It was a routine regulatory filing, the kind hedge funds must make every three months, where Melvin Capital first showed its hand.
“13F表格”是一份常规的监管文件，对冲基金每三个月必须提交一次该文件，而梅尔文资本(Melvin Capital)就是在这份文件中首次暴露了自己的持仓。
The “Form 13F” filing that landed on August 14 last year listed 91 positions it held at the end of the second quarter, including shareholdings in household names from Microsoft and Amazon to Crocs and Domino’s Pizza. Halfway down the list: an apparently innocuous bet against GameStop, a struggling video game retailer.
梅尔文于去年8月14日提交的这份“13F表格”列出了该公司截至去年第二季度末持有的91笔头寸，其中包括在一些知名企业持有的股份，如微软(Microsoft)、亚马逊(Amazon)、卡骆驰(Crocs)和达美乐比萨(Domino's Pizza)。在该表单的中间位置，有一项看似无害的押注，是对一家陷入困境的电子游戏零售商——游戏驿站(GameStop)——的看空押注。
That the New York hedge fund should think GameStop’s shares were going lower was hardly remarkable — many others were betting the same way. Wall Street analysts had sell ratings on the stock and the retailer’s prospects looked grim as gamers switched to downloads. But by using the options market for the bet, which forced it to disclose the position, Melvin had put a target on itself.
这家纽约对冲基金认为游戏驿站的股价将下跌，这在当时并不值得大惊小怪——其他许多公司也做了同样的押注。此前，华尔街分析师对该股给予卖出评级；随着游戏玩家改为从互联网上下载游戏，该公司前景看上去十分黯淡。但梅尔文利用期权市场进行押注——这要求它必须披露该头寸——使它成为了靶子。
An eagled-eyed Reddit user called Stonksflyingup was not the only one to spot Melvin’s position, but they might have been the most prescient. In an October 27 video posted on the WallStreetBets message board — titled “GME Squeeze and the Demise of Melvin Capital”, using GameStop’s three-letter stock market ticker — the Redditor used a scene from TV show Chernobyl to portray Melvin as a nuclear reactor that would blow up when its bet against GameStop went wrong.
眼尖的Reddit用户“Stonksflyingup”并不是唯一发现梅尔文持有这一头寸的人，但他们可能是最有先见之明的人。在去年10月27日发布在WallStreetBets板块上的一段名为《游戏驿站股票逼空与梅尔文的覆灭》(GME Squeeze and the Demise of Melvin Capital)的视频中，这名Reddit用户用电视剧《切尔诺贝利》(Chernobyl)中的一个场景，将梅尔文描绘为一个核反应堆，当它对游戏驿站的押注出问题时，这个核反应堆就会爆炸。
Within six months, half of Melvin’s $13bn fund had been wiped out.
在不到6个月的时间里，梅尔文管理的130亿美元资金就损失了一半。
The David-and-Goliath narrative of the events, in which retail investors organised on Reddit overwhelmed the short-sellers who had bet against GameStop, has captured the imagination far beyond Wall Street. To many in the hedge fund industry, however, the tale has raised the more prosaic question of why Melvin left itself so exposed and why it didn’t reverse out of the trade earlier — questions it will ultimately have to answer to its clients.
散户投资者在Reddit上组织起来，对抗押注游戏驿站下跌的卖空者。这一被叙写为“大卫与歌利亚”(David-and-Goliath)的事件，引发的关注远远超出了华尔街的范围。然而，对于对冲基金行业中的许多人来说，这个事件引发了一个更为平淡的问题：为什么梅尔文让自己如此暴露在风险之下？为什么它没有更早退出这项交易? 这些都是梅尔文最终将不得不给其客户一个交代的问题。