Archegos - How a Family Office Torched Wall Street (2021) - QuickFinanceStories

Nobody had heard of Bill Hwang. He ran a family office with no outside investors. No filings.

No disclosure. Just leverage. Lots and lots of leverage.

This is the story of how one man crashed $100 billion in stocks. Hwang had made money at Tiger Asia. Then he got into regulatory trouble and went quiet.

He started Archegos - just his own money. But he didn't just buy stocks. He used total return swaps.

Derivatives that gave him exposure without showing up on any filing. Multiple banks gave him leverage. Goldman.

Derivatives that gave him exposure without showing up on any filing.

Morgan Stanley. Credit Suisse. Nomura.

None of them knew about the others. Each thought they were special. Hwang piled into a handful of stocks.

ViacomCBS. Discovery. Baidu.

Concentrated bets. Massive positions. Then in March 2021, ViacomCBS announced a stock sale.

The price dipped. Margin calls came. Hwang couldn't pay.

The banks panicked. Everyone tried to sell at once. Goldman and Morgan Stanley moved fast.

They dumped their positions early. Credit Suisse waited. They lost $5.5 billion.

Within days, stocks connected to Archegos crashed. $100 billion in market value vanished. One family office. A few phone calls.

A hundred billion gone. The lesson? Leverage doesn't need a crowd to cause chaos. Sometimes one man is enough.