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Sunday, August 16, 2026

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@RagingVentures

Raging Capital Ventures on X

Some thoughts of mine on Archegos from May 2021 (below). Was Leopold using swaps? The value of Situational’s reported Q1 13F holdings pale in comparison to some of the exposure numbers being mentioned today, even adjusting for appreciation. I would observe that once Archegos blew up at the end of March 2021, many previously impossible shorts (names like $TDOC and $TRUP come to mind) became much easier to navigate and ultimately collapsed… ****** PEELING BACK THE ARCHEGOS ONION The implosion of Archegos is a very important market development and I hope regulators peel back the onion to truly understand what occurred. Archegos owned massive swap positions in companies like ViacomCBS (VIAC), Discovery Communications (DISCA), Tencent Music (TME), and GSX Techedu (GSX), in some cases controlling 20-50% of their tradeable float. Swap ISDA agreements typically limit aggregate ownership in a single company to 4-9%. Archegos appears to have aggressively violated these limits and/or the prime brokers looked the other way, enabling the firm to corner numerous large stocks in the U.S. equity markets. Notably, Archegos owned perhaps 50% of the float of a reputed fraud, GSX. How long has Archegos’ Bill Hwang been cornering stocks like this? He is rumored to have turned $200 mm into $5 b over the past six years (and may have briefly tripled that amount to $15 b during early 2021). What other short squeezes did he orchestrate in recent years? Are other funds using similar strategies as Archegos, and were there wolf packs of funds that Archegos was communicating with on these squeezes? My hunch is that Hwang and his ilk have been cornering stocks for years, with the typical exit plan being the sale of his positions to passive indexes who are perversely designed to buy more of a stock the higher the price goes. This underscores a major issue with passive investing. Archegos’ machinations also created tremendous pain for short selling hedge funds, which provide a valuable ballast for the entire stock market. Furthermore, if you peel back the onion enough, I think you will find an Archegos (or a similar fund) connection to Tesla (TSLA), which was squeezed multiple times until it was added to the S&P 500. Is it possible that Elon Musk, who regularly attacked the shorts, and who in 2018 was making unusual pre-market trades in his own stock at prices well above the prevailing market price, was somehow connected to this action?

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40 Stock Pitches (3rd-9th August)

Navient trades near 40% of tangible book as Gator Financial Partners argues private student-loan growth and restructuring can reverse its…

NAVI $902M
Capital Employed 9 clicks

DEC-laration of independence

Diversified Energy cut $233 million of debt in 1H26, repurchased $93 million of stock and sold $273 million of land and assets while…

DEC $972M
The Oak Bloke 7 clicks

Floor & Decor: 2Q26 Business Update

Floor & Decor’s same-store sales improved to minus 2%, while $45 million of tariff refunds lifted second-quarter gross profit and operating…

FND $5B
Speedwell Memos 8 clicks

Vistance Networks (NASDAQ: VISN)

Vistance Networks plans a large post-Ruckus-sale dividend, leaving Aurora Networks valued below 4x guided EBITDA after $1.88 billion of…

VISN $1.5B
Triple S Special Situations Investing 7 clicks

[OTCM] Listings for the rest of us

OTC Markets gives smaller, distressed, and lightly disclosed companies a trading venue outside NYSE and Nasdaq, with lower listing barriers…

OTCM $653M
scuttleblurb 3 clicks
TDC · short

Teradata CORP

Teradata is a short as its on-premises analytics business declines while enterprises shift workloads to cloud-native platforms.

TDC $2.7B
Value Investors Club

Clear the DEC?

Diversified Energy (DEC) has paid $21.84 per share in dividends since June 2017 and trades at $13.35 amid a bullish U.S.

DEC $972M
The Oak Bloke 3 clicks

Matan on Stitch Fix

Stitch Fix’s rushed Freestyle pivot cannibalized its profitable Fix business, driving active clients below 3.4 million, quarterly revenue…

SFIX $379M
MBI Deep Dives 2 clicks

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