Tag: GameStop

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Article: Market manipulation using pump-and-dump strategy

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Market manipulation using pump-and-dump strategy

CFA SOCIETY SINGAPORE ADVOCACY TEAM, 31 March 2021

CONSIDER this hypothetical scenario: In an effort to pump up the price of his holdings in a loss-making distributor of electronic games, Steve Wong logs on to several investor chat rooms on the Internet to start rumours that the company is about to expand its distribution network to untapped overseas markets, in anticipation of tie-ups with big local champions in their respective domestic markets. Continue reading “Article: Market manipulation using pump-and-dump strategy”

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Article: Fraudsters Siphon $100 Million In COVID Relief Through Online Investment Platforms

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Fraudsters Siphon $100 Million In COVID Relief Through Online Investment Platforms

PYMNTS, 30 March 2021


Scammers stealing from government-funded pandemic relief programs have found a new trick — opening accounts with at least four online investment platforms, CNBC reported Monday (March 29).

Law enforcement officials say digital platforms are an easy way to dump money into stolen identity accounts.

Authorities say over $100 million in fraudulent funds reportedly passed through investment accounts in the time since Congress passed the CARES Act last March.

Among the platforms allegedly used by thieves are Robinhood, TD Ameritrade, E-Trade and Fidelity, according to law enforcement.

“The thieves are loving this stuff. This has been the financial crime bonanza act of 2021,” said Charles Intriago, a money-laundering expert and former federal prosecutor, according to CNBC. Continue reading “Article: Fraudsters Siphon $100 Million In COVID Relief Through Online Investment Platforms”

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Article: How Goldman And Other Wall Street Giants Loaned Billions To Someone Who Traded Like A Meme Stock Gambler

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How Goldman And Other Wall Street Giants Loaned Billions To Someone Who Traded Like A Meme Stock Gambler

Kevin Dowd,  29 March 2021

Imagine if Goldman Sachs GS -0.5% lent a billion dollars to RoaringKitty.

News about margin calls is once again roiling markets. Except this time, instead of industry outsiders like Robinhood and RoaringKitty, a leading GameStop bull on WallStreetBets subreddit, the drama centers on traditional giants of the financial establishment. Continue reading “Article: How Goldman And Other Wall Street Giants Loaned Billions To Someone Who Traded Like A Meme Stock Gambler”

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Article: These 2 Meme Stocks Won’t Survive the Next Stock Market Crash

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These 2 Meme Stocks Won’t Survive the Next Stock Market Crash

Leo Sun,  26 March 2021

The Reddit-fueled short squeezes of GameStop (NYSE:GME) and other heavily shorted stocks earlier this year thrust the idea of “meme stocks” — equities that get aggressively promoted on social media platforms — into the broader market’s spotlight.

Some of those meme stocks actually have solid underlying businesses that could allow them to resist a market downturn. However, there are plenty of others with businesses that can’t possibly support their frothy valuations. Let’s take a look at two meme stocks that will likely burn their shareholders the next time the market stumbles.

1. Naked Brand
Shares of Naked Brand Group (NASDAQ:NAKD), a New Zealand-based retailer of intimate apparel and swimwear, surged from about $0.07 last October to an all-time high of $3.40 in late January. Nearly everyone who chased that rally and hung on got burned — the stock now trades at about $0.77 per share.

Naked’s rally had nothing to do with its fundamentals. It was identified as a short squeeze target on Reddit, and its name was cited in discussions about “naked shorting” — the illegal practice of shorting a stock without borrowing it first. Those discussions inexplicably evolved into a movement to promote the stock on Reddit, which caused it to rally alongside GameStop and other meme stocks in January.

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Article: Report: Robinhood Is Building A Platform To Democratize IPOs

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Report: Robinhood Is Building A Platform To Democratize IPOs

Sarah Hansen, 25 March 2021

Robinhood is working on a platform that will allow its users to buy into initial public offerings, Reuters exclusively reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the process, marking another push by the popular investment app to democratize investment opportunities that are traditionally only available to big banks and Wall Street firms.

The allocation of IPO shares is a complex process—it doesn’t happen the same way for every listing and can depend on the type of industry and market conditions at the time. In general, the majority of available shares go to institutional investors. Some shares can also be reserved for retail investors, who are then able to buy them through their brokerage firms. More established and wealthier retail investors often have a better chance of receiving IPO shares than lay people, especially in popular listings. Continue reading “Article: Report: Robinhood Is Building A Platform To Democratize IPOs”

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Article: In Cramer We Trust

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In Cramer We Trust

HARRISON R. T. WARD,  24 March 2021

Without trust, markets break down. The U.S. dollar is a fiat currency, which means that its value is derived from the trust we ascribe to our government; as that trust wanes, Americans turn away from traditional financial institutions. During the 2008 financial crisis, many everyday Americans, unsure of who to trust, took their money out of banks en masse. Large commercial banks began to fail; by 2012, almost 450 banks had collapsed. Today, deep into a historic pandemic and recession marked by political division, Americans’ trust is waning again.

On Jan. 27, a group of amateur traders helped push the stock of struggling video game retailer Gamestop to a price of $347 per share. Alarmed, financial experts took to the air to warn against what Alan Greenspan, former chair of the Federal Reserve, calls “irrational exuberance” — an unreasonable, optimistic view that the market will keep rising. Jim J. Cramer ’77, host of CNBC’s finance show “Mad Money,” was of those exasperated experts — “People begin to think, ‘Are prices real?’” he exclaimed on the air. Continue reading “Article: In Cramer We Trust”

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Article: GameStop hearing targets stock lending, social media

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GameStop hearing targets stock lending, social media

Michael Shaw, 23 March 2021

Two issues emerged from a congressional hearing on the volatile trading of GameStop Corp. shares: Lawmakers and regulators need a greater understanding of how technology helped foster the frenzy, and regulators need systems to understand such events — and possibly to manage them.

House Financial Services members and witnesses spent most of their time at the hearing last week focusing on the role of short-selling in the GameStop trading frenzy in January. They specifically looked at the source of securities used to take short positions, and they looked at how a bunch of retail investors seemingly were able to outmaneuver the professionals. Continue reading “Article: GameStop hearing targets stock lending, social media”

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Article: Meme stocks loom large in the CSA’s short-selling review

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Meme stocks loom large in the CSA’s short-selling review

James Langton, 22 March 2021

When a group of retail traders used Reddit to gleefully gang up on a handful of hedge funds in January, giving birth to the concept of “meme” stocks, they cranked up an already simmering debate about proper public discourse related to trading. In Canada, a consultation regarding activist short-sellers is the focus of that debate.

Late last year, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) published a consultation paper on the role and regulation of activist short-sellers — traders who publicly air their negative views on the stocks they’re shorting.

Defenders of the practice maintain that vocal short-sellers are the only thing standing between unrelenting upside hype and ordinary investors — i.e., their skepticism and scrutiny help expose corporate fraud and misconduct, aiding naive regulators and investors alike. Continue reading “Article: Meme stocks loom large in the CSA’s short-selling review”

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Article: Why Is Everyone (Still) Talking About GameStop Stock?

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Why Is Everyone (Still) Talking About GameStop Stock?

Keith Noonan, 19 March 2021

GameStop (NYSE:GME) has to be 2021’s most interesting stock. The video game retailer started to pick up momentum ahead of the launch of new game consoles from Sony and Microsoft last year, and over the past two months, short-squeeze mania and other big developments have led to incredible swings for the the company’s share price.

GameStop’s stock climbed as high as $483 per share during the height of short-squeeze mania. While the stock briefly returned to trading in the range of $50 per share, it’s bounced back once again and traded at $201.75 at Thursday’s close. That price represents a 971% increase year to date and a 4,715% increase from the $4.19 share price the stock had one year ago.

Why is GameStop surging, and what comes next?

How did we get here?
The start of GameStop’s improbable, supercharged rally can be traced back to the introduction of Sony’s PlayStation 5 console and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S platforms in 2020. New console launches have historically led to a cyclical upcycle for GameStop’s business and stock performance.

Pricing momentum created by the new hardware launches was further intensified by news that activist investor and Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen was amassing a large stake in the company and would advocate for pushing the business toward an e-commerce focus.

From there, Reddit’s WallStreetBets group began championing the stock as a potential target for a huge short squeeze. Social media users noticed that enormous short interest had amassed against GameStop — and that a massive run for the stock could potentially be generated through a bit of favorable news and coordinated buying.

Prior to the first major short squeeze, GameStop had about 50 million shares of its stock outstanding. At the same time, roughly 70 million shares of the company’s stock had been sold short — meaning that investors had placed bets against more shares of the company’s stock than actually existed.

Short interest exceeding the company’s actual outstanding share count was made possible through a practice called naked short selling, which allows bets to be placed against shares that haven’t actually been borrowed. WallStreetBets members wound up being right about the squeeze, and GameStop bulls notched incredible gains as short-sellers were forced to buy back the stock at elevated levels in hopes of avoiding massive losses.

A combination of continued short-squeeze momentum and indications that the company would be aggressively pursuing its pivot to online retail have added new chapters to the story of GameStop’s incredible rally, and it currently stands as one of the best-performing stocks of the year. Cohen has been appointed chairman of a new committee to accelerate the business’s online retail push, a bounce for the stock has once again attracted new short interest, and the GameStop saga rages on.

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Article: GameStop stock surge lingo: Here’s what Reddit’s WallStreetBets vocabulary means

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GameStop stock surge lingo: Here’s what Reddit’s WallStreetBets vocabulary means

Katie Conner, 19 March 2021

Reddit’s community, WallStreetBets, is still assisting in the rise of GameStop’s stock, which is currently sitting at $272 per share and even hit an all-time high last week. Reddit users are battling it out with Wall Street to keep GameStop’s stock prices soaring while Wall Street expected a crash. Small investors are using Reddit communities to drive “meme stocks,” causing short sales and https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortsqueeze.asp. And it’s not just GameStop. Other companies, like AMC and Nokia, have also been affected by the coordinated surge.

No, this doesn’t mean you should necessarily drop everything and fully invest in the stock of the moment. Some are calling the market manipulation a “Ponzi scheme,” and the stock price will likely even out once the hullabaloo dies down.

In fact, broker TD Ameritrade restricted trading of the GameStop and AMC stocks on Jan. 26 and continues to post an advisory note to clients about market volatility. Trading app Robinhood followed suit on Jan. 27 in response to the runaway growth — the company got itself into trouble by restricting stock trades and will be closely reviewed by the SEC (It’s currently limiting buys on AMC and GameStop stocks). The White House has said it’s monitoring the situation.

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Article: Stop the Game!: How To Chill Bubbles Sensibly

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Stop the Game!: How To Chill Bubbles Sensibly

John C. Coffee Jr., 17 March 2021

Much of the excited journalism on GameStop has focused on its asserted “Democratization” of the markets or the new “populism” sweeping Wall Street. This sort of commentary is the product of journalists being on tight publication deadlines and willing to generalize based on a data sample of one. Those of us who take a longer-term view see it differently: Bubbles are bad; GameStop was a bubble; and the influences that caused it (which were indeed new and novel) need to be chilled. Those who disagree with the last sentence should probably stop reading here.

But how you chill a bubble is not a simple question. Many commentators have unrealistic solutions: (1) Prosecute everyone (or at least those on Reddit) for manipulation; and (2) subject websites to tight regulatory controls. Such solutions, proposed by those who can reach legal conclusions faster than the average knee can jerk, face formidable obstacles. First, manipulation is a crime of intent that requires the actor to attempt willfully to move a stock price (up or down) to an “artificial” price that the actor knows is different than that which would be reached by the normal intersection of supply and demand in a fully informed market. Currently, the circuits are split, but both the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second Circuit and D.C. Circuit insist that the defendant must intentionally send a false pricing signal (such as a wash sale or a factually false statement). See Fezzandi v. Bear Stearns & Co., 777 F.3d 566 (2d Cir. 2015); Koch v. SEC, 793 F.3d 147 (D.C. Cir. 2015). Second, the First Amendment largely precludes any attempt to shut down social media. In addition, §230 of the Communications Decency Act gives immunity to websites, such as Reddit, for what their users say on them. Beyond that, mere statements of opinion—even manic opinions—are not fraudulent. Most of the lost souls on WallStreetBets sound like true believers, not cynical manipulators, and their prediction that GameStop was “going to the moon” were silly, but not fraudulent. According to Motley Fool, the average investor in a Robinhood account had an account balance (in 2020) between $1,000 and $5,000. A colleague tells me that his account balance on Draft Kings (a different betting venue) is greater than that. In short, Robinhood’s investors are not big-time and are probably feeling their losses keenly at this point.

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Article: A long list of Anson short positions.Good post on Stockhouse here

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A long list of Anson short positions.Good post on Stockhouse here

u/Rubarbarbara, Reddit, 17 March 2021

I have the full post below:We all know how the dirty rats at Anson Funds work. Wash trading, down ticking, spoofing among a host of other dirty tricks the banks let them get away with.

Then we have their army of social media bashers, their relationships with Nate Anderson at Hindenburg Research, Ben Axler at Sprucepoint Capital Management and Andrew Left at Citron Research, amongst many others. All of them in the pay of Moez and Anson Funds.

All working together to destroy companies and profit off their illegal deals.

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Article: Column: Forget GameStop and short sellers — the SEC says ‘OCMillionaire’ manipulated a worthless stock higher

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Column: Forget GameStop and short sellers — the SEC says ‘OCMillionaire’ manipulated a worthless stock higher

Michael Hiltzik, 17 March 2021

If you’ve been following the ludicrous saga of trading in GameStop shares, you’ve probably heard about how short sellers try to profit by manipulating stocks to fall in price.

But that’s not the only way people try to play the market.

The Securities and Exchange Commission just unveiled fraud charges against a trader allegedly trying to profit by manipulating a stock higher.

He’s Andrew Fassari, a 33-year-old Orange County resident. According to the SEC, he staged a vigorous campaign in December using the Twitter handle “OCMillionaire” to suck penny-stock investors into shares of Arcis Resources Corp., which had been defunct for years.

Fraudsters can use online platforms (including social news aggregators, investment research websites, online investment newsletters, ratings websites, message boards, chat rooms, and discussion forums) to spread false or misleading information.

Securities and Exchange Commission

Fassari made $929,693 in his first round of trading in Arcis shares from Dec. 9 through Dec. 16, the SEC says in a complaint unsealed in Los Angeles federal court Monday. He bought back in on Dec. 17 and sold his entire stake the next day, sustaining a loss of $436,312.

Fassari’s overall net gain was $493,381, the SEC says. The agency notes that Arcis never traded higher than about 5 1/2 cents while Fassari was buying, selling and promoting, and often traded for a few tenths of a cent.

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THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?