“For a while, Hwang hedged the portfolio by shorting individual stocks. Some of those short positions, like Under Armour, performed exceptionally well. But others, particularly Tesla, did not.”
“So Hwang retreated from the individual shorts and emphasized broadly shorting the market.”
Told you so
The article quoted above independently corroborates most of what I wrote in my thread. And it too leaves us wondering what happened over the last 1-2 years (which is where I am curious):
The archegos coverage is improving but there’s a key question that remains unanswered:
How/why/when did a guy whose portfolio was concentrated FAANG for many years (and before FAANG was an acronym) - my guess is 2012-2019 -
pivot into levered long highly shorted stocks?
We did diligence on Archegos 6 years ago - which is why I find most of the archegos coverage/comments laughable. None of you ever talked about them until last Friday. Armchair “experts” (meaning, quacks) all over.
Do the math- if their starting AUM was few hundred million $s and was concentrated FAANG - and had insanely long holding periods, maybe in some cases doubling down or averaging up - you then get to your few billion.
Why do some of these people - for example, tech bros - write twitter threads or blog posts on why they’re moving to Florida/Miami?
It’s a free country - live/move wherever you please - but why make a public declaration? I have a few guesses
1. If they’re moving away from high tax jurisdictions like California they want to signal as loud as possible. should they get audited, they have additional “evidence”
2. They’re trying to encourage others - who are on the fence - to move there. “Network effects” etc etc
“Family Offices Like Archegos Take Big Risks Like Hedge Funds”
Yet the article fails to name a single FO that takes big risks... even though it’s not difficult to work out which those are (at least some).
The statistically likely explanation: the journalists/editors behind the story truly don’t know.
The cynical explanation: they are fully aware, but the FOs of interest pay PR top $$$ to control articles written about them, or they use their $/influence in other ways to censor.
The one great observation of that article: it astutely points to cultural differences between FOs often arising from generational differences:
1st gen FOs (the generation that made the $) tend to be risk takers.
The subsequent generations.. I will leave it to you to imagine.
Notable how 'Cham the scam' doesn't address inequality between ordinary income vs capital gain tax rates (don't get me started on the inequality versus HF/PE 'carry').
If you're serious, you address reducing ordinary income, or at least eliminating differences between these.