Wall Street’s Biggest Risk Takers Are Doubling Down

As Wall Street learned Friday evening that Donald Trump is preparing to announce Scott Bessent, who runs macro hedge fund Key Square Group, as his nominee for US Treasury secretary, traders were looking back on a strange week in markets. The buy-everything mania that greeted Trump’s election has been cooling as his finance fanbase begins to consider the consequences of some of his economic plans. Yet on the speculative fringes, the risk-taking extravaganza isn’t just continuing—it’s getting bigger by the day. Heavy trading—and big price moves—in everything from crypto to leveraged exchange-traded funds was the story in a week where swings in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 finally started to abate.

Ground zero for the casino crowd is the $140 billion complex of amped-up exchange-traded funds tracking the likes of Big Tech stocks and Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy. No corner of the juiced-up ETF world saw more action than funds centered on the software firm Saylor transformed into what amounts to a pure-play bet on Bitcoin (more on that below). Two leveraged funds based on the company saw a combined $420 million inflow amid a 24% surge for the underlying stock this week. The popularity of the two funds has led some market-observers to point to a leveraged-loop buying frenzy.