 439% net in the first half of 2026.
his issue was getting margin called due to being short on software (which went up) and long on AI infra (which went down) - getting margin called != losing money.
> let's be clear here - he didn't actually "lose" a ton of money. he was up 439% net in the first half of 2026.
He's down 67% on the month. He most certainly lost alot of money.
He'll be fine and i think he'll be successful at raising more money, and he's still up on the year as far as I've been told by LP's, but he sure did lose alot of money this month.
Yes he lost a ton of money. He went from being up as much as you said to up only 80% and getting liquidated at that point. If it weren’t for Citadel stepping in to buy his investments who knows how much worse it could have gotten.
The only thing you can argue is realized vs unrealized.
Sounds like someone took huge risks, incurred huge losses, and thought they were entitled to always win. It honestly feels good seeing these folks get knocked down a peg.
This is everywhere. For reference, former FTXer and OpenAIer raised $225m into a hedge fund structure, went long and short, and reportedly peaked at $40bn of value; leverage bit hard this week and they sold their entire-ish portfolio to Citadel at $10bn. (Which, I imagine was very likely aiming at this outcome in their trading in the last few weeks).
Not reported anywhere -- was additional money raised in to the fund, and what is the LP basis? The story might be: wunderkind 40x+ed his first hedge fund and sold it to Citadel, or it might be: wunderkind raised $20bn and turned it into $10bn fast trading against Citadel.
Believe it or not, you are legally bound to act in the interests of shareholders.
Though you cannot be pardoned from civil stuff, and the options to actually prosecute are pretty slim, so I doubt it.
Though, even if this is just tongue-in-cheek, you can literally buy a pardon in America right now with just a little bit a money into the pockets of the Trump family, in case you didn't get the joke (that the US government is literally pro-corruption right now).
I say this with absolutely no evidence and only stating it as a hypothetical. But as an example it would be plausible that insider trading was involved.
To be clear, I'm not claiming Citadel created double digit drops in SK Hynix / Samsung. I am saying that as market vol hits, vol traders might choose to make it worse. And when word hits the street someone has a liquidity position, prop traders WILL come and pressure. SA's filings were clear how concentrated they were, and this was known. In this case, Citadel (hedge fund) bought, while I imagine Citadel Securities would have been doing this (speculated upon) trading. We'll know more when the filings come out though. I'll be curious what of the portfolio they kept and what they worked / rolled in the market
Firms like citadel will run crowding analytics, who owns what, at what leverage and rough margin trigger points. Over simplifying but they could be shorting the longs and going long on the shorts. Everyone generally knew situational was heavily levered.
An inexperienced portfolio manager that’s never seen a down tech market in his life has created a massively leveraged position on frothy assets in a bubble and the bubble is looking ill. What could possibly go wrong.
Many of these AI plays are massively entangled and leveraged. It all looks good until it doesn’t and when there’s a hiccup things unravel quickly and exponentially. I fully expect in the next 12 months we’re going to see some rather spectacular investment implosions with folks losing their shirts. Get your popcorn ready.
I really don't like this guy, seriously he's a shark (he's probably right, but what a jerk): "If you know somebody has to liquidate, the best thing you have to do, unfortunately, sadly, Darwinian is to go sell all the positions you have in common, then start shorting everything they have. It accelerates the downfall as quickly as you can." of course then he says 'It's nothing I would ever do...'
If there's any purpose in hedge funds as a structure it's that they provide liquidity for the market. So it's in everyone's best interest to let them do price discovery against each other.
Using leverage has risks that you're supposed to understand before you do it.
It's not a free lunch, unless you're putting the sharks' interest ahead of yours. Or clueless, which was the case here, as L.A. is not a trader and has no business running a fund.
He's an absolute ghoul, and to see sibling comments praising him breaks my heart. Yeah, he "did his time", but he also took advantage of sick people for immense profit. You don't get a pass for that.
Ironically, I would describe this selloff as an increase in situational awareness.
4 years ago, it was SBF blaming Changpeng Zhao for shorting FTT and triggering a run on FTX.
Now another EA has followed the path of making a lot of money relatively quickly and losing it just as fast, using the exact same arguments for why it happened.
I would be very interested to know what he did with the management and performance fees (and how much they were) he gathered over the last 3 years. Just the perf fees from 2025 are probably enough to set him up for life. If he reinvested not so great.
I mean, I'm pretty sure he pocketed the money and got richer. Most hedge fund compensation structure has always (ironically, I'd add, given the name "hedge" fund) incentivized volatility over long term performance.
let's be clear here - he didn't actually "lose" a ton of money. he was up 439% net in the first half of 2026.
his issue was getting margin called due to being short on software (which went up) and long on AI infra (which went down) - getting margin called != losing money.
He's down 67% on the month. He most certainly lost alot of money.
He'll be fine and i think he'll be successful at raising more money, and he's still up on the year as far as I've been told by LP's, but he sure did lose alot of money this month.
The only thing you can argue is realized vs unrealized.
Not reported anywhere -- was additional money raised in to the fund, and what is the LP basis? The story might be: wunderkind 40x+ed his first hedge fund and sold it to Citadel, or it might be: wunderkind raised $20bn and turned it into $10bn fast trading against Citadel.
Inquiring minds want to know!
Though you cannot be pardoned from civil stuff, and the options to actually prosecute are pretty slim, so I doubt it.
Though, even if this is just tongue-in-cheek, you can literally buy a pardon in America right now with just a little bit a money into the pockets of the Trump family, in case you didn't get the joke (that the US government is literally pro-corruption right now).
Though a common Internet trope, this is incorrect. However, “legally” or not, you might find yourself unemployed should you ignore the shareholders.
The guy really really really wants to end up in prison, lol.
Many of these AI plays are massively entangled and leveraged. It all looks good until it doesn’t and when there’s a hiccup things unravel quickly and exponentially. I fully expect in the next 12 months we’re going to see some rather spectacular investment implosions with folks losing their shirts. Get your popcorn ready.
Spectacular blowup and a lesson on leverage, but let's not miss this line.
His thesis was correct. The problem is, his thesis was measured in years if not decades when his funding was measured in days and hours.
Using leverage has risks that you're supposed to understand before you do it.
It's not a free lunch, unless you're putting the sharks' interest ahead of yours. Or clueless, which was the case here, as L.A. is not a trader and has no business running a fund.
The arguments against him barely hold water in general anyway.
His investor literacy youtube backlog is unusually deep and as of yet has only shilled his own trading product.
But your point is valid, he will never live down the fraud conviction and his face is so punchable.
he's a relatively well known figure in finance and pharma investing
Edit: I don't do podcasts but this is absolutely worth some of your time to watch.