The family office of former Tiger Management trader Bill Hwang was behind the unprecedented selling of some U.S. stocks Friday, according to two people directly familiar with the trades.
Archegos Capital Management was forced by its banks to sell more than $20 billion worth of shares after some positions moved against him, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details aren’t public. The companies involved ranged from Chinese technology giants to U.S. media conglomerates.
Morgan Stanley traded about $13 billion, including Farfetch Ltd., Discovery Inc., Baidu Inc. and GSX Techedu Inc., said the people, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sold $6.6 billion worth of shares of Baidu, Tencent Music Entertainment Group and Vipshop Holdings Ltd. before the market opened in the U.S, according to an email to clients seen by Bloomberg News.
That move was followed by the sale of $3.9 billion of shares including ViacomCBS Inc. and iQiyi Inc. the email said.
Hwang didn’t reply to an email seeking comment Sunday. A Goldman spokesperson declined to comment and a Morgan Stanley official didn’t immediately respond.
ViacomCBS and Discovery posted their biggest declines ever Friday, after the selling and analyst downgrades. ViacomCBS closed 27% lower to $48.23, down from a high of $100.34 on March 22. Discovery also slumped 27% to $41.90, down from $77.27 on March 19.
Wall Street figures have been feverishly speculating about the identity of Friday’s seller. The liquidation had triggered price swings for every stock involved in the high-volume transactions, rattling traders.
Block trades -- the sale of a large chunk of stock at a price sometimes negotiated outside of the market -- are common, but the size of these trades and the multiple blocks hitting the market during the normal trading hours aren’t.
Hwang was an institutional stock salesman at Hyundai Securities Co. in the early 1990s, where he dealt with Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management. Robertson hired him in 1995 after Hwang won an annual prize awarded to the person outside of Tiger who had contributed most to the fund’s success.
After Robertson closed Tiger, Hwang set up Tiger Asia Management, in part with money seeded by his mentor Robertson.
In December 2012, Hwang admitted to illegally using inside information to trade Chinese bank stocks and agreed to criminal and civil settlements of more than $60 million.

Ho ho.. Interested to see if he can climb out of this hole

Ho ho.. Interested to see if he can climb out of this hole

tal faham a word even here

eli5 plz

Why is the candlestick the wrong colour? Going down should be red, this one is green.

1. bad risk management
2. over-leveraged.
3. failed psychology control.
4. inadequate technical control.

not sure the basis of his trade.
was it price action dude or technical side.

from the chart can clearly see MA crossover to short position.
there was no flash attack manipulation.

he stuck to his trade for an additional of 3 candles.
looks like a daily candle - so that about 3 days of him holding for miracle.

any decent strategy or system would have got out at the second candle going down.

He isn't a day or position trader.
Insider dude.
And those are caused by his margin call sell off rather than active position.

Goldman Sachs liquidated US$10.5 billionworth of stocks
in block trades on Friday, part of an extraordinary spree of selling that erased US$35 billion from the values of bellwether stocks ranging from Chinese technology giants to US media conglomerates.
The Wall Street bank sold US$6.6 billion worth of shares of Baidu, Tencent Music Entertainment Group
and Vipshop Holdings before the market opened in the US, according to an email to clients seen by Bloomberg News. That move was followed by the sale of US$3.9 billion of shares in ViacomCBS, Discovery, Farfetch, iQiyi and GSX Techedu, the email showed.
More of the unregistered stock offerings were said to be managed by Morgan Stanley, according to people familiar with the matter, on behalf of one or more undisclosed shareholders. Some of the trades exceeded US$1 billion in individual companies, calculations based on Bloomberg data show.
The Financial Times reported that Morgan Stanley sold US$4 billion worth of shares earlier in the day, followed by another US$4 billion in the afternoon, Reuters reported, citing the Financial Times. Goldman Sachs told counterparties that the sales were prompted by a “forced deleveraging,” the UK newspaper added, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
“This was highly unusual,” said Oliver Pursche, a senior vice-president at Wealthspire Advisors, which manages US$12 billion in assets. “The question now is: Are they done? Is this over? Or come Monday and Tuesday, are markets are going to be hit by another wave of block trades?”
In block trades, large volumes of securities are privately negotiated between parties, usually outside open market.
Maeve DuVally, a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman, declined to comment. A spokesperson for Morgan Stanley declined to comment. A person reached at Archegos’s New York office on Friday declined to comment. An email sent to Hwang seeking comment was not returned.
Wall Street is now collectively speculating on the identity of the mysterious seller or sellers. The liquidation triggered price swings for every stock involved in the high-volume transactions, rattling traders and prompting talk that a hedge fund or family office was in trouble and being forced to sell.
Several major investment banks with ties to hedge fund Archegos Capital Management liquidated holdings, contributing to the slump in share prices of ViacomCBS and Discovery, IPO Edge reported, citing people it did not identify. CNBC said forced sales by Archegos were probably related to margin calls on heavily leveraged positions.
New York-based Archegos is controlled by former Julian Robertson protégé and Tiger Management analyst Bill Hwang.
Shares in ViacomCBS and Discovery tumbled around 27 per cent each on Friday, while US-listed shares of China based Baidu and Tencent Music plunged during the week, dropping as much as 33.5 per cent and 48.5 per cent, respectively, from Tuesday’s closing levels.
Baidu, China’s dominant Internet search-engine company, made its secondary listing debut
in Hong Kong on March 23, and ended the week at HK$214, or 15.1 per cent below its IPO price. Its American depositary shares fell 19 per cent during the week to US$208.61.
Goldman Sachs, BofA Securities and Citic Securities were the joint global sponsors, coordinators, bookrunners and lead managers of the offering that soaked up HK$23.7 billion in net proceeds from local retail and foreign institutional investors.
Eric Handler, an analyst at MKM Partners, who covers Discovery, said that large blocks of shares in both Viacom and Discovery companies were put in the market on Friday, likely exacerbating the declines.
Friday’s sell-off dragged companies including Alibaba Group Holding (the owner of this newspaper) and NetEase lower. The peers later recovered after traders said word of the offerings lessened fears that a broader trade was unfolding throughout the sector.
That late rebound pushed up an index of companies engaged in internet-related businesses in China and the US, with the measure halting a three-day sell-off while still notching a slide of about 6.5 per cent for the week.
Chinese stocks have been under pressure after a warning from the Securities and Exchange Commission that it is taking steps to force accounting firms to let US. regulators review the financial audits of overseas companies. The penalty for non-compliance is ejection from exchanges.

he got into margin call because he didn't exit his trade after initial reversal.