No, they took risk by buying long dated bonds which had X% yield rather than short dated ones which had close to 0% yield.
It was a huge gamble.
It was a huge gamble.
Was it a "huge gamble"? NO! Banks are literally in the business of long duration.
The Feds were draining liquidity at the fastest rate in recent history and they did this right after an extremely over leveraged bull run leaving the entire system very fragile.
A collapse was inevitable, SVB just happened to get the short end of the stick and yes they put themselves in that position through incompetence/arrogance.
If not SVB, it could've been maybe a bank over exposed to the commercial real-estate market or literally any other area left too fragile.