The USD 20 bn “firesale” of Chinese and US tech stocks last week is the doing of hedge fund Archegos Capital Management, which defaulted on margin calls by a number of prime brokerages last week following a tumble in ViacomCBS and several tech stocks to which the fund was highly exposed, the Financial Times reports. Having been slower to offload equity blocks than Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Japanese bank Nomura are likely to suffer losses, with Credit Suisse insiders saying the bank could lose in the realm of USD 3-4 bn, and the bank saying losses “could be highly significant and material to [their] first-quarter results.” Further block sell-offs could ensue in coming days, hedge fund managers said, as other funds wind down overleveraged positions.

But how did Archegos amass such an overleveraged portfolio to begin with? Most of the money was provided by banks in swaps, or contracts-for-difference agreements, meaning Archegos may not have owned most of the securities underlying its stocks, Bloomberg reports. The types of derivatives used by Archegos are made off of exchange markets, meaning the company is not bound by market rules to disclose holdings of more than 5%, and future transactions, in a US-listed company.

MEANWHILE: Visa is jumping on the crypto bandwagon, saying yesterday that it will now support payments in cryptocurrency USD Coin as part of a pilot program with payment platform Crypto.com, in the latest sign that crypto is going mainstream, Reuters reports.

The EGX30 fell 1.2% yesterday on turnover of EGP 1.1 bn (24.7% below the 90-day average). Local investors were net buyers. The index is down 1.0% YTD.

In the green: EFG Hermes (+3.0%), Pioneers (+2.0%) and GB Auto (+1.8%).

In the red: Eastern Co. (-3.6%), CIB (-2.5%) and Heliopolis Housing (-2.3%).