OH. MY. GOODNESS.
CITADEL HAS BOUGHT A MAJORITY OF THE PUBLIC ASSETS FROM LEOPOLD'S SITUATIONAL AWARENESS FUND.
So...Citadel scares everyone on Tuesday about a surprise rate hike during FOMC that WE ALL KNEW was not going to happen...
On Wednesday, the entire market freaks out about the rate hike which causes the selling to compound on itself creating 50-70% drawdowns across the board in high beta semicondcutor names...
Which means Leopold who we now know had $45B of assets and was 400% LEVERED ends up being the sacrifice as he gets liquidated at what theoretically could be the bottom due to not having the margin requirements to keep solvent...
AND THE PERSON WHO CAUSED THE SELLOFF WITH THE RATE HIKE FEARS ENDS UP COMING IN TO BUY HIS ASSETS FOR 40 TO 50 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR.
By the way, Leopold is getting married this weekend. I think he wanted to make sure he wasn't getting margin called during his wedding.
A vet on wall street in Ken Griffin takes out the young new kid.
ABSOLUTE. CINEMA.
THIS HAS TO BE THE STORY OF 2026
Ken Griffin’s Citadel was pushing surprise-rate-hike fears just days before the AI trade collapsed and forced 4x-levered Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness to unload its book near the lows.
Citadel then reportedly bought most of those assets at significantly lower prices knowing that if sentiment deteriorated enough the fund could be forced to sell which makes the entire sequence look absolutely ruthless.
This is why the stock market is the greatest game on Earth.
In late-June, cracks in the market began to emerge.
Stock trade defaults reported by firms in Taiwan rose to ~$70 million in June.
This is the highest monthly total since data began in 2019.
Trade defaults soared +300% in 2 months and exceeded the 2021 record by ~20%.
Oh shit
The information: China Starts Mass-Producing Homegrown DUV Chipmaking Tools, An Advance for Local Chip Industry A Chinese state-backed company has begun manufacturing one of the key pieces of equipment used in chip manufacturing for the first time, a key development in Beijing’s drive to reduce its reliance on foreign technology to make chips
The ultimate paid group
Trump is the perfect CT grifter
He's launched multiple NFTs
A meme coin
A "utility" coin
And now a paid group
And all of that in one cycle
Impressive really
Feels bad, -49.4% drawdown this month after the recent crash.
My portfolio is mainly AI chokepoints and bottlenecks.
In the memory, photonics, robotics, and upstream semis, (on margin) which all tend to be higher beta than others. But reduced leverage recently from the crash.
I see a lot of people making fun of the drop or AI names, saying it’s obvious that:
- “AI is a bubble”
- “memory/kospi is a bubble”
- “photonics is a bubble”
- “humanoids won’t get anywhere”
- “neoclouds will get replaced by hyperscalers like Meta”
And a bunch of retail + bots saying “sell everything, it’s never going to recover”.
But I have conviction that all these themes are backed by structural revenue growth or technological shifts.
And I’ve had similar drawdowns back when there admin threatened global tariffs, before markets pulled off a recovery.
I personally have a longer horizon + higher tolerance for volatility than others, to see how this plays out.
Especially considering a lot of retail view things on a week to week basis: no, my thesis isn’t wrong yet if I project revenue inflection in H2 2027 and it’s 2026 now.
Anyway, feels bad short term just wanted to share anyway for transparency.
I’d like to give a special thank you to Bloomberg’s piece on $META compute.
As well as the 2 back to back bear posts on CPO delays.
But I believe thematically photonics, memory, energy, and physical AI will outperform in the long run.
BREAKING: 🇺🇸🇨🇳 China is now leading the AI race after spending ten times less of what the US did
Kimi-K3 by @Kimi_Moonshot is now number 1 in the Frontend Code Arena with 1679 pts, surpassing Claude Fable 5.
Today Cassandra Unchained crossed 300,000 subscriber. 231 days from the start.
https://t.co/B2rWpTWCzw
346,689 Followers.
300,044 Subscribers.
ALL 50 States and 212 Countries.
52% of Subscribers are from Outside the United States.
I am so thankful.