In 2007, investments in risky US mortgages went sour as homeowners struggled to pay. Funds run by Bear Stearns, BNP Paribas and other banks either had to freeze the ability of investors to take out their money, or liquidate the funds completely.
These problems were the canaries in what proved to be a very deep financial coal mine. As nervousness spread, even banks eventually stopped lending to each other for fear of not getting their money back, creating a so-called “credit crunch”. That caused a global financial crisis.
Fast forward to today.
Several funds which lend money have declared losses or restricted investors’ ability to take out their money. BlackRock, Blackstone, Apollo and Blue Owl have all faced demands for billions of withdrawals from private credit funds - institutions that provide an alternative to traditional banks.
Those are some…interesting names. Could these be attempts to pull the rug before an AI crash? I’m genuinely asking as I have no clue how funds work
Its not a rug pull, most of these investment companies function just like banks, but instead of giving out loans, they invest most of the money that their clients(people like you and i) put into them into the stock market, and give the clients a cut of the profits. Just like banks, most of the capital these funds manage is not directly available, its in stocks, options, bonds, etc… Say you want to cut your losses that the from your investment with that fund, thats no problem! They’ve got some cash reserves, and can immediately give you your money, and sell the shares later, you know run a minimal loss. But if more people start doing it, the fund will gradually become less powerful, less appealing and it will start to turn a loss that can not be recuperated with the profits off selling shares they own. How appealing/powerful they are directly depends on how much money they manage, because who trusts someone that says "yoo i can make you a lotta money man, gimme like a 100 bucks, whilst being broke and homeless.
Then, why invest your money in these funds, well, for one, they are enormous, can make much bigger investments and make much more money, and in turn you get a bigger cut. Secondly ivesting is very risky, but thesr guys have a litteral army of trained professionals that know more about this stuff than you and i will ever. They sell a security guarentee, like yeah we can invest your money, make a tiny bit of profit, but in turn, if something goes wrong you wont lose your life savings. Many even sell a warranty returns of 95 to 100% of the money you invest into them.
So to round things out, its not a rug pull, but its also not good. People do not trust the current economy and think its too volatile and think that whatever stocks their life savings are can at any moment plummet in the coming years. They think its much safer to take the money out and put it in a bank somewhere, thus shrinking the economy and exasturbating the problem. It is the meme, it is a recession indicator.
Edit : explanation was kinda garbadge, updated it to make sense