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"The dilemma for Hwang’s lenders was obvious. If the stocks in his swap accounts rebounded, everyone would be fine. But if even one bank flinched and started selling, they’d all be exposed to plummeting prices. Credit Suisse wanted to wait."

"Late that afternoon, without a word to its fellow lenders, Morgan Stanley made a preemptive move. The firm quietly unloaded $5 billion of its Archegos holdings at a discount, mainly to a group of hedge funds."

"On Friday morning, well before the 9:30 a.m. New York open, Goldman started liquidating $6.6 billion in blocks of Baidu, Tencent Music Entertainment Group, and Vipshop. It soon followed with $3.9 billion of ViacomCBS, Discovery, Farfetch, Iqiyi, and GSX Techedu."

"When the smoke finally cleared, Goldman, Deutsche Bank AG, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo had escaped the Archegos fire sale unscathed. There’s no question they moved faster to sell. ... As of now, Credit Suisse and Nomura appear to have sustained the greatest damage."

hmm... so the stocks themselves were solid & promising. hwang himself also was a pillar of his society and very much the opposite of a wolf-of-wall-street type. the viacom drop revealed the massive leverage which was attained legally though hidden

so while hwang himself was comfortable with the leverage on these stocks (and they had good fundamentals) the banks were not and wanted out. but they couldn't sell at that volume w/o moving the price.