Good morning!

Jordi Visser says hedge funds, not an AI bubble, are behind this month's violent tech selloff — and Monday's market signals show only a tentative, uneven bounce. Jensen Huang and Cathie Wood both found themselves explaining their own AI calls this weekend, while Kaupr caught you up on what mattered most from Finans Norge's payments conference: tokenization and the agentic economy. Bitcoin and ether, meanwhile, are still looking for a floor — and a Swedish exchange found one of its own.

Some stories in Kaupr Daily:

💎 22V's Jordi Visser says the $70 billion in forced selling hit within 90 minutes of Thursday's open — call it deleveraging, not a popped bubble.

💎 Nvidia's board is investigating Jensen Huang's ties to a Chinese intelligence operation, even as it says it has no reason to doubt his leadership.

💎 Swedish exchange Safello posted its first profitable quarter since 2024 — though founder Frank Schuil calls it one data point, not a confirmed turnaround.

Today's Trendline from Venkat Hrushikesa Varri finds bitcoin and ether both testing fresh support levels as the downtrend holds.

— Morten

AI agents could handle a third of online shopping by 2030, agentic banking is arriving in the Nordics, and the tokenisation of securities and bank money is underway — the main themes at Finance Norway's payments and digitalisation conference, held 5–6 November. Kaupr was on site, live-blogging throughout with a separate article after each key talk.

Why it matters: Visser says the deleveraging "is just the beginning," since funds can hedge net exposure but can't cut gross exposure fast enough: "The AI bubble didn't pop. Hedge fund leverage did."

Source: 22V's Jordi Visser says the AI selloff was a $70 billion forced deleveraging, not a bubble — BigGo Finance

Per Goldman Sachs prime brokerage data, hedge funds erased nearly two years of AI stock purchases in five trading days in late October, selling about $20 billion of tech shares over two weeks. Goldman's gross leverage stood near 310%, close to a five-year high, and its basket of hedge fund favorites fell 4.2% on October 22 — its worst daily decline since 2011. Memory chipmakers Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and SanDisk lost over $700 billion in market value in under two weeks.

Why it matters: The piece argues hedge funds sold "because their positions had become crowded and borrowed money made those positions risky" — not because AI demand collapsed, and notes the average hedge fund has only beaten the S&P 500 in three years since 2010.

Source: Hedge Funds Reversed All Their 2025 AI Stock Buying In Five Days — Forbes

Hedge funds cut exposure to the broader AI trade to underweight for the first time since early 2023, Morgan Stanley says, ending "the longest sustained stretch of portfolio de-risking in over 15 years." Cumulative gross hedge fund flows fell 8% from their June peak — the largest sustained de-grossing on record — even as Goldman data shows funds net-bought US equities for the first time in four weeks over October 23-29, mostly through index products and ETFs.

Why it matters: Prime desks argue depressed net exposure leaves room for further short covering, which could fuel a turnaround — the "Magnificent Seven" were still net sold in four of five sessions.

Source: Hedge funds turn underweight on AI for first time since 2023 — Morgan Stanley — Seeking Alpha/TradingView

Hong Kong-based Aspex lost 16% in October, and Goldman Sachs prime brokerage estimates Asia-focused equity hedge funds fell 9.4% for the month. China-focused stock pickers lost about 11%; some long-only quant strategies erased their full-year gains. A Thursday US tech selloff wiped $2.3 trillion from the Nasdaq 100, and Friday's rout sent South Korea's Kospi down 8.8%, triggering a trading halt — wealthy individuals in Hong Kong and Taiwan faced margin calls on structured products.

Why it matters: Analysts say forced position unwinds, "rather than a fundamental reassessment of AI's long-term prospects," are driving the severity of the selloff.

Source: Asia hedge funds hit by AI selloff as leveraged bets trigger margin calls — Hedgeweek (via Bloomberg)

Walleye Capital, a $17 billion multi-strategy firm, is restructuring its equity long-short business and cutting staff after its worst month since March 2020 (-5.9% in October). CEO Will England called it "a proactive decision." Other October losses: Millennium (-2.3%), Marshall Wace's Eureka strategy (-5.4%), ExodusPoint (-2.4%). Situational Awareness, an AI-focused fund, lost 67% of its value in July and sold most holdings to Citadel.

Why it matters: Crowded, leveraged AI positions can force simultaneous selling across funds — "a test of liquidity, risk controls and survival," as the semiconductor index fell as much as 11% on Thursday, its steepest drop since March 2020.

Source: AI free-fall triggers another major hedge fund shakeout — Investing.com/Yahoo

Thursday's Nasdaq selloff (-5.5%, its worst session in 19 months) wiped roughly $3 trillion off S&P 500 companies' value, with Nvidia down over 9% and semiconductors down more than 12%. Tech-heavy long-short hedge funds lost over 4% that day, per Goldman data cited by Reuters — their 2026 returns are now roughly flat, down from as high as 24% in June.

Why it matters: The piece argues institutional selling is often driven by risk limits and leverage rather than company value, giving patient individual investors an edge: "Your advantage over Wall Street is not knowing what happens next."

Source: AI Stocks Just Lost Trillions — Barchart/Yahoo

Asia rebounds, but thinly. Nikkei rose 3.4% and Kospi 1.5% Monday after Friday's ~6% drop, while Nasdaq futures ticked up just 0.3% ahead of Tuesday's CPI test. BeInCrypto

US futures climb, Taiwan leads Asia's rebound. Taiwan's Weighted Index jumped nearly 6% on a TSMC/Foxconn rebound, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.42% and 0.18%. Retail traders dumped the most stocks since Covid on Thursday and "haven't proven to be the dip buyers," says Schwab's Liz Ann Sonders. CNBC

Oil's Iran risk isn't gone. Brent held near $98 after a 12.5% weekly drop, but former Biden adviser Amos Hochstein puts the odds of renewed US-Iran conflict above 50/50. BeInCrypto

Money supply hit a record, bitcoin didn't follow. US M2 reached $23.34 trillion in August, the fastest growth pace since 2022, even as bitcoin slipped this week. BeInCrypto

Gold climbs on Iran peace hopes. Gold recovered above $4,020 despite a blowout October jobs report that lifted December rate-hike odds to 79.6%. FXStreet

Bitcoin fell below roughly $76,200 and is trying to stabilise near $74,500, moving within a descending channel of lower highs. $76,200 is now resistance — reclaiming it would be a first encouraging sign, with $78,200 (the channel's upper boundary) marking a more meaningful shift and further resistance near $83,500. If $74,500 breaks, Varri points to the $72,600–$74,500 zone, where horizontal support meets a long-term descending trendline near $72,530.

Ethereum lost the rising trendline that had supported its recovery since May, dropping roughly 5% below $2,330 toward the $2,200 area, trading around $2,250 at the time of writing; $2,180 is the key downside level, with resistance at $2,334, then $2,388, then $2,539.

Varri says the downtrend hasn't clearly ended — buyers now need to reclaim lost levels, not just defend new support, with the central question being whether demand can stabilise prices or whether the rebounds are just pauses in a broader correction.

Source: Bitcoin and Ethereum extend their decline as key support levels give way — Kaupr Trendline

Nvidia's board launched an independent investigation Sunday, led by independent directors and outside legal counsel, after reports that Huang was targeted by a Chinese intelligence operation. Bloomberg and others reported Huang had sent an internal message admitting an affair with Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based chip firm Megaspeed — writing "there is no excuse for what I did." A memo circulated among US policymakers earlier this year alleged she had been recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to spy on him.

Why it matters: The board says it has "no reason to believe" national security or company secrets were compromised and retains confidence in Huang's leadership — but the episode lands as AI chips sit at the center of the US-China trade war, and Huang holds unusually close ties to the Trump administration.

Source: Nvidia says it's investigating CEO Jensen Huang's relationship with possible Chinese spy — TechCrunch

In ARK Invest's monthly video Friday, Cathie Wood said Dario Amodei's warnings of massive AI-driven job losses and a 10% chance of human extinction within a decade fed this year's gloomy AI headlines — "I can't understand why he's been saying it." The comment lands days after the Nasdaq fell 5.52% on November 5 as Democrats' midterm sweep raised fears of data-center restrictions; voters backed limits in 39 of 45 data-center ballot measures.

Why it matters: Wood points to Ramp data showing the top 1% of companies spend nearly $10,000 per worker a month on AI, versus $15 for most — a gap she argues shows AI adoption is still early, not overhyped. ARK Invest is itself an Anthropic investor.

Source: Cathie Wood Blames Anthropic's CEO for AI Panic — BeInCrypto

Finance Norway held its annual payments and digitalisation conference on 5–6 November. Kaupr was on site and live-blogged throughout the conference with individual articles after the key talks.

AI agents could handle a third of online shopping by 2030, agentic banking is arriving in the Nordics, and the tokenisation of securities and bank money is underway. Norges Bank Says the Financial Industry Needs a Tokenisation Strategy
The Norwegian financial industry should have a strategy for meeting and using tokenisation, according to Norges Bank – just as the central bank itself should. Tokenisation and traditional technology may end up coexisting in the financial industry going forward.

Why it matters: Kaupr live-blogged the conference on LinkedIn and kaupr.io — via the link you can find Kaupr's own coverage that mattered most, and links to 10 articles.

Source: Agentic finance and tokenisation defined the payments conference — Kaupr

DNB director Ole Morten Sunde, who leads the bank's tokenisation work, told Finance Norway's payments and digitalisation conference that collaboration between banks and regulators is becoming essential. He said payments and securities — separate value chains for decades — can now meet on the same digital register, built on blockchain technology, with ongoing projects already solving the classic challenge of moving bank money directly across banks, central banks and currencies.

Why it matters: Sunde frames tokenisation as collapsing two previously separate worlds — payments and securities — onto one shared register, calling the resulting freedom to move money across banks and borders a "win-win-win" for customers, banks and society.

Source: DNB: Bank-regulator collaboration key to solving tokenisation — Kaupr

Swedish exchange Safello posted an operating profit of SEK 0.8 million in Q3 2026 — its first profitable quarter since Q4 2024 — even as net turnover fell 41% year-on-year to SEK 98.4 million. Costs fell by roughly the same proportion, with headcount down to 19 from 33, and gross margin rose to 8.8% on a fee-structure change. Founder Frank Schuil, back as CEO, has focused on cutting costs and launched a "crypto checkout" pilot letting partners offer crypto buying via Safello's API.

Why it matters: Schuil calls it a single data point, not a confirmed turnaround, setting the bar at three consecutive profitable quarters: "Three in a row is a business, and that is the bar we are setting for ourselves."

Source: Safello returns to profit for first time since 2024 — Kaupr

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Wishing you a great Monday — and welcome back tomorrow morning for the next edition of Kaupr Daily.

Best regards
Morten Myrstad
Founder & Editor