AMC Fails to Deliver Pass 2.6 Million in New Report

I did a double-take when I saw the number.

Fails to deliver in shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. passed 2.6 million in June. The report, released today by the Securities and Exchange Commission, covers the first half of the month.

Fails to deliver hit 2,653,787 on June 3 before settling at 1,231,742 at the end of the reporting period. Fails to deliver topped 1 million numerous times.


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I’ve been writing about this topic for about a year, and I can’t recall ever seeing a figure so massive. This despite a long history of large fails to deliver in this stock.

AMC’s fails to deliver are way out of line with other stocks. Here are the numbers on the same day for several companies dramatically larger than AMC:

Amazon: 0
Microsoft: 0
Tesla: 24,983

But let’s back up a second: what is a fail to deliver? A fail to deliver occurs when a trade is made but is never finalized.

Now why might a stock like AMC have a pattern of large and persistent fails to deliver? A common reason is naked short selling.

To sell a stock short, you must borrow shares and sell them. Naked shorting is the generally illegal practice of selling short shares you never borrowed.

This is a powerful way to push down a stock’s price.

If you naked short, there’s no limit to the number of shares you can short. After all, you never had to find any to borrow!

Huge numbers of trades have failed in this stock for at least a year. Despite this, the SEC has not investigated these irregularities.

I keep coming back to this topic because I’m amazed at the inaction. Why not find out why the market in this stock is functioning so poorly?

I hope exchanges and regulators dive into this topic right away. We need orderly and fair capital markets for our country to thrive.

What do you think is causing these failed trades? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know.

More on markets:

Hedge Fund Giant Tiger Global Losing $28 Million an Hour

$6B Hedge Fund Cut Off from Trading As Investigation Looms

Hedge Funds Could Lose Nearly Half of Assets Under Proposed SEC Rule

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The Power Law (Part Four): The First Venture Deal

They were the best and brightest young engineers American could produce. But they had one problem: their boss was a tyrant.

Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory founder William Shockley shouted at his talented engineers, recorded all phone calls, and even demanded they take lie detector tests. All refused.

Instead, they did something few engineers in the 1950’s had ever done: struck out on their own. But how could these men of modest means start a semiconductor company?


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Enter Arthur Rock, perhaps the first venture capitalist. Rock invested and also brought in entrepreneur Sherman Fairchild, who put in a cool $1.5 million.

The “traitorous eight” engineers were off to the races. The company called itself Fairchild Semiconductor.

This was the first modern-style venture capital deal. This fascinating history is recounted in Sebastian Mallaby’s new book, The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future.

Like today, the Fairchild deal involved equity investment. What’s more, the founders and employees continued to own much of the company.

That employee ownership was a critical advantage.

Its engineers interviewed customers about what they needed before building anything. This made sure the new company’s products were useful.

The engineers had a strong incentive to make sure they built products that sold well. Big sales meant their stock went up!

Fairchild prospered, making huge advances in semiconductors and racking up millions in sales. Rock’s investment proved to be a home run.

His first fund went from $3.4 million to $77 million in just 7 years. This 23-fold return would be absolutely off the charts, even today.

What’s striking about the story of Fairchild is how unlikely it was.

The culture of the 1950’s was all about big institutions, from major corporations to the army. Finance was highly conservative, more concerned with avoiding loss than reaching for enormous gains.

Without this new form of investing, the Fairchild engineers would’ve kept laboring miserably for Shockley. Or perhaps they’d have moved to some lumbering bureaucracy with little interest in their ideas.

Either way, they probably wouldn’t have been able to make the huge technical advances they did at Fairchild.

The impact of what some call “liberation capital” has only grown with time.

Just a fraction of 1% of US firms raise venture capital. But that tiny group of companies accounts for 76% of the market value of IPO’s and 89% of R&D spending in America.

The most valuable assets are increasingly intangible. They are not smoke belching factories but lines of code.

This is why the venture industry will only become more important with time. It’s the only one that’s good at financing these intangible assets.

Most other investors are conservative and want collateral young firms don’t have.

When I meet with an ambitious founder today, I sometimes wonder where they’d be without venture capital. Perhaps they’d be toiling away miserably in some large bureaucracy indifferent to their talents.

And I want to free them.

More on tech:

The Power Law (Part Three): Angels and VC’s

The Power Law (Part Two)

The Power Law (Part One)

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Photo: The “traitorous eight” at the Fairchild Semiconductor offices

The Power Law (Part Three): Angels and VC’s

In the world of venture capital, there are two species: great white shark VC’s and goldfish angel investors. They dwarf us in size and power as we wiggle about looking for an insect to eat.

So I was surprised to learn that in some of the hottest deals, angel investors actually have the advantage.


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In his superb new book The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future, Sebastian Mallaby recounts how the greatest tech companies found their first supporters. Time and again, the hottest companies rejected entreaties to meet from the top venture firms.

Instead, they went to angel investors to raise money quickly and easily with a minimum of oversight.

Mark Zuckerberg refused to meet with Accel early on. He even showed up at the offices of heavyweight Sequoia Capital in his pajamas!

Sequoia founder Don Valentine recognized the stunt for what it was: a provocation. Zuckerberg wanted the princes of Sand Hill Road to know he didn’t need them.

Instead, he turned to Peter Thiel and other angels for his first funding. Unlike the slow moving investment committees of venture firms, they could write a check on the spot.

But Zuckerberg was not the first great entrepreneur to shun VC’s. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had every firm in the Valley breathing down their necks.

Instead, they met angel Andy Bechtolsheim on their front porch.

After a brief pitch, Betcholsheim raced back to his Porsche and returned with a checkbook. He invested $100,000 when the company wasn’t even incorporated.

Along with angels, lesser known venture firms also back many of the greatest companies. As Mallaby notes:

“…the idea that venture capitalists get into deals on the strength of their brands can be exaggerated. A deal seen by a partner at Sequoia will also be seen by rivals at other firms: in a fragmented cottage industry, there is no lack of competition. Often, winning the deal depends on skill as much as brand: it’s about understanding the business model well enough to impress entrepreneurs; it’s about judging what valuation might be reasonable. One careful tally concluded that new or emerging venture partnerships capture around half the gains in the top deals, and there are myriad examples of famous VC’s having a chance to invest and then flubbing it.”

I was very surprised to learn that being at a top firm isn’t the advantage it may seem. No wonder Sequoia still cold messages founders!

In this competitive environment, I look for ways for us to cooperate.

VC’s can benefit if angels bring them great early stage deals. Angels benefit by being able to help their portfolio companies.

In the end, if we can work together to build the greatest companies of the future, everybody wins!

What are your experiences raising from angels and VC’s? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

More on tech:

The Power Law (Part Two)

The Power Law (Part One)

Managing a Crisis the Sequoia Way

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Photo: Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. “File:Google page brin.jpg” by Ehud Kenan is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The Power Law (Part Two)

“When in doubt, take the shot.”

Doug Leone, Managing Partner, Sequoia Capital

The partners from prestigious venture firm Accel stood outside an office in Palo Alto, waiting to take theirs.

These were the offices of a young startup called thefacebook.

Most startups would’ve killed to meet them. But thefacebook’s young founder gave the Accel partners the cold shoulder.


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This didn’t stop them. They lurked outside and buttonholed any thefacebook employee they could find.

Eventually, they got the meeting with founder Mark Zuckerberg. And they won the deal, a $10 million check into the company’s Series A round.

To this day, it remains one of the greatest investments in the history of venture capital.

As an angel investor, I always assumed that the prestigious firms like Accel or Sequoia had it easy. The best founders must be falling all over themselves to meet them!

Nothing could be further from the truth. As Sebastian Mallaby chronicles in his superb new book The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future, the greatest firms are also the scrappiest.

Sequoia Capital, perhaps the greatest VC firm in history, wrote their own code to find the most downloaded new iOS apps. One day, it flagged a small program called WhatsApp.

Sequoia partner Jim Goetz sent e-mail after e-mail to WhatsApp’s founder. For months, he never heard a word.

Finally, Goetz was able to get a meeting with WhatsApp’s founder, Jan Koum. In time, Sequoia won the deal.

The investment made Sequoia $3 billion, and WhatsApp is now ubiquitous throughout the world.

So what does this mean for small fries like me?

Even the greatest have to vigorously pursue deals and handle rejection, so don’t give up on an awesome company! If Sequoia isn’t too cool to cold-message a founder on LinkedIn (psst: they’re not), neither am I!

And when I find that rare, incredible startup, I’ll be repeating Leone’s words to myself: “take the shot.”

More on tech:

The Power Law (Part One)

Managing a Crisis the Sequoia Way

Talking Startups and Today’s Fundraising Pullback

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Photo: Doug Leone, Managing Partner, Sequoia Capital. “_SJP1148” by TechCrunch is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Retirees Face $1.3 Billion Loss in Wall Street Fraud

It was supposed to be a safe investment.

In small offices across the country, brokers sold a security called L Bonds. The bonds were backed by life insurance policies and were supposed to provide a steady stream of income.

Many buyers were elderly. Now they’re facing catastrophic losses of up to $1.3 billion.

From a report that broke this morning in The Wall Street Journal:

What many of these retail investors didn’t know was that [bond issuer] GWG’s founders and a board director would each use the money to fund and launch their own startup ventures, then move them out of the investors’ reach, according to people familiar with the matter. The roughly 27,000 individuals who bought GWG’s unique debt securities, known as L Bonds, are now facing huge potential losses – for many, their retirement nest eggs.


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The original business buying life insurance policies quickly ran into trouble. So, bond issuer GWG Holdings cast about for another strategy.

It settled on backing speculative startups run by the company’s founders.

That would be reckless enough a thing to do with small savers’ money. But worse yet, the miscreants running GWG quickly moved those assets out of reach of the L Bond buyers.

Once the top executives had taken the assets, they drove GWG into bankruptcy.

The judge overseeing the court proceedings in Houston said he had never before seen a company give up control of everything it owns before seeking chapter 11 protection.

GWG appears to have operated like a Ponzi scheme. Of the $1.26 billion in L Bonds the company sold, nearly two-thirds went to paying off prior bonds.

Meanwhile, the top executives siphoned off tens of millions of dollars in dividends for themselves.

The SEC began investigating GWG as early as 2020. GWG didn’t disclose the investigation to its investors for a year.

In the mean time, it sold another $200 million in toxic L Bonds.

The law generally prohibits the SEC from disclosing investigations. I think it’s high time to change those laws.

Many elderly put their life’s savings into these bonds.

They should’ve known the company was under federal investigation. The government they pay taxes to should never have kept that a secret from them.

It doesn’t help for the SEC to blow the whistle once the money is already gone.

What do you think of this case and how the SEC handled it? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know.

See you on Monday!

More on markets:

Hedge Fund Tiger Global Losing $136 Million a Day, Down 52%

Hedge Fund Giant D1 Loses $7 Billion in 2022

Shadowy Hedge Fund Cash Bankrolls Fight Against Regulation

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The Power Law (Part One)

“Reasonable people…routinely fail in life’s important missions by not even attempting them.”

The Power Law

Every day for the last 15 months, I’ve sat down in front of my computer and tried to find the next great tech company. Being immersed in the daily details of e-mails and deal memos made me wonder about the history of this most unusual of industries, venture capital.


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So I grabbed a copy of Sebastian Mallaby’s excellent new book The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. Mallaby traces the history of venture capital from its first deal to today, and explores the principles that drive its success.

The fundamental principle of venture capital is the power law — a small percentage of winners generate almost all the returns:

“Anytime you have outliers whose success multiplies success, you leave the domain of the normal distribution for the land ruled by the power law — from a world in which things vary slightly to one of extreme contrasts. And once you cross that perilous frontier, you better begin to think differently.”

Since just a few companies drive most of the returns, the entire business becomes about finding and investing in those very few companies:

“…each year brings a handful of outliers that hit the proverbial grand slam, and the only thing that matters in venture is to own a piece of them.”

So how should investors identify those rare businesses? Arthur Rock, who was arguably the first venture capitalist, liked to ask open-ended questions like “Who do you admire?” or “What mistakes have you learned from?”

Rock looked for founders who were realistic and determined. He avoided those who were prone to wishful thinking or who tried to please instead of being honest.

Rock’s inquisitive style led him to back Fairchild Semiconductor in the 1950’s in what was the first modern-style venture capital deal.

Founder traits are important, but hard numbers also matter. Google, eBay, Facebook and YouTube all had staggering growth figures early on.

Andy Rachleff, Benchmark partner and early investor in eBay, looks at an even more sophisticated growth metric:

“‘When companies grow exponentially, they don’t suddenly stop,’ Andy Rachleff observed later, adding that it is the ‘second derivative —the changes in the rate of growth of a company’s sales — that really tell a venture investor whether to back it.’”

Once an investor finds that diamond in the rough, he needs to own a piece, even if the price is high. Mallaby notes that Google’s seed round valuation was around $10M, high for its time.

Prone as I am to analysis, I often undervalued actually meeting investors and founders. This book taught me a lot about the importance of networking to the venture industry.

Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia, went to a Silicon Valley bar every Wednesday and Friday to chat with engineers about the next big thing. In the world of startups, investors are the specialists in connecting people with each other.

The more interesting people we meet, the better we’ll be at our job!

Mallaby provides so much great information that I’ll save the rest of the book for another post soon. In the mean time, if you’re interested in startups and venture capital, I urge you to grab yourself a copy!

More on tech:

What I Learned From an Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000

Amp It Up

Managing a Crisis the Sequoia Way

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Photo: “Don Valentine, Sequoia Capital” by jdlasica is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Shadowy Hedge Fund Cash Bankrolls Fight Against Regulation

Hedge funds are going all out to stop the SEC from implementing new disclosure rules. Now they have some help from an academic group whose finances are shrouded in secrecy.

From a report that broke yesterday in Institutional Investor:

…hedge funds aren’t fighting the SEC alone: A new organization, which Institutional Investor has learned has at least one hedge fund backer, has enlisted dozens of academics to argue against the proposals, creating something of a firestorm of criticism.

Wonky academic comments on proposed SEC rule changes typically fly under the radar. But [UC Berkeley law and finance professor Frank] Partnoy made them his mission. Now his work — in comment letters signed by himself, [Robert] Bishop, and other academics — is taking some heat. In part, that’s because the financing of his institute, which pays Partnoy and Bishop for their letter writing, has been shrouded in secrecy.

The International Institute of Law and Finance refuses to disclose its backers. But at least one major hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management, is bankrolling the effort per Institutional Investor.


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Even the group’s chairman is a hedge fund employee:

The chairman of the institute’s board is Stephen Fraidin, a corporate attorney and partner at Cadwalader who has also long worked for Pershing Square.

Given the institute’s lack of financial disclosures, we can only guess who else may be backing its efforts. But we do know that numerous hedge funds, including Citadel, have met with the SEC to oppose new regulations.

So what exactly are these regulations that hedge funds and their friends in academia so passionately oppose?

One requires investors who buy over 5% of a company’s stock to disclose the position sooner. Another requires similar disclosure if the 5% position is in swaps.

Swaps can be used to hide both long and short positions in a stock. They can also lead to sudden, massive losses, as was the case with Archegos Capital Management last year.

Other shareholders should know when the stock they hold is being accumulated by a major investor. Employees too need to know about ownership changes that can affect their livelihood.

Better disclosures could even prevent another financial crisis. If banks know about a fund’s huge swaps positions, they may be unwilling to extend it more credit, which could prevent a huge hedge fund or bank failure.

But just because regulations are good for society as a whole doesn’t mean hedge funds won’t fight them with everything they’ve got. And since the message isn’t that persuasive coming from them, why not pay a few academics to deliver it for them?

Hedge funds are also finding some unlikely allies in Washington, including a Congressman with ties to hedge fund Elliott Management:

Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York’s South Bronx — one of the poorest districts in the nation — whose top donors include Elliott, has been circulating the letter [opposing regulation], according to an individual familiar with the effort. (Torres, whom OpenSecrets says is a top recipient of hedge fund cash in the current election cycle, did not return multiple requests for comment, nor did Elliott.)

Is hedge fund regulation really a top priority of Torres’ constituents in the South Bronx?

Big money has long since poisoned politics and now is doing the same with academia. We, as citizens and investors, need to stop fooling ourselves about who these institutions really represent.

Who else do you think is behind the fight against hedge fund regulations? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

More on markets:

$6B Hedge Fund Cut Off from Trading As Investigation Looms

Hedge Fund Tiger Global Losing $136 Million a Day, Down 52%

Hedge Fund Giant D1 Loses $7 Billion in 2022

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The End of Celsius — the Beginning of Crypto Regulation

Cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network has stopped all withdrawals, imperiling the savings of 100,000 users. From The Wall Street Journal:

A few months ago, Mike Washburn’s cryptocurrency investment looked like a winner.

Now he’s just hoping to get his money back.

Mr. Washburn, a 35-year-old plumber in Otsego, Minn., had $100,000 in an account at Celsius Network LLC, one of the largest lenders in the cryptocurrency world. Recently widowed, Mr. Washburn said he and his two children moved in with his parents, and he planned to buy a house with his savings. The Celsius account offered him yield higher than would a traditional bank account, and the company was well-known in the crypto community.


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Celsius promised rates of over 18%, versus around 1% in a traditional bank account. Users flocked to the platform, perhaps unaware of the risk compared to a traditional bank.

The assets Celsius holds to pay those high rates plummeted in value as crypto markets crashed this year. And some of its investments are only semiliquid, making it difficult to meet redemption requests from depositors.

Yesterday, certain investors tried to engineer a short squeeze in Celsius tokens.

It caused some run-up in the price, but the tokens remain down over 75% in the last year. I would expect this attempt to fail in the long term, given the overall instability of the Celsius platform.

Source: Coinmarketcap.com

Some savers may have looked at the 18% Celsius was offering, noted that it was 18 times as much as the bank, and piled in. But comparing a crypto lending product to a US bank account is “apples and bowling balls.”


A bank account provides FDIC insurance for up to $250,000. What’s more, any interest is paid in US dollars, a much more stable currency than most crypto tokens.

I think Celsius is finished as a platform.

Any deposit-taking institution operates on trust. Even if it weathers the current storm and manages to stay solvent, who will trust Celsius with their money in the future?

The even greater impact of the Celsius implosion will be on crypto regulation. The industry has often tried to avoid regulation, espousing a libertarian ethos.

That ends when plumbers in Minnesota are losing their life savings. Once their constituents are losing everything and barraging their representatives with phone calls, politicians become motivated to investigate and pass new laws.

What’s more, pols and regulators see opportunities to make names for themselves by sticking it to unsympathetic crypto fat cats.

It may take several years, but expect stiff regulations on cryptocurrency to come out following this crash.

I expect crypto lending and stablecoins to be the first targets for regulation. They are the most similar to the heavily regulated banking industry in that they take deposits and aim for stability.

What do you think is next for Celsius and the crypto market at large? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know.

More on tech:

Hedge Fund Tiger Global Losing $136 Million a Day, Down 52%

Managing a Crisis the Sequoia Way

Why Tech Stocks Are Oversold

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A Wisconsin Summer With The People Who Matter Most

As I entered the baggage claim, I heard an old friend’s voice calling my name. But where was he?

My head swiveled around, confused. Then, Matt* rolled up to me in a purloined wheelchair with a big smile on his face.

That’s when I knew this would be an interesting trip.

A mural in Milwaukee celebrating the great Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks!

One of the greatest things about the world today is how we’re getting back to the moments we used to love. In person events, concerts, and travel are finally returning to brighten our lives after a long absence.

I’m back today from the most wonderful vacation I’ve had in a long time! I got to see my mother and my old friends in Wisconsin for the first time since COVID.

I began with a visit with Matt in Milwaukee.

We’ve known each other since the 8th grade. I’m lucky to have such a longstanding friendship.

It had been nearly three years since we’d seen each other, but we didn’t miss a beat! We laughed all the way home from the airport, always on an adventure no matter what we’re doing.

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Milwaukee’s Hoan Bridge

Dinner was airy spanikopita and delicate baklava at Sts. Constantine and Helen Grecian Fest. Milwaukee is known as the City of Festivals, and in the warmer months there are celebrations of heritage and food almost every day.

The next day, I grabbed the bus north to my mother’s house. Getting to hug her after nearly three years apart felt like the end to the difficult period the world has been in for the last several years.

Or…almost the end. Ironically, we both got COVID for the first time as soon as I arrived!

Luckily, our symptoms were mild and we’ve made full recoveries. And on the bright side, COVID kept us close to home and enjoying the simple things, like reading on the glider as deer and chipmunks passed by.

Deer in the yard
The view from the glider

We played cards with the same deck we used with my great grandpa 30 years ago. We walked slowly down the streets at sunset, just happy to be together again.

Frozen custard at Culver’s a Wisconsin must!

After about a week, I came back to Milwaukee to meet Matt again, joined by our friend Brian* from Madison. When we all lived in the same neighborhood shortly after college, we were an inseparable trio.

But we hadn’t been together all at once since 2018. We ambled down the charming industrial streets like the Three Musketeers, always more excited when it’s all three of us together.

When they dropped me at the airport to go home to New York, I wanted nothing more than to stay! But they have work they need to get back to, and so do I.

There’s only so many times I can go three or four years without seeing friends and family. At that interval, I might see them a dozen more times at most before we’re all gone.

So I plan to come more often and enjoy that special feeling of being around those I love and have known the longest. As Dorothy said, there’s no place like home.

More on travel:

A Special Weekend in Stokes State Forest

Pine Barrens Glamping in Brendan Byrne State Forest

Is this NJ’s Most Beautiful Spot?

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Hedge Fund Giant D1 Loses $7 Billion in 2022

Yet another massive crossover hedge fund is facing serious losses. New York-based D1 Capital Partners has lost approximately $7 billion this year.

From a Bloomberg report that broke yesterday:

…D1 has told investors who selected a 50-50 mix of public and private assets that the strategy lost 23% through May. The firm attributed most of the damage to public investments, which fell 44%. It marked down private assets only 8% — including 0.05% last month.

This 50-50 mix was the most common choice for D1 investors.

D1 still has about $17 billion in private equities and $7 billion in public stocks, implying losses of about $5.5 billion and $1.5 billion respectively. The firm’s total loss for 2022 alone appears to be about $7 billion.


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D1’s losses, large as they are, are probably severely understated.

It has marked down its private company stocks by only 8%. However, the Refinitiv Venture Capital Index is down 47% for the year.

If D1’s portfolio mirrors the broader markets, the real losses on this $17 billion pile of private company stocks could be billions more.

To make things even more interesting, D1 borrowed billions and poured it into illiquid private company shares. From Bloomberg:

Hedge funds were tallying gains on their hottest bet in years when Dan Sundheim reached an unusual deal with JPMorgan Chase & Co. to go even further.

With the bank’s help in August 2020, Sundheim’s D1 Capital Partners used its stakes in private companies as collateral for borrowing $2 billion that the firm could put toward yet more of those stakes, among other things. Last year that focus on private companies looked brilliant, as D1 updated its valuations and posted a whopping 70% gain in that part of its portfolio.

Now, the industry is bracing for a reckoning.

I invest in startups myself, but I would never borrow money to do so.

Borrowing money to invest in tech startups is completely reckless. These companies are volatile, speculative, and illiquid.

It’s telling that the best venture capital firms in the business, like Sequoia and Benchmark, don’t play these shell games to boost returns.

Losses for crossover hedge funds like D1 are so severe that some cannot even meet redemption requests from investors:

In the starkest sign yet of the strain on hedge funds, Tiger said last week that it couldn’t continue to fill redemptions the normal way because so much of its portfolio was invested in hard-to-sell stakes in private companies. As the firm saw losses and some redemptions in the first quarter, it exited 83 stocks. Now if investors want to pull money from Tiger’s hedge and long-only funds, a portion of the liquid assets will be sold, but private investments will be placed in a separate account to be cashed out later.

I expect a similar move at D1 soon.

This isn’t the first time D1 has gotten itself into trouble.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, it lost 30% of its public portfolio in January 2021. As meme stocks soared, D1 was badly burned by short positions.

The overall impression I have of D1 is of a reckless firm casting about in vain for a winning strategy. It rushed into venture capital with a risky and untested scheme, then lost a fortune betting against volatile meme stocks.

Were I an investor in the firm, I’d be asking for my money back. The question is: can you get it?

What do you think of D1’s losses? And who do you think is next?
Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

This is the last blog for this week. There will be no blog next week — I’m heading off for a vacation!

See you on Monday, June 20th. Have a great weekend! 👋

More on markets:

Hedge Fund Tiger Global Losing $136 Million a Day, Down 52%

$6B Hedge Fund Cut Off from Trading As Investigation Looms

Citadel Adds Millions to AMC Options Bet

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Fundrise

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Misfits Market

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

Photo: “the Great Hedge Fund Hei$t” by eyewashdesign: A. Golden is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.