It is still unclear exactly where Archegos Capital fits into the annals of spectacular hedge fund blow-ups. But the early signs are that it will probably prove the biggest since Long-Term Capital Management’s collapse in 1998.
The saga erupted into the open last Friday, when Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley broke cover and started dumping multibillion-dollar positions in US and Chinese stocks. They did it on behalf of an unnamed investment fund that had failed a “margin call” — essentially a demand to put up more collateral against its trades or face a forced liquidation.
That sparked an epic whodunnit across markets, with Archegos — an obscure, remarkably opaque investment group run by Bill Hwang, a former Tiger Management hedge fund manager with a chequered past, quickly identified as the primary party involved. By Monday, Credit Suisse and Nomura were admitting that they would probably lose billions of dollars in the fallout.