Article: Robinhood’s Big Gamble

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Robinhood’s Big Gamble

Sheelah Kolhatkar, 10 May 2021

Early on the morning of January 19th, Cody Herdman woke to the vibration of his smartphone alarm under his pillow. He immediately checked the finance app Robinhood for the trading price of a company called GameStop. Herdman, who is nineteen, is a freshman computer-science major at Dakota State University, where until recently he played center for the Dakota State Trojans football team, and he had been investing in the stock market for a month.

Robinhood, which offers zero-commission trading in stocks and cryptocurrencies, pitches itself as an enlightened version of Wall Street; its stated mission is to “democratize finance for all.” Herdman’s friend Chase Bradshaw had introduced him to trading on the app, which now consumed much of the time that he used to spend playing video games. Continue reading “Article: Robinhood’s Big Gamble”

Article: Einhorn: “The Market Is Fractured And In The Process Of Breaking Completely”

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Einhorn: “The Market Is Fractured And In The Process Of Breaking Completely”

TYLER DURDEN, 15 April 2021

In many ways, David Einhorn’s Greenlight appears to be back to its “new normal” – in a letter sent to investors, Einhorn writes that Greenlight again underperformed the market and returned -0.1% in the first quarter, badly underperforming the 6.2% return for the S&P 500 index, before proceeding to bash the Fed, broken markets, Chamath and Elon, the basket of short stocks and much more.

That said, even though as Einhorn writes Greenlight made only a handful of portfolio changes and essentially broke even, “a lot happened. In general, the investment environment – especially from mid-February through the end of the quarter – was favorable as value outperformed growth, and interest rates and inflation expectations rose.” Continue reading “Article: Einhorn: “The Market Is Fractured And In The Process Of Breaking Completely””

Article: Is Another Family Office Blowing Up: JPM Dumps 9MM Share Block Of ASO After Hours

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Is Another Family Office Blowing Up: JPM Dumps 9MM Share Block Of ASO After Hours

TYLER DURDEN, 07 April 2021

In the aftermath of the Archegos blow up, the biggest nightmare on Wall Street – where there is never just one cockroach – is that (many) more Archegos-style, highly levered “family office” blow ups are waiting just around the corner.

Well, in a transaction after the close that is sure to spark much heated controversy tonight and tomorrow morning, Bloomberg announced that JPMorgan was offering a 9 million block of Academy Sports and Outdoors (ASO) stock. Since this is virtually identical to what happened two Fridays ago when similar public BWICs by Goldman and other banks proceeded to unwind the Archegos portfolio, the immediate question on everyone’s lips is whether a second highly levered family office has blown up. Continue reading “Article: Is Another Family Office Blowing Up: JPM Dumps 9MM Share Block Of ASO After Hours”

Article: GME Shares Plunge As Company Moves To Sell 3.5M New Shares

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GME Shares Plunge As Company Moves To Sell 3.5M New Shares

TYLER DURDEN, 05 April 2021

More than 2 months have passed since Robinhood shut off trading in Gamestop while the firm’s shares soared past the $400 mark, marking a historic confrontation between an army of GME-hodling “apes” and hedge funds like Melvin Capital, not to mention the mighty hedge fund-market maker Citadel, that would cement GME’s status as a favorite of the “Wall Street Bets” retail-trading army.

But for the first time since the intense retail interest made GME one of the most closely watched tickers on Wall Street, GameStop announced Monday morning that it would issue up to 3.5M new shares in an at-the-money offering. The proceeds will help GME accelerate its pivot to digital, the company said in a prospectus filed with the SEC. Continue reading “Article: GME Shares Plunge As Company Moves To Sell 3.5M New Shares”

Article: Robinhood Restricted-Trading Suits Will Play Out In Florida

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Robinhood Restricted-Trading Suits Will Play Out In Florida

Elise Hansen, 02 April 2021

Dozens of lawsuits against stock-trading app Robinhood over its move to block users from buying shares of GameStop and other volatile stocks will be centralized and moved to the Southern District of Florida, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation said.

Panel Chair Karen K. Caldwell said Thursday that even though the suits have varied defendants and legal claims, there’s enough common ground to centralize the cases. Many of the plaintiffs and all of the defendants supported centralization, the order noted. Continue reading “Article: Robinhood Restricted-Trading Suits Will Play Out In Florida”

Article: GameStop Update | Armstrong Economics

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GameStop Update | Armstrong Economics

Martin Armstrong, 15 March 2021

Gamestop has rallied back during the week of March 8th after all the hoopla. Cyclically, it was 13 years down and it was due for a bounce. Even our pattern recognition models picked up the rally starting in August 2020. Quite frankly, this has all the hallmarks of manipulation, but not what you may think. The classic manipulation is to pump up a market touting some player but the pros have already been in the market. This is how the Buffet manipulation of silver was done in 1998 and even the entire Hunt Brothers silver rally back in 1980. Continue reading “Article: GameStop Update | Armstrong Economics”

Article: Biggest Players In The Short-Selling Game Are Getting A Pass

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Biggest Players In The Short-Selling Game Are Getting A Pass

ERIK SCHATZKER, BRANDON KOCHKODIN, 10 March 2021

It’s in the air again, on Reddit, in Congress, in the C-suite: Hedge funds that get rich off short-selling are the enemy. The odd thing is, the biggest players in the game are getting a pass.

Those would be the asset managers, pension plans and sovereign wealth funds that provide the vast majority of securities used to take bearish positions. Without the likes of BlackRock Inc. and State Street Corp., the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the Kuwait Investment Authority filling such an elemental role, investors such as Gabe Plotkin, whose Melvin Capital Management became a piñata for day traders in the GameStop Corp. saga, wouldn’t have shares to sell short.

“Anytime we short a stock, we locate a borrow,” Plotkin said Feb. 18 at the House Financial Services Committee hearing on the GameStop short squeeze.

“Anytime we short a stock, we locate a borrow,” Plotkin said Feb. 18 at the House Financial Services Committee hearing on the GameStop short squeeze.

There’s plenty to choose from. As of mid-2020, some $24 trillion of stocks and bonds were available for such borrowing, with $1.2 trillion in shares—equal to a third of all hedge-fund assets—actually out on loan, according to the International Securities Lending Association.

It’s a situation that on the surface defies logic. Given the popular belief that short sellers create unjustified losses in some stocks, why would shareholders want to supply the ammunition for attacks against their investments? The explanation is fairly straight forward: By loaning out securities for a small fee plus interest, they can generate extra income that boosts returns. That’s key in an industry where fund managers are paid to beat benchmarks and especially valuable in a world of low yields.

The trade-off is simple: For investors with large, diversified portfolios, a single stock plummeting under the weight of a short-selling campaign has little impact over the long run. And in the nearer term, the greater the number of aggregate bets against a stock—the so-called short interest—the higher the fee a lender can charge.

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Article: Watch Live: GameStop Hearing On Market Manipulation

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Watch Live: GameStop Hearing On Market Manipulation

Jonathan Ponciano,  18 February 2021

A Congressional hearing into the GameStop mania that triggered the largest weekly selloff since late October is underway, with some of the key players in the saga—billionaire Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin, Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev, Reddit Cofounder Steve Huffman and the 34-year-old securities broker behind the Roaring Kitty online persona—all set to testify.

Committee Chair Maxine Waters (D-Mo.) kicked off the hearing by asking Tenev whether he misled investors on January 28 when he denied that Robinhood had a liquidity problem despite raising more than $3 billion in the following days to meet reserve requirements from the Securities & Exchange Commission. Continue reading “Article: Watch Live: GameStop Hearing On Market Manipulation”

Article: Explainer: How were more than 100% of GameStop’s shares shorted?

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Explainer: How were more than 100% of GameStop’s shares shorted?

John McCrank, 18 February 2021

NEW YORK (Reuters) – One area of focus from a U.S. House of Representatives panel on Thursday will likely be on the role short selling played in the GameStop market mayhem.

Executives from trading platform Robinhood and hedge funds Melvin Capital and Citadel will be grilled following the retail-driven trading frenzy that sparked wild gyrations in GameStop and other heavily shorted stocks. Continue reading “Article: Explainer: How were more than 100% of GameStop’s shares shorted?”

Article: Here’s what to expect at the congressional hearings on GameStop and Robinhood

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Here’s what to expect at the congressional hearings on GameStop and Robinhood

Scum sucking sack of shit lawmakers will seek to make headlines, not legislation — and all the witnesses are probably RICO eligible!

Chris Matthews, MarketWatch, 16 February 2021

Executives at Robinhood, market maker Citadel Securities, hedge fund Melvin Capital, social media firm Reddit, and Keith Gill, an independent investor who found fame and riches with his early purchases of GameStop Inc. GME, -5.52% shares, will all testify at the hearing, scheduled for noon on Thursday. Here’s what to expect:

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Article: Exposing The Robinhood Scam: Here’s How Much Citadel Paid To Robinhood To Buy Your Orders

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Exposing The Robinhood Scam: Here’s How Much Citadel Paid To Robinhood To Buy Your Orders

Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, 14 February 2021

Frankly, we’ve had it with the constant stream of lies from Robinhood and neverending bullshit from the company’s CEO, Vlad Tenev.

With Tenev scheduled to testify on Thursday, alongside the CEOs of Citadel, Melvin Capital and Reddit, the apriori mea culpas have started to emerge – if a little too late – the former HFT trader spoke late on Friday on the All-In Podcast hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, who had strongly criticized Robinhood over the trading restrictions, and Jason Calacanis, a Robinhood investor, and said that “no doubt we could have communicated this a little bit better to customers.”

David K. Lifschultz: New Forms of [Wall Street] Treason?

Letter

Max Keiser does not really understand what the monetary expansion has to cover.

Central banks are transferring wealth from the average person to the likes of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos – RT’s Keiser Report

You have according to the BIS 600 trillion in derivatives against a 81 trillion dollar world GDP or a multiple of 7. The BIS coordinates only the banks so this figure does not include insurance company derivatives or others in private industry unless a bank is connected to the transaction so it is grossly understated.  Some Swiss bankers tell me it is more like 1.2 quadrillion and others up to 2.5 quadrillion. 1.2 quadrillion gives you a multiple on the world GDP of 14 and 2.5 quadrillion a multiple of 30.

Continue reading “David K. Lifschultz: New Forms of [Wall Street] Treason?”

Article: Report: Feds Investigating Meme Stock Frenzy For Market Manipulation

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Report: Feds Investigating Meme Stock Frenzy For Market Manipulation

Sarah Hansen, 11 February 2021

Federal authorities are investigating whether massive gains in “meme stocks” like GameStop in January were caused by market manipulation or other illegal behavior, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

In January, individual traders from online communities like Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum and users of popular online brokerage apps like Robinhood were a driving force behind the meteoric rise of a handful of previously unpopular stocks. The traders pitted themselves against major hedge funds who had bet that the price of stocks in struggling companies like GameStop, AMC Entertainment, and Blackberry would fall in a practice called short selling. The rapid surge of interest from retail investors pushed the price of those stocks to record levels, and hedge funds like Melvin Capital faced massive losses as a result. At the peak of the frenzy, Robinhood restricted trading on shares of GameStop and a handful of other stocks, prompting a swift backlash from lawmakers and multiple class-action lawsuits from traders who said they had missed out on gains.

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THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?