Article: The Reddit revolt: GameStop and the impact of social media on institutional investors

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The Reddit revolt: GameStop and the impact of social media on institutional investors

Annabel Smith, 13 April 2021

The Reddit revolution in the US has drawn attention to the potential power that a growing force of retail investors can wield in stock markets when equipped by social media.

Amateur investors have increasingly engaged with retail platforms in the last year, partly due to the pandemic leaving them idol at home, but also due to the newfound onslaught of information through social media and access to the market through retail brokerages and platforms such as Robinhood. Continue reading “Article: The Reddit revolt: GameStop and the impact of social media on institutional investors”

Article: Wall Street Is Donating to This D.A. Candidate. Is That a Problem?

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Wall Street Is Donating to This D.A. Candidate. Is That a Problem?

Jonah E. Bromwich, 13 April 2021

Even had she not raised more money than her rivals, Tali Farhadian Weinstein would be a formidable candidate in the nine-way race to become the Manhattan district attorney, perhaps the most high-profile local prosecutor’s office in the country.

She was a Rhodes scholar, has an elite legal résumé and is the only candidate who has worked for both the Justice Department and a city prosecutor’s office. And while most of the candidates are campaigning as reformers intent on reducing incarceration, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, 45, has staked out a slightly more conservative position, expressing concerns about guns and gangs. Continue reading “Article: Wall Street Is Donating to This D.A. Candidate. Is That a Problem?”

Article: Half of S&P 500 report more money for foreign taxes than U.S. taxes

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Half of S&P 500 report more money for foreign taxes than U.S. taxes

STEPHEN GANDEL, 09 April 2021

Nearly half of the large U.S. companies that make up the S&P 500-stock index set aside more money to pay foreign taxes in 2020 than they did for payments to the U.S. government — a lot more money.

In all, 241 S&P 500 companies last year earmarked a combined $73 billion for taxes to foreign governments and just $6.7 billion to cover U.S. taxes, according to a CBS MoneyWatch analysis of the companies’ regulatory filings and data from financial information firm FactSet. That’s a foreign-to-domestic tax ratio of more than 10-to-1.

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Article: LA-Based Actor Charged With Running $227 Million Ponzi Scheme

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LA-Based Actor Charged With Running $227 Million Ponzi Scheme

TYLER DURDEN, 08 April 2021

Zachary Horwitz, a little known LA-based actor, has been arrested by the FBI this week and was charged with running “an enormous ponzi scheme” wherein he represented that he had a successful film distribution company.

The reality was that the actor – who has had some roles in small films – was cheating his investors out of $227 million and using most of the money to fund his own lifestyle, according to the NY Post. Horwitz also “used investor funds to pay in cash for a $5.7 million home in Los Angeles’s Beverlywood neighborhood,” the Wall Street Journal added. Continue reading “Article: LA-Based Actor Charged With Running $227 Million Ponzi Scheme”

Article: GameStop plans to elect activist investor Cohen as chairman

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GameStop plans to elect activist investor Cohen as chairman

Reuters, 08 April 2021

GameStop Corp, which has been part of a recent Reddit-driven trading frenzy, said on Thursday it intends to elect activist investor Ryan Cohen as chairman, putting him in the driver’s seat as he looks to transform the videogame retailer.

Since Chewy co-founder Cohen joined GameStop’s board in January, he has been pushing towards transformation of the brick-and-mortar retailer into an e-commerce firm that can take on big-box retailers such as Target Corp and technology firms such as Microsoft Corp.

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Article: Crypto Lobby Forms to Shake Reputation as Criminals’ Currency

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Crypto Lobby Forms to Shake Reputation as Criminals’ Currency

Joe Light, 06 April 2021

Even as cryptocurrencies steadily gain support on Wall Street, they’re still regarded by regulators as a tool for criminals to conceal shady transactions — posing a challenge to the nascent industry as it seeks to win wider respect.

That’s creating a potentially lucrative opportunity for new groups in Washington advocating for digital currencies. Some prominent crypto lobbying organizations say they’ve increased their membership and raised millions of dollars to help improve the industry’s image. Continue reading “Article: Crypto Lobby Forms to Shake Reputation as Criminals’ Currency”

Article: Republicans Slam ‘Hypocritical’ Biden For Funneling $13 Million Through Tax Loopholes

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Republicans Slam ‘Hypocritical’ Biden For Funneling $13 Million Through Tax Loopholes

TYLER DURDEN, 05 April 2021

President Biden has come under fire by House Republicans for ‘hypocritically’ using an IRS loophole to avoid paying taxes on $13 million in income for tax years 2017 and 2018, while slamming wealthy Americans for using similar schemes to minimize their tax burden, according to Fox News.

In a scathing letter from the leader of a House conservative caucus Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), the Bidens’ used two S-corporations, the CelticCapri Corporation and the Giacoppa Corporation, to funnel proceeds from book royalties and speaking appearances, “avoiding self-employment payroll tax liabilities that would have flowed to America’s Medicare program that provides care to over 60 million seniors.” Continue reading “Article: Republicans Slam ‘Hypocritical’ Biden For Funneling $13 Million Through Tax Loopholes”

Article: Dollar Death Knell: IMF Introduces World Currency

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Dollar Death Knell: IMF Introduces World Currency

Anthony Migchels, 05 April 2021

Anthony Migchels: “Henry, something big happened last week: the IMF is going to give out loans in SDR. Special Drawing Rights are their currency. By itself, they’re nothing special, but the IMF has always lent in Dollars.

That they are going to print their own currency on a large scale, $650 billion to begin with, is simply monumental. It means that World Currency is starting.

This is EXACTLY what Mark Carney (BoE chief) announced 18 months ago. That the Petrodollar would end ‘in ten years’, and would be replaced with an IMF World Reserve Currency. I reported on it here. There’s Going to be a Gold Standard & It Will Be Disastrous.”

“Make no mistake: if there’s a World Central Bank, and a World Reserve Currency, open World Government is not far away.”

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Article: “An Absolute Car Crash” – Deliveroo Shares Tumble 31% In London IPO

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“An Absolute Car Crash” – Deliveroo Shares Tumble 31% In London IPO

TYLER DURDEN, 31 March 2021

In what some might take to be the latest sign of exhaustion in global equity markets, shares of Deliveroo tumbled 31% in their market debut Wednesday after pricing at the lower end of their range.

Despite pricing near the bottom of its range, Deliveroo’s opening valuation of about £7.6 billion ($10.5 billion) was the highest in London since resources group Glencore’s 2011 IPO, according to Dealogic data.

But traders quickly wiped more than £2 billion ($2.8 billion) off its market cap as shares plunged. It’s a start contrast to the debut of DoorDash, which IPO’d in the US back in December. Its shares soared more than 86% at the open. One equity capital markets banker who was not involved in the deal described the debut to the FT as “absolute car crash”. In recent days, Deliveroo and its bankers had continued to insist that the offering had seen “very significant demand” from investors, even as its debu tprice range started to slip. Continue reading “Article: “An Absolute Car Crash” – Deliveroo Shares Tumble 31% In London IPO”

Article: Report: SEC Opens Preliminary Investigation Into Archegos’ Bill Hwang After $30 Billion Stock Liquidation

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Report: SEC Opens Preliminary Investigation Into Archegos’ Bill Hwang After $30 Billion Stock Liquidation

Sarah Hansen, 31 March 2021

TOPLINE The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened a preliminary investigation into Sung Kook “Bill Hwang,” whose Archegos Capital Management roiled markets by defaulting on risky margin calls last week and prompted $30 billion in losses, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

Archegos defaulted on highly leveraged margin calls last Friday, triggering a fire sale of some $30 billion in stocks including ViacomCBS, Baidu, Tencent Music Entertainment and Discovery Communications as banks rushed to unwind their positions. Credit Suisse and Nomura—two of the firm’s brokers—warned this week of “significant losses.” Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were also forced to liquidate the positions they held for Archegos, but did so more quickly than other banks and as a result saw smaller losses, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Continue reading “Article: Report: SEC Opens Preliminary Investigation Into Archegos’ Bill Hwang After $30 Billion Stock Liquidation”

Article: WA rancher Easterday pleads guilty to stealing $244M in ‘ghost cattle’ scam

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WA rancher Easterday pleads guilty to stealing $244M in ‘ghost cattle’ scam

KRISTIN M. KRAEMER, 31 March 2021

The president of one of the largest agricultural operations in Washington state has admitted concocting a scheme to defraud Tyson Foods and another company out of more than $244 million.

Cody A. Easterday, 49, pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court in a case that federal prosecutors are calling a “ghost-cattle scam.”

Easterday, who’s also chief executive officer of Easterday Ranches Inc., charged the two companies under various agreements for the costs of buying and feeding 200,000 cattle, when those cattle did not actually exist, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release. Continue reading “Article: WA rancher Easterday pleads guilty to stealing $244M in ‘ghost cattle’ scam”

Article: Comeback quashed for faith-driven investor Bill Hwang

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Comeback quashed for faith-driven investor Bill Hwang

Lawrence Delevingne, 30 March 2021

(Reuters) – Bill Hwang’s comeback was nearly complete. Once punished by U.S. and Asian regulators for stock trading rule violations at his former hedge fund, the New York investor rebuilt his fortune to about $10 billion. Major Wall Street banks once again competed for his business. And his charitable foundation’s coffers swelled by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Hwang was making big money again, inspired by a renewed Christian faith.

“When we create good companies through the capitalism that God has allowed, it enhances people’s lives….God delights in those things,” Hwang said in a video posted online in 2019 here. Continue reading “Article: Comeback quashed for faith-driven investor Bill Hwang”

Article: One of World’s Greatest Hidden Fortunes Is Wiped Out in Days

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One of World’s Greatest Hidden Fortunes Is Wiped Out in Days

Katherine Burton and Tom Maloney,  30 March 2021

From his perch high above Midtown Manhattan, just across from Carnegie Hall, Bill Hwang was quietly building one of the world’s greatest fortunes.

Even on Wall Street, few ever noticed him — until suddenly, everyone did.

Hwang and his private investment firm, Archegos Capital Management, are now at the center of one of the biggest margin calls of all time — a multibillion-dollar fiasco involving secretive market bets that were dangerously leveraged and unwound in a blink. Continue reading “Article: One of World’s Greatest Hidden Fortunes Is Wiped Out in Days”

Article: Big Oil’s Secret World of Trading

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Big Oil’s Secret World of Trading

Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, 30 March 2021

It was a bleak moment for the oil industry. U.S. shale companies were failing by the dozen. Petrostates were on the brink of bankruptcy. Texas roughnecks and Kuwaiti princes alike had watched helplessly for months as the commodity that was their lifeblood tumbled to prices that had until recently seemed unthinkable. Below $50 a barrel, then below $40, then below $30.

But inside the central London headquarters of one of the world’s largest oil companies, there was an air of calm. It was January 2016. Bob Dudley had been at the helm of BP Plc for six years. He ought to have had as much reason to panic as anyone in the rest of his industry. The unflashy American had been predicting lower prices for months. He was being proved right, though that was hardly a reason to celebrate. Continue reading “Article: Big Oil’s Secret World of Trading”

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”

THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?