The Pomp Podcast · Oct 17, 2026 · 1h · 51m saved
With Jordi Visser, Macro Investor and Author of the VisserLabs Substack; former CIO of Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers
Photo via institutionalinvestor.com
Lone Pine Capital was up more than 40% in the first half of the year and had given all of it back by the end of September. Jordi Visser, a macro investor and former CIO of Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers, told Anthony Pompliano on The Pomp Podcast that losses like that are the real story of 2026's market stress.
Most of the market's worry is about an AI bubble. Jordi's view is that the leverage being forced out of the system belongs to hedge funds, not to AI.
"The only leverage that I see in the system that is being knocked out is hedge funds." — Jordi Visser
Jordi spent more than 30 years on Wall Street before leaving the hedge fund business, and he now writes the VisserLabs Substack on AI, crypto and macro.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 1 hour of audio, 9 minutes of reading.
Here are the 8 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Hedge-fund leverage, not AI, is what the market is forcing out, in Jordi's view
Lone Pine gave back a first-half gain of more than 40% by the end of September
AI's builders are funded by Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta, which Jordi says are not defaulting
Tokenization could free capital trapped in private credit, endowments and BDCs
Money-market funds have grown 70% since 2022, against 56% for bank deposits
Bitcoin is Jordi's hedge against his own thesis that AI disrupts everything else
Anthropic's revenue growth should slow from about 10x this year to 3–3.5x next, both men expect
CPI does not move markets unless people lose their jobs, Jordi argues
1. Hedge Funds Are Unwinding
Jordi drew a line from the 1998 collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, which he watched from Brazil and then New York, to this year's hedge-fund losses. The Fed did not bail out LTCM. About 14 banks and funds pooled roughly $4 billion to unwind its book.
Jordi Visser sees the LTCM pattern of forced deleveraging repeating in 2026
"You are making a bet as to how long your investors will stay with you... We are watching leverage come out of the system." — Jordi Visser
Lone Pine's reversal came in a quarter when the S&P 500 rose only 2% and the VIX never spiked, which implies the fund was up more than 50% before it gave the gain back. He also pointed to a fund called Vera AI, reportedly down more than 40% in July. Most hedge funds other than Citadel and the market makers, in his account, profit from structural mispricings using heavy leverage. AI agents can now do "everything that a hedge fund can do," which shortens how long those mispricings last.
Jordi Visser left the hedge fund business rather than compete with AI
"I have no interest in being in a competition against artificial intelligence, which everyone who's staying in the [hedge fund] industry is competing." — Jordi Visser
He expects the deleveraging to run for years, because demand for AI infrastructure keeps outrunning the market's ability to finance it. He cited Gartner's visibility on compute orders out to 2030.
