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Some hedge funds offload all stocks as selloff widens

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Prime brokers say leverage falling, more selling coming

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Sales triggered by margin calls rise in South Korea

By Summer Zhen and Samuel Shen

HONG KONG/SHANGHAI, April 7 (Reuters) - Some hedge funds

say they are offloading all or most of their holdings of stocks

as U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war wipes out trillions

of dollars of market value and forces them to curtail trading

using borrowed cash.

In the three trading days following Trump's announcement of

broad reciprocal tariffs on almost all countries, stock markets

across the world have plummeted, and bonds have become both a

haven and a bet on rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, turning on

their head market assumptions before Trump took office.

The selloff on Wall Street has been vicious as investors

that bet on U.S. exceptionalism and economic might stampede out

of its markets.

The benchmark S&P 500 index fell 10.5% over two days

and lost about $5 trillion in market value. China's CSI300

blue-chip index fell more than 5% on Monday, while the

pan-European STOXX index is down nearly 12% from its

March 3 all-time closing high and in correction territory.

William Xin, chairman of hedge fund Spring Mountain Pu Jiang

Investment Management based in Shanghai, said he had liquidated

all of his stock positions as the current geopolitical landscape

is messy, and the risk of a global recession is rising.

"The macro picture is getting very chaotic, and I cannot see

the future clearly at all," said Xin, who sold his China and

Hong Kong-listed shares last Thursday, ahead of a public holiday

on Friday.

Hedge funds that pursue a long-short equity strategy have

been particularly hard-hit as market volatility metrics

surged, brokers said.

Analysts at J.P.Morgan estimated net leverage, which refers

to borrowing, by hedge funds fell between 5% and 6% last week

over the previous one, and that net hedge fund leverage could be

around the lowest since late 2023.

The bank said on Friday that volatility targeting portfolios

had between $25 billion and $30 billion in equities to sell in

the coming days, as they unwind positions to reduce risk.

Levered exchange-traded funds (ETFs) had an additional $23

billion to sell to rebalance into Friday's close, mostly tech

stocks, it had said.

Hedge funds typically use margin accounts in which they

borrow cash from prime brokers to trade markets.

When the value of holdings in an investor's margin account

falls below the broker's required deposit, brokers can call on

an investor to top up the account with cash or to sell those

stocks or bonds.

That rush for cash has seen even gold, typically a

safe asset during crises, fall sharply since Trump's "Liberation

Day" tariffs were unveiled on April 2.

"In market selloffs like this, panic and forced selling via

margin calls can dominate for a while," said David Seif, chief

economist for developed markets at Nomura in New York.

"That's not to say that it isn't based on a very real

negative event, which is these tariffs. But I think the ensuing

selloff can take on a life of its own."

FALLING KNIVES

Bob Zhang, managing partner of Pine Street Capital, a

Beijing-based hedge fund, said he has cut net exposure to

Chinese stocks to 25% now from 100% in January. He has also

added some hedges on the stock index to protect against downside

risk.

"The volatility in China might just be starting, as

positions are very crowded, and some people are trying to catch

a falling knife."

Chinese investors are somewhat less likely to be affected by

margin calls as the market had risen a lot earlier this year,

yet the country is also the target of the biggest Trump tariffs.

The Hong Kong tech sub-index is down more than 27%

in a month and back to levels at the start of the year.

China faces fresh U.S. tariffs of more than 50%, and it

responded in kind on Friday by slapping extra levies on U.S.

imports.

"Too many uncertainties around, and everyone is de-grossing

given the elevated market volatility" said a portfolio manager

at a large U.S. multi-strategy fund, based in Hong Kong.

"I think we are just in the middle of this selloff. This

position unwinding usually will be sequentially affected from

one hedge fund to another."

Outstanding margin finance in China remains high, at 1.9

trillion yuan ($260 billion) as of April 3.

In South Korea, where a ban on short-selling of shares was

lifted just this month, data from the Korea Financial Investment

Association (KOFIA) shows there were a total of 28 billion won

($19.15 million) worth of stock sales between April 1 and April

3 triggered by margin calls, compared with 11.5 billion for the

whole of March, which was the biggest since September 2023.

($1 = 1,462.3100 won)

($1 = 7.3077 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Additional reporting by Isla Binnie in New York, Scott Murdoch

in Sydney and Jihoon Lee in Seoul; Writing by Vidya Ranganathan;

Editing by Jamie Freed)