As a massive, over-leveraged AI hedge fund, Situational Awareness, faces forced liquidation, former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, also known as ‘Pharma Bro’, warns that Wall Street’s trading tactics—not just falling valuations—are driving the collapse.
When prime brokers initiate margin calls on massive tech portfolios, rival traders actively short related stocks to oblivion, fully willing to send stocks like Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) “to $5” just to trigger a competitor’s ruin, said Shkreli, illustrating the mentality with an exaggerated example.
The Brutal Math of 4x Leverage
The rapid unwinding of the AI infrastructure trade exposes the fatal mathematics of heavy borrowing. Situational Awareness reportedly ran on 4x leverage. Speaking on a recent podcast with TBPN, Shkreli explained that at this extreme ratio, a mere 25% market drawdown wipes out a fund’s entire equity.
Once that threshold is breached, prime brokers seize control. “No prime broker is going to let you keep 90 billion of gross market value because once you dip your equity below zero, it’s their loss, not yours,” Shkreli said.
Investor Ross Gerber echoed this harsh reality following the fund’s collapse, bluntly stating: “Leverage will kill and bury you.”
Citadel just bamboozled this kid. The so called wiz kid. Turns out maybe some trading experience is necessary to play on this court. Kids take note. This is a hard business. Leverage will kill and bury you. Anyways. Thanks for the cheap stocks this week. Us long term players…
— Ross Gerber (@GerberKawasaki) July 30, 2026
Blood in the Water
When the market sniffs out a distressed, highly levered seller, competitors move to accelerate their demise by shorting their known public holdings—a tactic called “shooting against a fund.”
“Once there’s blood in the water, like, these positions would go to zero,” Shkreli noted, explaining the ruthless strategy. “Like, ‘we’ll send Micron to $5, you know, just to eliminate this guy at three, right?’ Like that’s, you know, the craziest thing is like that’s the nature of Wall Street.”
The Ultimate Beneficiary
The winners of these forced liquidations are heavily capitalized giants like Ken Griffin‘s Citadel, which acquired most of the fund’s publicly traded portfolio. Shkreli described firms such as Citadel as acting like “shadow banks,” stepping in to acquire distressed assets.
Some analysts are questioning the convenience of this bailout. Futurum Equities analyst Shay Boloor pointed out that Citadel Securities pushed surprise rate-hike fears just days before the AI trade collapsed—helping crush the same stocks Citadel’s hedge fund arm then bought on the cheap.
THIS HAS TO BE THE STORY OF 2026
— Shay Boloor (@StockSavvyShay) July 30, 2026
Ken Griffin’s Citadel was pushing surprise-rate-hike fears just days before the AI trade collapsed and forced 4x-levered Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness to unload its book near the lows.
Citadel then reportedly bought most of those… https://t.co/g1htbNOdoY pic.twitter.com/1FL6KUzEAf
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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