$Rocket Lab(RKLB.US)
Is the small rocket inside?
Repost:
The more detailed details of genius youth Leopold's margin call have come out.
In early 2026, Situational Awareness Fund's AUM was approximately $9.3 billion;
By May-June, relying on a net gain of +439% in the first half of the year, AUM rapidly expanded to $20-24 billion;
At the peak in early July, public market and private assets totaled approximately $45 billion.
The problem also lies here.
Of the $45 billion, about $10 billion consists of private assets such as Anthropic, leaving about $30-35 billion available to support public market long positions.
If calculated at approximately 4x leverage, the fund once controlled a total position of approximately $120 billion.
Under this level of leverage, it is not necessary for all stocks to go to zero.
As long as a few highly concentrated AI infrastructure holdings drop by 25%-40%, the fund's net value could be wiped out. In fact, Nebius once fell by about 48%, and SanDisk fell by about 56%; meanwhile, their shorted software stocks experienced a reverse surge, causing losses on both long and short sides simultaneously.
On July 24, the fund still described this downturn as a "buying opportunity" in its letter to investors and invited LPs to add funds on August 1.
This was basically the last rescue attempt.
In the following days, the fund conducted emergency negotiations with LPs, banks, and other potential funders, but failed to raise sufficient capital. By the end of July, the net assets in several Prime Broker accounts were close to zero, and may even have turned negative.
Prime brokers such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America ultimately ran out of patience, demanding immediate liquidation of positions.
The fund's remaining entire public market portfolio, with a nominal market value of approximately $16 billion, was sold off in one package to Citadel. After repaying margin loans and other debts, the net assets left for the fund from the public market portion were approximately zero.
The remaining fund size of approximately $10 billion mainly consisted of Anthropic equity and other private assets that were not leveraged and were not held in Prime Broker accounts.
