@MebFaber IMO this chart goes a long way in explaining that:
Blue = UMich Consumer Sentiment (RS1)
Red = SPX (LS)
Green = SPX priced in gold (real terms) (RS2)
Stocks are up while people are miserable because post 2018, inflation is driving stocks & misery (& gold.)
If you haven't realized by now, Ken Griffin is a genius and the Situational Awareness deal is proof of a pattern that started decades ago (Save this).
Griffin started Citadel out of a Harvard dorm room in 1987 with just $265,000 raised from friends and family, rigging up a satellite dish on the roof and running cable through an old elevator shaft into his window just to get real time stock quotes.
That scrappy, do whatever it takes instinct never left him and it showed up again during the 2008 financial crisis, when Citadel lost roughly half its capital as Lehman collapsed and the firm hemorrhaged hundreds of millions a week.
What separated Griffin from most people who go through that kind of drawdown is that he didn't freeze or panic sell everything indiscriminately, he made hard, deliberate calls day after day, cutting costs, restructuring the business, and personally shouldering losses alongside his investors to keep the firm's credibility intact.
That experience effectively trained him to operate calmly inside chaos which is exactly the skill set on display now with Situational Awareness.
Leopold Aschenbrenner's fund ran up massive, concentrated positions in AI infrastructure names like CoreWeave and Core Scientific and when the AI trade reversed hard, those bets turned a sector pullback into a fund threatening collapse.
Griffin has effectively seen this movie before from the inside, so instead of avoiding the wreckage, Citadel bought it, taking on Situational Awareness's stock portfolio at what was almost certainly a steep discount to where those positions were valued at their peak.
The biggest fortunes are made when everyone else is forced to sell.
That's exactly what Ken Griffin has built his career doing, turning panic into opportunity while others freeze and the Situational Awareness deal looks like another example of that playbook in action.
Make sure to follow @MelvinInvests for more investing insights.
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.
Bitcoin will go down tonight as toxic maxis panic sell the coins they can still get off Coldcard and send to an exchange. Then tomorrow when they panic buy Bitcoin ETFs the price will go right back up. Blackrock and Citadel win yet again. Predictable.
BREAKING: Bernard Arnault, the billionaire behind Louis Vuitton, has officially joined 𝕏.
He is one of the 10 richest people on Earth. Seven of the world’s 10 richest people are now on 𝕏.
Welcome to 𝕏, @BernardArnault