“Silicon Valley Bank’s failure is just what happens when a tech bubble bursts,” says Nate Koppikar, co-founder of San Francisco–based hedge fund Orso Partners, who was short (that is, betting against) the bank’s stock for more than a year before it failed.

The abrupt collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week came as a surprise to nearly all the denizens of the venture-capital world.ĭespite all the big brains who did business with the tech-industry stalwart, almost no one seemed to be aware that the bank would have been in deep trouble months earlier had it not been for an arcane accounting rule that allowed it to ignore the losses (then still on paper) in its investment portfolio.īut there were a few investors who did see the bank’s collapse coming.