Update (1000ET): Situational Awareness has exited all of their public investments, CNBC’s David Faber reports on air, citing people familiar with the situation.Faber reports that the liquidation was done “through one enormous trade."Roughly two-thirds of the assets under management at Situational Awareness were public equities, both that he owned on the long side and that he was shorting, Faber says.That could help explain the panic bid in Nasdaq this morning, as investors may believe the overhang from this unwind is over......do you really think that Leopold was the only 'smartest man in the room' that was using TRS to massively lever into momentum?* * *In 2020/2021, one fund almost single-handedly used massive amounts of leverage to drive several big media and tech stocks dramatically higher.That fund - Archegos - run by the now infamous Bill Hwang - used Total Return Swaps (TRS) to build massive levered positions on the back of de minimus capital (and even more notably, without everyone seeing how much he really owns because these were 'off-balance-sheet' swaps).For a while, everything was awesome.The prime brokers were earning their interest and Archegos was making bank, Hwang was a genius, as the shares rose on the back of their own virtuous buying circle.But then, one day in March 2021, one of his big stocks (ViacomCBS) suddenly drops a lot because the company sold more shares.The banks came knocking for some more collateral to cover the losses (which were huge due to the leverage), but Archegos didn't have the cash (and they had been using TRS from a number of brokers - none of which knew about - creating a systemic crisis). The prime brokers were forced to liquidate the holdings (first one to sell wins), and the result was the escalator up in shares became an elevator down (see chart above) in a number of the names that Archegos was holding.Since then we have had a few scares, but in general, banks have improved their risk management process (a number of risk managers were fired over Archegos).But, the money that primes can make from the interest and the incessant momentum of the AI bubble perhaps became too much to miss out on... especially when you know other competitors are doing 'the thing'.All of which brings us to the last month...About six weeks ago, we raised a big red flag that something was going on as soaring funding costs suggested the banks were offering significant leverage...Unprecedented surge in S&P funding costs by dealers lending out futures and Total Return Swaps (remember Archegos) to institutional clients. Think of it as lending costs for long positions. pic.twitter.com/x9KQu4r9MK