© Reuters. “Carl Icahn” admits to a huge investment mistake that cost him $ 9 billion
American investor and billionaire Carl Icahn has admitted he was wrong in betting on a market crash, which has cost his group nearly $9 billion over nearly six years.
According to an analysis conducted by the “Financial Times” newspaper, the investor lost about $1.8 billion in 2017, pumping it into building hedging positions, which could have brought him gains only if asset prices fell, before losing about another $7 billion between 2018 and 2018. and 2023.
“I have always told people that no one can predict the market in the short or medium term, and I may have been wrong not to heed my advice in recent years,” Icahn said, discussing the analysis with the newspaper.
Billionaire Icahn Enterprises began betting aggressively on a market crash in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and has become more aggressive in recent years, deploying a complex strategy that included short selling of market indices, corporate stocks, commercial mortgages and debt securities.
At times, Icahn’s exposure or the underlying value of the securities he was betting on exceeded $15 billion, and he commented, “You’ll never get the perfect hedge, and if I kept to the standards I’ve always believed in, I’d be fine, but I didn’t.” “.
He added that he thought the market was going through big problems, but the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars into the market to fight “Covid,” stressing the validity of the old saying “Don’t fight the Fed.”
The losses resulting from these ill-fated trades put Icahn in a difficult position and threatened to undermine his reputation and standing as one of the most influential and “feared by Wall Street” activist investors.
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