Wintermute Weekly Report: Fed Hawkish Divergence Continues, AI Mega Fund Forced Liquidation
According to the market weekly report released by market maker Wintermute (@wintermute_t), the macro and crypto markets experienced multiple shocks over the past week:
On the macro level, the Federal Reserve maintained interest rates unchanged at 3.50-3.75% with a 9-3 vote. Officials Hammack, Kashkari, and Logan rarely voted together to support a 25bp rate hike, marking dissent at the second meeting since Chairman Warsh took office. The 30-year US Treasury yield once touched 5.24%, hitting a new high since July 2007, while the 10-year yielded 4.67%. The yield curve bear-steepened, indicating market doubts about the Federal Reserve's inflation credibility.
On the stock market level, AI leveraged fund Situational Awareness (under Leopold Aschenbrenner) encountered margin calls due to leverage as high as 400%. Its size plummeted from $45 billion in early July to about $10 billion, forced to sell all public positions to Citadel at a discount. Long positions in AI infrastructure such as SK Hynix and CoreWeave fell sharply, partially explaining the reason for the continuous decline in chip stocks in July.
On the crypto level, BTC fell 2.84% weekly and ETH fell 3.63% weekly, but Wintermute believes major sellers are nearly exhausted, and the painful trade direction has turned upward. ETH has outperformed BTC for two consecutive months,
