At 24, someone able to lose $24 B is impressive.
Leopold Aschenbrenner, in 2 years took $1B investments to $24 B by investing in AI stocks. He was long AI stocks and short Software. The trade went against him.
The real story in this is, not the 24 yr old losing so much money. But institutions have given him 4x leverage…
You can never trust the bank’s balance sheet; We never know what kind of risks are hidden inside them.
It is impressive that he took $500 M fund to $45 B in 2 years, but his asset base was almost $200 B due to the 4x leverage.
Let us not forget the role “citadel” played.. while SA is suffering the double whammy and asked its LP’s for additional capital because prices got cheaper… “Citadel” came out with an unusual report calling for immediate interest rate hike… which also helped the stocks to go down further…
Net-net, citadel engineered the collapse, and ended up buying the entire portfolio for a $3~$4 B discount.
These are all big boys, but remember whenever you sell “options” whether you like or not, you are swimming with them and could get hurt.