Leverage won't make you judge wrong. Leverage only prevents you from surviving until the day your judgment turns out to be correct.

He made 439% in half a year, then got wiped out within 24 hours 📉

I'll lay out the facts first; whether it counts as a hunt is for you to decide.

Leopold Aschenbrenner, 24 years old. Graduated first in his class at Columbia University at age 19. Worked on safety at OpenAI, was fired in April 2024. Two months after being fired, he wrote a 165-page article: AGI is coming, buy compute power, memory, and electricity.

Then he bet his own hard-earned money on what he wrote. Starting with $225 million, net return of 439% in the first half of the year, with assets peaking at $45 billion.

The suits on Wall Street watched this kid make in six months what they couldn't earn in ten.

In July, the wind changed. On the long side: SK Hynix, SanDisk, Micron, CoreWeave, Nebius all fell over 35% in a single month. On the short side: He shorted software stocks, while Adobe and others surged across the board. Both sides got squeezed simultaneously.

For the next part, look at the timeline yourself. In mid-to-late July, market bets on Fed rate hikes skyrocketed from 10.7% to 31.5% within a week. During this period, one of the loudest voices publicly saying 'the Fed might be forced to hike rates instead of cutting them' was Ken Griffin. He hadn't just started shouting about it two days ago. He had been calling it on CNBC since May. For a full two months.

Then the mechanism kicked into gear. Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase—his three prime brokers—all demanded margin calls simultaneously. Remember these three names—they are not only his creditors but also the ones in the entire market who know best what he holds and when he will be forced to sell.

He went to old shareholders asking for money. Couldn't raise enough.

Then, within 24 hours. Ken Griffin, 57 years old, Citadel, $71 billion, swept away the entire public market portfolio of this 24-year-old. Not a part. The whole thing.

And here comes the most disgusting part—on the very day he was liquidated, his stocks started flying. SanDisk rose 25%, Micron rose 18%, SK Hynix rose 17%, SOX rose over 8%. The next day Seoul hit a record, Hynix rose another 25%, Samsung rose 20%. The only explanation the market gave was four words: Selling pressure ended.

Oh, by the way. On July 29th, the Fed ultimately did not raise rates.

I'm not saying this was designed, nor do I have evidence. But read these steps in order: Call for rate hikes → Panic → AI stocks crash → Margin calls → Forced liquidation → Bottom-fishing the whole package → Full surge the next day → Fed actually didn't raise rates.

Finished reading? Feel it yourself.

He was right, completely right. HBM is still scarce, capacity hasn't expanded yet, fabs still take three years. He just didn't have the money to hold on until this morning.

I've done real estate for ten years; I can recite this script with my eyes closed. Developers never die because the land is bad; they die because banks pull their loans. Your best piece of land is always taken away from you at the cheapest price exactly when you have the least money.

Leverage won't make you judge wrong. Leverage only prevents you from surviving until the day your judgment turns out to be correct.

For us without leverage, without margin call phones, without LPs chasing us for answers—simply 'surviving' itself is the greatest advantage.