With WallStreetBets’ Triumph, Wall Street Warns of Contagion

No sooner had Citadel forked over billions of dollars to help staunch the bleeding ofMelvin Capital-一家相对默默无闻的对冲基金对视频游戏零售商GameStop的做空遭遇了大规模的空头挤兑，而华尔街亚慱体育app的风云人物则开始窃窃私语：“这是一个传染事件。”

And by Wednesday, when a slew of heavily shorted names were still soaring and the Dow ended the day down more than 600 points, one top manager told亚博赞助欧冠that “every long-short hedge fund in the world is getting killed. It’s all about leverage.”

对冲基金内部人士表示，下一个受到伤害的基金可能是Maplelane Capital Management，该公司还做空了与梅尔文同名的几只基金。

Both funds had disclosed in their most recent regulatory filings that they owned puts on GameStop, leading retail investors on a now-famous Reddit forum, WallStreetBets, to try and orchestrate a short squeeze on the name — which wasn’t hard, given that 140 percent of its shares had been sold short.

As the stock soared, Melvin secured a $2.75 billion lifeline from Citadel and Point72 Asset Management Monday afternoon.

As was the case for Melvin, many of Maplelane’s 25 disclosed short positions have also been also ripping, including names like Pitney Bowes, which had almost doubled in value before coming down on Wednesday. It’s still up more than 50 percent for the past five days.

“追加保证金？“是一个post星期三早上在Reddit的Wallstreetbets/new上。

“想对枫兰资本进行追加保证金。你需要的所有信息都在这里，”它说，并添加了一个屏幕截图，列出了Maplelane的所有看跌期权，其中包括GSX Techedu、iRobot和国家饮料公司（National Beverage Corp）——也是梅尔文的卖空。

Maplelane, like Melvin, was a hot, relatively new fund whose founder came out of a prominent firm shut down as a result of the insider trading scandals that rocked the hedge fund world a decade ago.

莱昂Shaulov被一个高级投资组合经理t Galleon Group, whose founder Raj Rajaratnam was convicted of insider trading in 2011. (Melvin’s Gabriel Plotkin had come out of SAC Capital, which pled guilty to insider trading in 2013.)

Galleon shut down in 2009, following Rajaratnam’s arrest, and a year later Shaulovfounded Maplelane.

需要说明的是，普罗特金和肖洛夫都与任何内幕交易无关，据报道，他们的两只基金近年来都表现出色。

By the end of last year, Maplelane had amassed $3.7 billion in regulatory assets under management, which includes leverage. Its last quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, where it disclosed its long equities positions as well as options, showed a portfolio valued at $5.4 billion — also including leverage.

这两家公司本周似乎都继续亏损。据报道，截至上周五，梅尔文今年累计下跌了30%，枫叶巷下跌了30%Wall Street Journal.

在Maplelane的纽约办公室，没有人接电话，另外也联系不到Shaulov。

A spokesman for Melvin Capital declined to comment on the size of its losses. However, the fund released a statement that said “Melvin Capital has repositioned our portfolio over the past few days. We have closed out our position in [GameStop].”

It added that “the social media posts about Melvin Capital going bankrupt are categorically false.”

Whatever the fate of those two funds, it has become clear that the pain has become widespread, even as several short sellers said they had stepped back from the market. One toldIIthat he gone to cash.

“The short squeezes are causing major pain,” said another hedge fund short seller earlier this week. “It will trickle over to the long books soon.”

[IIDeep Dive:‘They’re Harassing Me However They Can’: Citron’s Andrew Left on WallStreetBets and Shorting GameStop]

例如，Mapelane和Melvin都做多的一只股票是Fiserv，该股自1月8日以来一直下跌，今年以来跌幅超过9%。

In general, the reason the overall market has fallen is that many hedge funds were in the same trade — “long Nasdaq names and short dying retailers,” one manager said. “Those funds that have massive market neutral strategies that use a lot of leverage would also have to de-lever.”

And while the Reddit users on WallStreetBets may have been the catalyst for the hedge fund woes, many people defended them.

Chamath Palihapitiya, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, was the most vocal. Speaking on CNBC’s Halftime Report Wednesday, he said retail investors did nothing wrong.

Palihapitiya, who had tweeted around noon Tuesday that he had bought February $115 calls on GameStop — leading it to spike — argued on CNBC that the solution to the chaos the market is experiencing now is to force hedge funds to disclose their positions — both short and long — as well as their leverage, on a daily basis.

他还建议，做空一家公司100%以上的股份不应该是合法的。Palihapitiya认为：“系统缺乏完整性是导致（GameStop）卖空140%的前兆。”。

The problem, he added, is that hedge funds “are allowed to take their money to a prime broker and all of a sudden get 10x notional on that.”

Several hedge fund managers toldIIthat they, too, are sympathetic to the Reddit retail investors.

“这太可怕了，因为你让我坐在这里，忍受着这些家伙带来的短暂痛苦，仍然在为他们加油！一位做空偏股基金的对冲基金经理在Twitter上直接留言说。“这就是现状。”