Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Insider Trading Is Not About Fairness

Archegos

The basic story of Archegos Capital Management is that it borrowed billions of dollars from banks to buy huge positions in like seven stocks, pushing up the prices of those stocks and creating huge paper gains for Archegos, which it then used to borrow more money to buy more of the stocks, pushing up the prices some more, etc. This was nice while it lasted, but it couldn’t last. Eventually, in March 2021, one of the stocks went down a bit, the banks sent Archegos some margin calls, it had no extra money, the banks foreclosed, the stocks went down and ...