Forbes – Financial Treason & Crime

GRACE BLAKELEY, 13 June 2021

Last year, during the peak of the global pandemic, the world created more than seven hundred new billionaires. In the year since, another five hundred have been created — but the total wealth on the Forbes list has increased from $5 trillion to $13 trillion, the largest increase ever recorded in any one-year period. China topped the list for the highest number of new billionaires, with the United States coming in second.

Meanwhile, global GDP shrank by 3.3 percent in 2020 and unemployment rates are around 1.5 percentage points higher than they were before the pandemic in most economies. This doesn’t simply raise moral questions about the distribution of wealth during a pandemic — it requires us to ask exactly how those at the top are doing so well while demand in the global economy is so subdued. Continue reading “Article: Corporate Welfare Props Up the Billionaire Class”

04/20/202104/21/2021

Article: 14 Critical Lessons Investors Can Learn From The GameStop Story

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14 Critical Lessons Investors Can Learn From The GameStop Story

Forbes Finance Council, 20 April 2021

Investing in the stock market comes with risks, especially in the age of social media. Valuable information that every investor should be aware of—including the occasional volatility of the stock market as well as investment nuances such as short selling—came into the spotlight recently when Redditors banded together to inflate the prices of retailer GameStop’s (GME) stock.

As well as serving as a refresher on stock market basics, the GameStop situation is also a signpost pointing to emerging trends in investment and fintech. Current and would-be stock market investors can take away some important lessons from this story. Below, 14 members of Forbes Finance Council share what every investor should learn from the GameStop stock saga.

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03/28/202103/29/2021

Article: The Firm Behind The $30 Billion Firesale Shaking Financial Markets Disclosed Almost Nothing

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The Firm Behind The $30 Billion Firesale Shaking Financial Markets Disclosed Almost Nothing

Antoine Gara, 28 March 2021

Up until recently, the website of Archegos Capital Management, the firm behind a reported $30 billion financial firesale that is battering stocks worldwide, contained a giant image of Central Park. The vista displayed on Archegos’ webpage was a fitting homage to the views of its offices atop a Manhattan skyscraper on 57th street, until the site was taken down as the firm gets liquidated.

Archegos was a giant in U.S. financial markets, apparently holding tens of billions of dollars in securities, including massive exposures to companies like ViacomCBS, Discovery Communications and Baidu. It traded with Wall Street’s largest brokerages, and was headquartered at an expensive address housing many powerhouse investment firms. But when it came to routine financial disclosures, Archegos was virtually non-existent.

Forbes searched for a trace of Archegos on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s repository for securities filings, called EDGAR, short for Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval. Amazingly, almost nothing came up. Continue reading “Article: The Firm Behind The $30 Billion Firesale Shaking Financial Markets Disclosed Almost Nothing”

06/07/201503/20/2021

Article: Forbes Flashback: How George Soros Broke The British Pound And Why Hedge Funds Probably Can’t Crack The Euro

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Forbes Flashback: How George Soros Broke The British Pound And Why Hedge Funds Probably Can’t Crack The Euro

Forbes, 07 June 2015

Greek citizens voted against further austerity measures demanded by the Troika financing their rescue package, casting even more doubt on the country’s future as a member of the eurozone and throwing bond and currency markets into an uproar.

The euro has plunged from $1.20 to $1.09 this year (see chart). The feared unraveling of the currency – which, admittedly, would take a lot more than Greece’s departure – calls to mind another currency fiasco from the early 1990s, when George Soros and a group of other investors that included fellow hedge fund managers Paul Tudor Jones and Bruce Kovner, bet against a central bank’s ability to hold the line on its currency.

Forbes took a deep dive into that trade in the November 9, 1992 issue, illuminating how Soros made $1.5 billion in just a single month by betting the British pound and several other European currencies were priced too richly against the German deutsche mark.

The entire group cashed in big-time. Jones’ funds made $250 million, while Kovner’s Caxton Corp. rang the register to the tune of $300 million, but no one made more than Soros, who cleared $1.5 billion in that fateful month of September. (The score made Soros’ legend and swelled his firm’s coffers; assets under management jumped to $7 billion, from $3.3 billion, by mid-October 1992, and to $11 billion by the end of 1993.)

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