25-year-old Silicon Valley AI trading “stock god” cornered by Wall Street, forced liquidations explode 📉
Leopold—this post-00s trader previously worked at FTX and even joined OpenAI’s super-alignment team. After leaving Silicon Valley, he founded the SA hedge fund. At its peak, the fund’s scale reportedly reached $45 billion, and short-term returns were extremely outrageous.
His trading logic is very clear: AI keeps iterating, continuously consuming compute and storage hardware. Hardware is a more deterministic “water-selling” lane, while the software layer suffers from intense competition. Therefore, he heavily positions in storage and compute-related names, shorts SaaS software, and relies on TRS tools to use a 4x leverage strategy over the long term to amplify returns.
The crash process:
- In July, the market saw extreme divergence: AI hardware stocks fell sharply across the board. The heavily weighted positions in SK Hynix and Micron suffered major drawdowns;
- Software stocks he shorted (like Adobe) rose against the trend, causing bidirectional losses on the account.
- Multiple prime brokers simultaneously demanded margin top-ups. The heavily weighted assets were hit by coordinated selling pressure, and liquidity quickly dried up.
- Within 72 hours, he closed out by liquidating at a discount $16 billion in secondary-market positions. The chips were picked up by Citadel at low prices. After the liquidation, the storage sector rebounded immediately—he cut precisely at the bottom.
Today, the fund has exited secondary-market leveraged trading and keeps only primary-market equity. Leopold has also announced that he will no longer use high leverage.
🤔🤔
Capital markets have never lacked the “correct” long-term strategy. Too many people can understand cycles, spot trends—yet ultimately stumble over tactical details like short-term capital collusion and liquidity suppression.
As the old saying goes: you can get through raging rivers and storms, but it’s easy to capsize in a ditch. Put into trading, it couldn’t be more fitting.
Aggressive leverage and long/short hedging may seem to magnify returns, but in reality they drastically shrink your tolerance for error.
And here’s the same old truth: huge capital has an inherent sin. No matter when or where.
In the end, trading isn’t about explosive power—it’s about staying steady and staying alive. Low leverage, not being too aggressive, and fewer gambles are the timeless survival rule.
Leopold—this post-00s trader previously worked at FTX and even joined OpenAI’s super-alignment team. After leaving Silicon Valley, he founded the SA hedge fund. At its peak, the fund’s scale reportedly reached $45 billion, and short-term returns were extremely outrageous.
His trading logic is very clear: AI keeps iterating, continuously consuming compute and storage hardware. Hardware is a more deterministic “water-selling” lane, while the software layer suffers from intense competition. Therefore, he heavily positions in storage and compute-related names, shorts SaaS software, and relies on TRS tools to use a 4x leverage strategy over the long term to amplify returns.
The crash process:
- In July, the market saw extreme divergence: AI hardware stocks fell sharply across the board. The heavily weighted positions in SK Hynix and Micron suffered major drawdowns;
- Software stocks he shorted (like Adobe) rose against the trend, causing bidirectional losses on the account.
- Multiple prime brokers simultaneously demanded margin top-ups. The heavily weighted assets were hit by coordinated selling pressure, and liquidity quickly dried up.
- Within 72 hours, he closed out by liquidating at a discount $16 billion in secondary-market positions. The chips were picked up by Citadel at low prices. After the liquidation, the storage sector rebounded immediately—he cut precisely at the bottom.
Today, the fund has exited secondary-market leveraged trading and keeps only primary-market equity. Leopold has also announced that he will no longer use high leverage.
🤔🤔
Capital markets have never lacked the “correct” long-term strategy. Too many people can understand cycles, spot trends—yet ultimately stumble over tactical details like short-term capital collusion and liquidity suppression.
As the old saying goes: you can get through raging rivers and storms, but it’s easy to capsize in a ditch. Put into trading, it couldn’t be more fitting.
Aggressive leverage and long/short hedging may seem to magnify returns, but in reality they drastically shrink your tolerance for error.
And here’s the same old truth: huge capital has an inherent sin. No matter when or where.
In the end, trading isn’t about explosive power—it’s about staying steady and staying alive. Low leverage, not being too aggressive, and fewer gambles are the timeless survival rule.