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Matthias Knab, Opalesque for New Managers: Mancala Capital Partners, the New York-based long/short equity manager led by Amir Zabeti, has told investors that its short positions tied to the AI-infrastructure trade returned 148.66% after fees in a single day, according to an email obtained by Opalesque.
The November letter, sent on November 9 under the subject line "Our NVDA short update", is headed "The unwind we wrote about in July +148.66%" and opens with a GIF of a man at a desk captioned "So I was right."
Shorts in Nvidia and CoreWeave
Zabeti, Managing Director and CIO, writes that the past two weeks have been hard on holders of what he calls the market's most crowded trade, with semiconductors leading the Nasdaq lower and the AI-infrastructure trade "being repriced in real time."
According to the letter, the firm acted on that view in a "concentrated sleeve." Across positions tied to the thesis, including shorts in CoreWeave and Nvidia, Mancala says it returned 148.66% after fees in one day. A "defensive consumer position" in Walmart, which Zabeti says he discussed on Hedge Fund Alpha, returned 141.54%, "making it a win on both sides," the letter says.
The letter does not state which instruments were used, how large the sleeve is relative to the fund, or what the move meant for the overall portfolio. A straightforward short in a stock cannot gain more than 100%, and a long position in Walmart rising more than 140% in a day would be unusual, which suggests the figures refer to options or leveraged exposure measured against a small capital base. The disclaimer at the foot of the email also states that all data is as of April 2026 and that "Mancala & Manager/s may/may not hold positions in the securities discussed", while the body of the letter refers to the firm's short positions in the present tense.
According to Preqin, Mancala Capital Partners was established in 2024 and runs a single long/short equity fund.
The private credit thesis
Zabeti ties the trade to the firm's private credit short thesis, published in April and updated in July as version 2.0. Excerpts reproduced in the letter describe Nvidia as, in Mancala's view, the most overvalued and most systemically important point of failure in the AI financing chain. The report argues that customer concentration and circular funding, with startups backed by Nvidia recycling capital back into its chips, mean the same dollar can show up as an Nvidia investment, an Nvidia sale and an Nvidia customer. It contrasts chips with a useful life of two to six years against data center leases of 15 to 19 years and the 30-year liabilities of the insurers and pension funds financing them.
The letter also points to the roughly USD500m portfolio of data center loans put up for auction last week, which it calls "this SoftBank dump." Bloomberg's initial report did not name the seller, and subsequent reports, citing Bloomberg, identified it as Dutch bank ING. The dozen loans include debt tied to Vantage Data Centers and CyrusOne, as well as a USD25m slice financing the Stargate campus in New Mexico, a venture in which SoftBank is a partner. Bids are due November 19.
Nvidia under scrutiny
Zabeti also references the reports about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Alice Huang (no relation), an executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, one of Nvidia's large customers in Southeast Asia, whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe to be an asset of China's Ministry of State Security. Commerce Department officials have been investigating whether Megaspeed helped Chinese firms circumvent U.S. export restrictions. Jensen Huang has since acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife, and Nvidia's board said on Sunday it is opening an independent investigation, which Huang has said he supports. Nvidia has said his interactions with Alice Huang were ordinary customer contacts and that no trade secrets or national security information were shared, and Beijing has dismissed the espionage allegations as smears.
The letter adds its own commentary, asking "How great is that for Nvidia lovers?" and saying "let's see how the divorce plays out", alongside an image of Huang captioned "nervous and embarrassed."
"When the crowd zigs, we zag"
Zabeti uses the letter to criticise long-only funds that, he says, ran large, leveraged books with little risk control, calling that approach the "dumbest idea", and contrasts it with Mancala's long/short structure. "Being early looks a lot like being wrong until it doesn't," he writes, adding that the firm does not give advice but "takes action" within its risk management.
He also thanks journalists who supported the thesis and says he is "truly sorry for those who ignored us." The letter closes by inviting readers to download the original report from the firm's website and signs off with a quotation attributed to Bruce Lee.
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