The System Is Rigged - Episode 4537: Game Stop Corp
Early this week a few amateur stock trading nerds decided to promote a stock that was heavily shorted by certain hedge funds. The idea was to raise the stock price of Game Stop Corp., a vendor for computer games, by having lots of small stock traders to buy into it. The hedge fund that shorted the stock, and thereby bet on a dropping stock price, would then make huge losses while the many small buyers would potentially profit.
These people, who had joined up in the sub-reddit /r/WallStreetBets, were not driven by greed but by rage against the financial machine:
Instead of greed, this latest bout of speculation, and especially the extraordinary excitement at GameStop, has a different emotional driver: anger. The people investing today are driven by righteous anger, about generational injustice, about what they see as the corruption and unfairness of the way banks were bailed out in 2008 without having to pay legal penalties later, and about lacerating poverty and inequality. This makes it unlike any of the speculative rallies and crashes that have preceded it.
The movement was successful. The stock price of Game Stop Corp. rose from some $10 to over $400 within just a few days. The short seller had to take cover under a larger firm:
Hedge fund Melvin Capital closed out its short position in GameStop on Tuesday after taking huge losses as a target of the army of retail investors. Citadel and Point72 have infused close to $3 billion into Gabe Plotkin's hedge fund to shore up its finances.
Then the system hit back.
Discord, the company which hosted the server for the sub-reddit /r/WallStreetBets suddenly found that there was 'hate-speech' in the threads. It unplugged the server. (Discord had previously unplugged the sub-reddit /r/The_Donald.)
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald - 0:53 UTC · Jan 28, 2021What an absolutely extraordinary coincidence of timing that Discord happened to decide the r/Wall Streetbets sub-reddit had too much “hate speech” to tolerate on the same day hedge fund billionaires declared them a huge threat for the crime of winning at their expense!
Next the trading app Robinhood, which many of the amateur traders use, blocked further buys into the stock:
Robinhood, the fee-free investment app that has helped Redditors and other retail investors pump dark horse stocks like GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, and Nokia, has stopped allowing users to buy those stocks and others YOLO picks.According to screenshots shared on social media, on Thursday morning a notification appeared on Robinhood telling users that they could close their position on GameStop's stock, but not buy any additional shares. Redditors are currently panicking, looking for ways to transfer their shares of GameStop off of Robinhood to other platforms, and are generally furious at the platform.
In a blog post, Robinhood confirmed that it has placed restrictions on several stocks due to volatility.
"Volatility" = the prols are messing up Wall Street by doing legal stock transactions our overlords do not like. What an irony that a company named Robin Hood is protecting the rich from the poor.
The many people who use Robinhood can now only sell their shares and not buy additional ones:
This is likely to have a massive impact on Robinhood users and ultimately the company. According to a popup on the app's homepage, 56 percent of all Robinhood users own at least some GameStop stock. They are now unable to freely trade it; the app is only allowing users to close out their positions, meaning they can sell it but not buy more. This is potentially devastating for novice investors or those who simply want to follow the general marching orders of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, which is to hold (and buy more) GameStop stock until further notice.
After Robinhood stopped to allow further buys of Game Stop Corp the stock price crashed from above $450 down to $120.
bigger
That outright manipulation of the stock markets was noticed and may even have consequences. Unlike Joe Biden it united legislators across the aisle.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC - 16:36 UTC · Jan 28, 2021This is unacceptable.
We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.
As a member of the Financial Services Cmte, I’d support a hearing if necessary.
Ted Cruz @tedcruz - 16:47 UTC · Jan 28, 2021Retweeting @AOC
Fully agree.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will take care that nothing will comes from it. The system has proven again and again that it is rigged. No change to it will be condoned.
As Glenn Greenwald noted yesterday:
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald - 13:49 UTC · Jan 27, 2021To review:
- Politics is to be manipulated only by K Street.
- The stock market is to be manipulated only by Wall St.
- Dissemination of information is to be manipulated only by corporate media outlets.
Those are the rules.
The lesson they want us to learn: Don't even think of ever breaking those rules.
Posted by b on January 28, 2021 at 18:05 UTC | Permalink
next page »I will repost the link to an article I recommended everybody to read:
Here's the excerpt of interest for the subject of this post:
Marx called financial assets, stocks and bonds, ‘fictitious capital’. Engels first composed this term in his early economic work, the Umrisse; and Marx developed it further in Capital Volume 3 (Chapters 25 and 29), where he defined it as the accumulated claims or legal titles, to future earnings in capitalist production; in other words, claims on ‘real’ capital, ie capital actually invested in physical means of production and workers; or money capital, cash funds being held. A company raises funds for investment etc by issuing stocks and/or bonds. The owners of the shares or bonds then have a claim on the future earnings of the company. There is a ‘secondary’ market for these claims, ie buying and selling these existing shares or bonds; a market for the circulation of these property rights.Stocks and bonds do not function as real capital; they are merely a claim on future profits, so “the capital-value of such paper is…wholly illusory… The paper serves as title of ownership which represents this capital.” As Marx put it: “While the stocks of railways, mines, navigation companies, and the like, represent actual capital, namely, the capital invested and functioning in such enterprises, or the amount of money advanced by the stockholders for the purpose of being used as capital in such enterprises…; this capital does not exist twice, once as the capital-value of titles of ownership (stocks) on the one hand and on the other hand as the actual capital invested, or to be invested, in those enterprises.” The capital “exists only in the latter form“, while the stock or share “is merely a title of ownership to a corresponding portion of the surplus-value to be realised by it”.
Investors (speculators) in financial markets buy and sell these financial assets, driving prices up and down. If cash (liquidity) is flush, share and bond prices can rocket, while banks and financial institutions invent ever new financial ‘instruments’ to invest in. As Marx put it: “With the development of interest-bearing capital and the credit system, all capital seems to double itself, and sometimes treble itself, by the various modes in which the same capital, or perhaps even the same claim on a debt, appears in different forms in different hands. The greater portion of this ‘money-capital’ is purely fictitious.”
The central banks become key drivers of any financial asset boom. Again, as Marx put it some 150 years ago, “Inasmuch as the Bank issues notes that are not backed by the metal reserve in its vaults, it creates tokens of value that are not only means of circulation, but also forms additional – even if fictitious – capital for it to the nominal value of these fiduciary notes, and this extra capital yields it an extra profit.” The creation or ‘printing’ of money by central banks provides the liquidity for speculation in the stock and bond markets – as we have seen in the year of the COVID.
Most people only read Marx's Capital to Book I (Production Process of Capital). That's the wrong way to read it: you must read the three books, in sequence, one chapter after the other, as if it were one single narrative book.
This is important because the part Marx talks about fictitious capital is also philosophically important to understand capitalism as a whole. Fictitious capital is extremely important to Marx's theory because it is the part his demonstration of capitalism as a historical period comes full circle: it shows how monopoly of violence is the ultimate guarantor of the system.
By explaining fictitious capital, Marx finally puts capitalism in History. History is the saga of class struggle, and the decisive factor of class struggle is the monopoly of violence. In capitalism, monopoly of violence is in the hands of the State (justice, the judicial system, Law). And it is only in the form of fictitious capital that capital gains a purely legal form. Capital then fuses with the State, which is violence concentrated.
The system is not rigged. It is working as intended: the politicians, as the personification of the State, put their services in the free market, which were bought by whoever could pay the price. Wall Street had the money and bought those politicians in the free market, therefore buying the State, therefore buying monopoly of violence. They used this bought monopoly of violence to freely squash their competitors. The free market is not only functioning perfectly - it is also in functioning in its most beautiful and evolved form in the USA, which is the Mecca of Capitalism.
I don't for a second believe Melvin's covered all his short. Why would tptb stop people from buying GME then?
Hedge fund Melvin Capital closed out its short position in GameStop on Tuesday after taking huge losses as a target of the army of retail investors. Citadel and Point72 have infused close to $3 billion into Gabe Plotkin's hedge fund to shore up its finances.
Posted by: Gazza | Jan 28 2021 18:40 utc | 4
I've seen an extraordinary erosion of rights and liberties over the past few years. It really started with the cover up after the Trump election, which sought to steer the narrative of public opinion away from the failure of the Clintons and the Democratic machine with obvious fantastic lies about Russia.
For a myriad of reasons probably understood best by likes of Freud, Jüng, and others, everyone on the left (who are supposed to be the smart and rational ones in society) bought these lies and repeated them.
Once this was allowed to happen, once Maddow was allowed to lead the vanguard of libel with no recourse, the snowball began to roll and now we are seeing the enforcement of that thought-policing, which is as unconstitutional as the libel itself, especially considering it is being perpetrated ubiquitously among media owners.
The phenomenon of Donald Trump the villain President has been used as an excuse to destroy free speech and shoe horn in authoritarian policies. Due to the immense power of propaganda, normal people who should identify politically as the "left" are actually supporting these dangerous policies and the erosions of liberty are accelerating in direct proportion to the level of resistance, such as r/Wallstreetbets and the immediate crackdown across several platforms to stop them.
This Wall St. favoritism is obvious, but will likely end without bankers taking much damage besides some short term outrage. They still control all the levers of currency and trade no matter the President.
The real dangers of the day are the clamping down on speech. Starting with imprisoning Julian Assange and then migrating to various corners of the Internet. I'll be very interested to see how things shake out with the stock market, but I imagine it will go back to the firm grip of those who control the money supply, which it was for a very long time.
In the meantime, shutting down the Reddit forums and Discord servers is a very serious danger and I hope we can shine a light on it.
Posted by: Rutherford82 | Jan 28 2021 18:40 utc | 5
I'm shocked! Absolutely shocked to see that the game of finance is rigged!!!!/snark
There have not been market fundamentals since the beginning of financialization in 1971 when money became fiat instead of gold backed. I find it interesting that it has taken 50 years for the cancer of financialization to fully compromise the host. It will be interesting to see where this goes from here.
I think the speed of decline of empire is speeding up as noted by the increase in international investment in China.
I am also reading the the next focus of the little people investors is the highly manipulated precious metals markets.....I love the smell of burning Wall Street in the morning.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 28 2021 18:47 utc | 6
@6 psychohistorian
"I am also reading the the next focus of the little people investors is the highly manipulated precious metals markets.....I love the smell of burning Wall Street in the morning."
Is Max Keiser going after the silver market again? I bet he was posting on r/Wallstreetbets to stir things up!
Posted by: Rutherford82 | Jan 28 2021 18:50 utc | 7
Back in the Oughts when the fraudulent mortgages were grossly inflating Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), there were many instances of naked short selling to keep honest REITs down, activities I learned firsthand. We formed a shareholders organization that lobbied the SEC to enforce its laws but to no avail--the regulators were well captured and did zip. We even ran full pages ads in the NY Times and WaPost to add visibility to our justifiable outrage, which was well proven when the bubble burst. But Obama didn't do his job and enforce the law, and the entire mess is far worse now. This episode epitomizes the amazing amounts of corruption masquerading as well regulated markets and an equitable financial system. I support Hudson's debt forgiveness for the main reason it will bankrupt the debt holders--the Financial Parasites--who are also the beneficiaries of the corrupt system; and with their destruction, will allow for the rise of the Public Financial Utility that will restore law and order to that realm of the economy. Yes, this must be seen as yet another episode of the longstanding Class War, one of the most brazen ever.
Shutting down and/or severely limiting free and open communications and transactions on the internet because they "threaten" TPTB's prerogatives to personally and totally control all of the real world's power and wealth is not ever going to hold in the mid-to-long run, no matter how repressive they become.
As we have all seen very clearly in this past pandemic year, the majority of the populations has essentially be put on notice that they are fundamentally superfluous - and becoming more so by the day.
Wall street, Oligarchs and Corporate Government flourishes while the rest of us flounder...
So, Game..Stop Indeed!
Posted by: time2wakeupnow | Jan 28 2021 18:56 utc | 9
@3 vk
The whole reality you espouse, though you are able to connect the dots to understand the pathway through history which the internationalists take, is utterly lacking in the fundamental concept of the nation; and how, once the power of the nation is eroded due to marketting and finance, you have this class of international trotskyites who, yes, are protected by the monopoly of violence owned by the state.
As I have said before: tyrannies are stupid. Every little meddling action, such as exposing government's collusion with big finance, is noticed, processed, and will revisit them as blowback in time.
We will see what the nationalists will do, post-Trump. I have also said before, the whole kit and caboodle now hinges on the steps Putin will take to forestall the internationalists. Time is of the essence. With conservative-nationalists looking to pinch the internationalists in the U.S. on the domestic front and Russia and a few token others, excluding China, pinching them on the other, they are literally caught in a pincer.
This is even more dangerous than being backed in a corner.
I fear a nuclear conflagration with Russia on the horizon.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 28 2021 19:19 utc | 10
@9 time2wakeupnow
"Shutting down and/or severely limiting free and open communications and transactions on the internet because they "threaten" TPTB's prerogatives to personally and totally control all of the real world's power and wealth is not ever going to hold in the mid-to-long run, no matter how repressive they become."
I appreciate your optimism, but we are in deep crisis as a society and we are not currently on a trajectory to have very much free information and communication. These recent events are revealing just how much crisis we are in and the controllers of wealth and information have a lot of tricks up their sleeve to continue to prop it all up.
Julian Assange's imprisonment is what accelerated this crisis, or at least truly revealed the level of the crisis. As long as Assange remains imprisoned, people with the ability to silence others will do so with relative impunity as long as they have influence.
And, if what you say is true and power and control will not hold up in the long run, what kind of picture will it be when people break this control?
Better to work on addressing the issues now so we can all prevent it from reaching a breaking point.
Posted by: Rutherford82 | Jan 28 2021 19:27 utc | 11
thanks b... greenwald has it exactly right - To review:
"- Politics is to be manipulated only by K Street.
- The stock market is to be manipulated only by Wall St.
- Dissemination of information is to be manipulated only by corporate media outlets.
Those are the rules."
i find it encouraging that this has come up.. more people will realize what a controlled ponzi scheme wall st is... it supports all of the posters here at moa in acknowledging what a corrupt financial system we have going... as @ karlof1 points out - the real estate ponzi scheme is making it impossible for the younger generation to keep up.. they can't afford to get into the market... real estate prices go up in a very disproportionate way to peoples wages - unless you work on wall st of course... the deck is stacked and it is a rigged game.. this is complete proof on it.. i hope it draws more peoples attention to what a rigged game it is.. i am waiting for the next bubble burst and bail out.. that is how the game is played.... it will be harder when the us$ bubble bursts...
Posted by: james | Jan 28 2021 19:28 utc | 12
@Posted by: Rutherford82 | Jan 28 2021 18:40 utc | 5
You posted in part:
"The phenomenon of Donald Trump the villain President has been used as an excuse to destroy free speech and shoe horn in authoritarian policies."
The noose-of-authoritarian-policies
was tightened a full notch today.
Scary, scary rhetoric from Nancy P.
The Enemy Within
Asked what she meant when referring to the “enemy within,” Pelosi said: “It means we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and who have threatened violence against other members of Congress.”
Posted by: librul | Jan 28 2021 19:28 utc | 13
Addendum
If you see shit starting to heat up in Syria again, you should know all but the most die hard globalists are heading for the door and the act is about to be dropped.
Why would they push Russia in Syria again knowing what happened last time unless they wanted to go further this time?
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 28 2021 19:29 utc | 14
btw - bemildred... short people - randy newman... thanks for the laugh! i don't fault short sellers.. it is just another part of the system meant to have checks and balances... the ordinary person who knows very little of the stock market and trading tend to hold a dim view of shorting stocks.. in fact, it helps the system maintain some balance to a good extent... it is just another area that people who are unfamiliar with trading express their ignorance on.. this is mostly a rant from reading the comment section on cbc's article on this from yesterday.. cheers..
Posted by: james | Jan 28 2021 19:31 utc | 15
btw - gamestock is down 35% today.. closed yesterday at 347 and is now at 229... the big boys are back in control... all bow to the legal ponzi scheme system - wall st..
Posted by: james | Jan 28 2021 19:35 utc | 16
Fresh insight into the RobinHood/Gamestop brouhaha.
First, consider that Citadel, which as regular readers know is the biggest source of revenue for Robinhood
is also now a part-owner of the insolvent bearish hedge fund Melvin Capital (which as recently as last week had $12BN in AUM) which would have collapsed and been forced to liquidate its longs, had it not received $2 billion from Citadel and another $750MM from Steve Cohen....
There's more. While unconfirmed, there is speculation that that "Citadel reloaded their shorts before they told Robinhood to stop trading GME." As the source notes, if true the people behind this should be in jail.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/7087-billion-reasons-why-exchanges-betrayed-retail-customers
Posted by: librul | Jan 28 2021 19:39 utc | 17
There's short selling, and then there's naked short selling. Why do the markets require naked short selling? If those hedge funds already owned the stocks that they are selling short, they would not be in such trouble now.
Posted by: lysias | Jan 28 2021 19:41 utc | 18
@13 librul
Dangerous words indeed.
It appears that the successful media campaigns to cancel people who disagree with mainstream thought really do have negative consequences if left unchecked and it isn't the first time Democrats have tried to shut down speech by equating it with violence.
Posted by: Rutherford82 | Jan 28 2021 19:47 utc | 19
@ 18 lysias.. it brings up the question of what the ''hedge'' is in hedge fund.... another way to short stock is via put options.. it is a similar approach..the fact is these businesses get into trouble -ltcm being a perfect example of one.. enron - another one... bitcoin probably another one yet to happen... and etc. etc. it is endless this ponzi scheme making system... all the buffoons in expensive suits - banker types - are a complete joke if the truth be known..
Posted by: james | Jan 28 2021 19:52 utc | 20
Hold the Presses!
The Wall Street Casino/Ponzi Scheme is Rigged!
In other news, the earth is round and not flat.
"The system is not rigged. It is working as intended: the politicians, as the personification of the State, put their services in the free market, which were bought by whoever could pay the price. Wall Street had the money and bought those politicians in the free market, therefore buying the State, therefore buying monopoly of violence. They used this bought monopoly of violence to freely squash their competitors. The free market is not only functioning perfectly - it is also in functioning in its most beautiful and evolved form in the USA, which is the Mecca of Capitalism."
That is something all the pro-capitalist shills here and elsewhere cannot bear to admit: Corruption and financial rigging are a feature, not a bug, of their precious Capitalist system in general.
Being the Leader of the Capitalist World, America consequently also leads the world in capitalist financial rigging and corruption.
Posted by: ak74 | Jan 28 2021 20:03 utc | 21
Next come the lawsuits brought by those who were stopped trading.
Did hedge fund speculators forget that they could also lose?
Posted by: Stonebird | Jan 28 2021 20:04 utc | 22
Seems like the WallStreetBets reddit is back?
https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/
I saw but haven't read this article yet:
Discord is no longer banning r/WallStreetBets — it’s helping them
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22254339/discord-r-wallstreetbets-server-help-moderation-ban
Posted by: Canadian Cents | Jan 28 2021 20:19 utc | 23
It's not over yet:
Investors file CLASS ACTION SUIT against Robinhood over GameStop ‘stonk’ suppression
Ms Johnstone:
Twitter Rolls Out New Wikipedia-Like Program to Narrative Manage Tweets
Posted by: Bemildred | Jan 28 2021 20:20 utc | 24
Lysias @19
There are two ways to sell a stock. One is if you own it, the other is if you don't own it. The latter is called short selling.
Posted by: arby | Jan 28 2021 20:30 utc | 25
The lesson they want us to learn: Don't even think of ever breaking those rules.
the number one enemy to the independence and security of humanity I believe would be Google.. next in order i place Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.. Size alone makes them suspect because in a competitive market it is unlikely one or a few firms would be able to amass such power. When you study their balance sheets you see their incomes and assets are mostly derived from the power of government to make for these giants monopoly powers which can be privately owned and acquired from their financial wealth Understanding that massive organizations can only exist when there is monopoly power.
the enemy to financial security is wall street and the federal reserve.. IMO.
The cyclist once said, if everyone would just pull their funds from wall street in unison at once, and buy back in a few weeks on cue and sell again just as soon as the prices rise. IMO. . the first step in a successful but peaceful revolution against monopolies powers would have begun. It is not the government (the government is a non person) but the people that control the government.
VK @ 3, 90% of all corporate assets are the monopolies made from rule of law (privately owned patent, privately owned copyright, privately owned real property and anything that can be privately owned made possible by your enemies in your legislatures and at the helm over the government. These people desire to use both your government and you for their private gain.
I believe we may be seeing the redirection in determining who is the real enemies its not the government its the people the government have made wealthy at our expense.
Posted by: snake | Jan 28 2021 20:30 utc | 26
@26 snake
Yes, we do need to de-FAANG ourselves.
This should be the first step of American nationalism in the post-Trump era.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 28 2021 20:33 utc | 27
Absolutely outrageous. They are no longer even pretending. At some point, even those whores in Congress will not be able to cover for Wall St, Big Tech and MSM.
One wonders how much more people are going to take. I am amazed the justified rage has yet to be channeled and focused more effectively on some well deserved sources of this systematic corruption. Sooner or later, if someone is not made an example of in the courts, it means it will have to come down to mob justice.
2021 is just beginning and the chances someone finds their first Marie Antoinette are only growing.
Posted by: Et Tu | Jan 28 2021 20:52 utc | 28
Citadel and Point72 have infused close to $3 billion into Gabe Plotkin's hedge fund to shore up its finances.
-b
How Robinhood was rigged:
Robinhood sells its orderflow to Citadel for.execution
Citadel then chiselled the retail investor for pennies per trade by frontrunning (think high freq trading) before execution of retail order, inflating the price and cheating the customer
Citadel bailed out Citron, essentially inheriting the short position.
Citadel then threatened Robinhood with refusing payment for orderflow
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 20:55 utc | 29
Addendum to my comment @ 3
The predominance of fictitious (finance) capital in the West (the EU is also heavily financialized, and also the UK) also explains why it uses so much moral, legal and symbolic arguments against China, Russia et al: when capital is just a legal concept, everything becomes a moral-relative argument.
That's why the West uses Rule of Law, Human Rights etc. as legitimate argument to wage wars against Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen etc. and enforce economic sanctions against Russia, China and Venezuela. That's the material base of the moralization/legalization of capital.
Biden Canceling Trump’s Plan On Opioid Treatment Prescriptions
- On January 14, 2021, there was a White House press release announcing the new guidelines. The change was in response to a 21% increase in Opioid-related deaths over 12 months.
From June 2019 to June 2020, over 83,000 people died from a drug overdose. By eliminating the federal rule, practitioners now had easier access to Buprenorphine.
Doctors with a DEA narcotics prescribing license were exempt from the mandatory training. Before President Trump, doctors had to attend an eight-hour course to get a federal permit.
The constraints had been in place for 20 years to ensure Buprenorphine was not overused. Under Trump’s clinical guidelines, more physicians gained access to Buprenorphine for medical treatment. So, when the news broke out, many clinicians rejoiced
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 21:06 utc | 31
Biden Stops Trump Order To Slash Price Of Insulin, EpiPen
- The HHS Thursday froze the former Trump administration’s December drug policy that requires community health centers to pass on all their insulin and epinephrine discount savings to patients.
Centers that don’t pass on the savings wouldn’t qualify for federal grants. The rule, which was finalized in late December, is delayed until March 22, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a Federal Register post.
This freeze is part of the Biden administration’s large-scale effort announced this week that will scrutinize the Trump administration’s health policies. If the previous administration’s policies raise “fact, law, or policy” concerns, the Biden HHS will delay them and consult with the Office of Management and Budget about other actions.
Why? Cos F dem Epipen users, F dem diabetics, rip em off as much as possible
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 21:11 utc | 32
Michael Roberts (the author of the article linked @ 3) has just posted another one specifically about the Gamestop imbroglio:
Stop the game – I want to get off!
I - again - highly recommend you all to read it in full.
The ZH posting I read said that SLV (silver) was the next focus and today SLV went up by over 5%
The precious metals markets have been manipulated since Roman times when the edges of coins were chipped off. While I enjoy seeing the public tweak the tails of these folks, I doubt if they will be successful in breaking the global finance elite control of the PM market.
But I am encouraged about the education of the public that this is doing about finance. It will be interesting to watch the kabuki that is created to keep us from comparing public/private finance as parts of our social contract.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 28 2021 21:13 utc | 34
@ Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 21:11 utc | 32
Biden made the correct decision from the point of view of capitalism because people who must pay more for their subsistence have a cheaper labor power, i.e. their labor journey decreases in value (less $$$ per hour).
If you give the working class the main subsistence items "for free" (i.e. socialized), then the value of the labor power rises, which lowers the profit rates of capital.
Put it in theoretical terms: the longer the hours the worker must put to satisfy his/her needs (including here their children and elderly), the cheaper he/she is to hire and employ (i.e. the lower his/her wages), the higher the surplus value extracted (rate of exploitation), the higher the profit rate. And the reverse is also true.
Thanks for pulling back the curtains b. Think anyone in MSM will cover this story? I don't think so, at least in depth. The system is now too powerful to oppose.
The mega-wealthy have captured the U$A, and it's Gov., the only entity powerful enough to challenge them.
This guy knew what had to be done.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2d/1e/18/2d1e181886fce802189549769025aa18.jpg
Posted by: vetinLA | Jan 28 2021 21:19 utc | 36
@ Et Tu:
"2021 is just beginning and the chances someone finds their first Marie Antoinette are only growing."
Perchance could that first Marie Antoinette be: PELOSI?
Posted by: time2wakeupnow | Jan 28 2021 21:25 utc | 37
https://mobile.twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1354588626613641219
- "They have rigged everything, silenced dissent with tech censorship and financial deplatforming, rigged the economy with insider trading, rigged democracy with lobbying and mass immigration, and they'll tell you with a straight face that racist rednecks are the problem."
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 21:26 utc | 38
As b points out, some people seem to be joining in not primarily to profit but more to try to stick it to the establishment system (like many of the votes for Trump and against Hillary/Biden/Harris, and probably a lot of the protest/rally attendees, both on the left, ex. BLM, and the right, ex. January 6.)
From one recent post at r/wallstreetbets:
I've been following r/wallstreetbets for years. Usually just for a laugh as I am a stodgy buy and hold guy and don't speculate often. When I saw the $GME shit happening a week ago I thought it was pure stupidity and was not planning on investing. In fact, I bought some $GME puts (which I've since sold since somehow they've gone up based on volatility) betting against the crowd here.However, what has started as a decentralized short squeeze has morphed into a class movement. I'm a big populist and think we need big changes in this country, especially a transfer of wealth and power from the elites to the people. When this morphed into a class movement I became obsessed. However, I still wasn't going to buy in because I shy away from speculating on ultra risky stuff like this. But when Robinhood and all the other major brokerages colluded to cause a massive sell off, that's when it became a matter of principle. I've watched all day as the stock has remained relatively stable on very little volume. People are holding despite wall street twisting your arm and trying to make you tap out by only allowing you to sell. It's a beautiful thing to see. I don't think of my purchase as an investment, but as putting my own skin in the game as a fuck you against a rigged system.
An entertaining meme post from a bit earlier.
Posted by: Canadian Cents | Jan 28 2021 21:31 utc | 39
Discord, the company which hosted the server for the sub-reddit /r/WallStreetBets suddenly found that there was 'hate-speech' in the threads. It unplugged the server. (Discord had previously unplugged the sub-reddit /r/The_Donald.)
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald - 0:53 UTC · Jan 28, 2021
- What an absolutely extraordinary coincidence of timing that Discord happened to decide the r/Wall Streetbets sub-reddit had too much “hate speech” to tolerate on the same day hedge fund billionaires declared them a huge threat for the crime of winning at their expense!
--b
------
Why, it's almost like wokeness is a means for the oligarchs to silence dissent
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 21:34 utc | 40
People are holding despite wall street twisting your arm and trying to make you tap out by only allowing you to sell. It's a beautiful thing to see. I don't think of my purchase as an investment, but as putting my own skin in the game as a fuck you against a rigged system.
Posted by: Canadian Cents | Jan 28 2021 21:31 utc | 39
---
Holding steady between 230/250 for most of today
a big drop from near-500 high
But still painful for the shorters
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 21:37 utc | 41
More rigging news, from Kit Klarenberg:
Signal, the ‘encrypted messenger of the future,’ has shady links to US national security interests
- If the sudden popularity of the encrypted messenger Signal has seemed suspicious to you, you may be onto something – the app is at least partially funded through American foreign influence cutouts.
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 21:44 utc | 42
welcome to the casino! house rules, lol!!
193.60-153.91 (-44.29%)
At close: 4:00PM EST
the only difference when the next stock market crash happens, is the federal reserve will be there to pick up the slack, lol.... not so with gamestock..
Posted by: james | Jan 28 2021 21:44 utc | 43
Whoops
Pressed "post" too soon
- "The most common destinations for WhatsApp exiles were, and remain, Signal and Telegram.
For reasons unclear, while available figures suggest [TELEGRAM] has to date received many orders of magnitude more fresh arrivals than [SIGNAL] corporate news outlets have overwhelmingly focused on Signal’s surging intake.
Much of this coverage has been highly approving – for instance, The Guardian published a lengthy explainer on January 24 titled “Is it time to leave WhatsApp, and is Signal the answer?”
The headline was answered very much in the affirmative, to the extent that readers were offered advice on persuading their contacts to likewise make the switch.
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 21:48 utc | 44
Investors file CLASS ACTION SUIT against Robinhood
https://www.rt.com/usa/513956-robinhood-class-action-lawsuit-gamestop/
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 21:54 utc | 45
@Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 21:44 utc | 42
I am zero surprised to hear about Signal.
The other day I promoted (albeit with cautionary notes) a site
that offers alternatives to Google, etc.
Lots of alternatives to "protect your privacy".
I just revisited the site and prominently promoted is...you guessed it...Signal.
Doesn't mean the site restoreprivacy is *all* bogus necessarily,
but trust nothing automatically. It isn't just Nigerians and our own government trying to
screw with you.
Wonder what the Nigerian Government is like.
Posted by: librul | Jan 28 2021 22:04 utc | 46
arby | Jan 28 2021 20:30 utc | 25
There are two ways to sell a stock. One is if you own it, the other is if you don't own it. The latter is called short selling.
Not quite right. There are two sorts of "short" stock sales: the legal and the illegal, called respectively "short" sales and "naked short" sales. Short sales are when you sell a stock that that you think will go down in price that you own or can borrow. A naked short is when you sell a stock that you do not own in any shape or form. (Usually the seller expects to be able to repurchase at a lower price the shares he sold, either to repay the loan or to cover the fact that he did not have the shares to sell.)
Posted by: foolisholdman | Jan 28 2021 22:08 utc | 47
vk @35
Fascinating, I understood decreasing the value of subsistence goods was one of the main ways to increase relative surplus value? (cheap Walmart goods allow wages to stay lower etc) I guess I'm not thinking in terms of the rate of profit.
Posted by: S.P. Korolev | Jan 28 2021 22:12 utc | 48
Flemish official news site brings on an authoritative voice, some big shot from BNP Paribas, to explain to us that shorting is good but some pesky gamblers sitting at home with too much money from all the aid they got, they are being annoying but hopefully everything will soon be back under control .
This is when mainstream is at its ugliest. It is not always ugly.
Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | Jan 28 2021 22:13 utc | 49
AOC couldn't stomach it all not being about "Me! Me! Me"
She just had to go full-retard, it's in her nature, in reply to Ted Cruz committing he unforgivable crime of agreeing with her:
https://mobile.twitter.com/AOC/status/1354848253729234944
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
@AOC
·
4h
I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out.
Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed.
In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign
Performative hysteria to the max
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 22:15 utc | 50
@ Rutherford82
"And, if what you say is true and power and control will not hold up in the long run, what kind of picture will it be when people break this control?"
Well...that's like saying: I agree that everything might be totally f#cked for most of the population, but can we all really risk tearing down this whole rotten Corporately manipulated system as it now parasitically exists.. and then have some, as yet, unknown form of regular citizens involvement (control) in the matters that personally affect us?
Ya..damn right we can..
Posted by: time2wakeupnow | Jan 28 2021 22:16 utc | 51
vk | Jan 28 2021 21:02 utc | 30
That's why the West uses Rule of Law, Human Rights etc. as legitimate argument to wage wars against Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen etc. and enforce economic sanctions against Russia, China and Venezuela. That's the material base of the moralization/legalization of capital.
Note though, that while the west is very keen on "Rule of Law, Human Rights etc." when it is applied to enemies it is prepared to ignore all such "rubbish" when it applies to the West or its allies. (Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Diego Garcia, Israel, General Suleman.)
Posted by: foolisholdman | Jan 28 2021 22:20 utc | 52
Rutherford82 #5
I've seen an extraordinary erosion of rights and liberties over the past few years. It really started with the cover up after the Trump election, which sought to steer the narrative of public opinion away from the failure of the Clintons and the Democratic machine with obvious fantastic lies about Russia.For a myriad of reasons probably understood best by likes of Freud, Jüng, and others, everyone on the left (who are supposed to be the smart and rational ones in society) bought these lies and repeated them.
Not one person on the left I know of bought the BS you reference for one second. You must be living in a land of fakers or perhaps you have a coolaid view of who the left is.
As for your erosion of rights and liberties timeline of "the last few years", I can assure you that many of the left around this planet have noticed said erosion for the last many decades. Your attempt here at reconfiguration of consciousness is in need of a more informed evidence base.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan 28 2021 22:37 utc | 53
Triden #50
Good catch and it looks to me that AOC is just supporting #ForceTheVote in her comfortable style.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan 28 2021 22:39 utc | 54
Oh, it gets even better
Janet Yellen accepted $810,000 in speaking fees from Citadel, owner of Robinhood.Reporter: Are there any plans to recuse herself from advising the President on GameStop and Robinhood situation?
[Press Spokesperson] Psaki: ‘No and she’s an expert and deserves that money.’
GameStop Short Sell Firm Citadel Paid Biden’s Treasury Secretary $MILLIONS
Posted by: vato | Jan 28 2021 22:42 utc | 55
@51 time2wakeupnow
I apologize if I misinterpreted your post.
I'm mainly concerned that violence while rule the day, as it feels the public is primed for it in a lot of different communities.
Posted by: Rutherford82 | Jan 28 2021 22:44 utc | 56
further to @43 gamestop after hours trading.. this will be my last post on as the stomach turns - stock fluctuation.. someone is having fun with this...
193.60-153.91 (-44.29%)
At close: 4:00PM EST
265.00 +71.40 (36.88%)
After hours: 5:47PM EST
Posted by: james | Jan 28 2021 22:50 utc | 57
@Rutherford82
I'm mainly concerned that violence while rule the day, as it feels the public is primed for it in a lot of different communities."
Exactly what sort of "violence" are you referring to?
1.Financial violence (as the majority has been subject to time and time again)?
2.Environmental violence (with a rapidly degrading climate)?
3.Corporate violence (displacing, discarding and depressing competition..see also #1)?
4.Media violence (As M. Taibbi so aptly highlighted in his book: "Hate Inc.)
5.Or..all of the above?
Posted by: time2wakeupnow | Jan 28 2021 22:59 utc | 58
@58 time2wakeupnow
I'm concerned that people with legitimate reasons to protest are going to be baited into actions that are deemed violent by authorities, which will lead to a swift shut down of protests.
Posted by: Rutherford82 | Jan 28 2021 23:06 utc | 59
Can't vouch for legitimacy of any of the below, just fyi:
r/ClassActionRobinHood
Robinhood Insider Information
Discussion
- I work for Robinhood. Don't kill me.
Low-level, technical shit, comp sciences major, not finance side.
Guess what we overhead today?
Vladimir, yes founder Vladimir, and the C-Suite, received calls from Sequoia Capital and the White House that pressured into closing trading on GME etc. I guarantee you the same took place at E-Trade and the others who closed trading.
File reports on the SEC page. If I wasn't scared to be out of work in a pandemic I'd quit. I'm disgusted. We all need to rise up, this is as bad as it gets when we talk about how the rich get one set of rules, and the rest of us get screwed 🪛 over, and over, and over again left to bail them out and pick up the tab for their trillion dollar tax breaks. We need to pile pressure on every government and financial institution involved in this travesty of justice.
I'm taking a massive career risk even posting here but fuck these motherfuckers.
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 23:20 utc | 60
@Rutherford82
Well...seems that the Demo's are currently crafting legislation that will most likely '
"criminalize" almost all forms of political dissent and even general "legitimate" protesting as being potentially "domestic terrorism" - especially if it is targeted against them.
However, right now, in super-evil Putin-land, our very own US (&EU) personel are openly encouraging their people to take to the streets in "insurrection" to hopefully overthrow the Kremlin 'regime' - with the US Embassy acting as one of the prime organizational operatives..ala Maiden in Kiev a few years back. All the west needs to do at the moment is find a few "double agent" snipers to take out a few of the Navalny supporters and also truck over Victoria Newland with her trusty cookie making abilities, and we'll have ourselves a nice, color-coded, semi-violent (for western outrage effect) classic Russian coup.
But..one should never, ever think of that very same promotion (instigation) of insurrection and violence chould, or should happen to us here at home.
We're not sometimes referred to as "the Empire of Chaos" just for laughs.
Posted by: time2wakeupnow | Jan 28 2021 23:30 utc | 61
In my humble opinion, if you attempt to break the corporate control that does all that you mention in your posts, one will face the crushing power of the corporate monopoly on violence (per vk's excellent post @3).
Rushing in with violent intentions seems futile, dangerous, and an easily blocked strategy by the powerful side.
Better to build an ocean of support, such as Ghandi, using truth and nonviolence if you realistically want to take on a monopoly of violence.
Posted by: Rutherford82 | Jan 28 2021 23:47 utc | 62
Unintended consequences
https://mobile.twitter.com/robinhood/status/1354786505873625091
- Robin Hood
@robinhood
Lovely to have all these new followers .. can we just check that you know that you’re following The World Wide Robin Hood Society in Nottingham and not the Robin Hood App .. if so .. a big welcome from Sherwood
Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 23:47 utc | 63
I got a real kick out of Game Stop kicking wall streets ass.
Poetic choice too, in the name.
Really nice to see some actual regular people getting a shot in.
But... But... Free Markets??
So this is what they mean by "The Invisible Hand"?
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Jan 29 2021 0:26 utc | 65
@Rutherford82
"Better to build an ocean of support, such as Ghandi, using truth and nonviolence if you realistically want to take on a monopoly of violence."
You are "misinterpreting" the jist of my recent posts: I do not in any way, advocate for any kind of direct or outright "violence" towards TPTB. What I am trying to say is that there are many forms of "violence" - most of which are being done to the general population, and also to other, non-compliant to Empire, countries around the world on a daily basis. Why please tell me, if you advocate for a totally nonviolent "Ghandi" aren't you in the streets, or on this, or any other blog advocating for the very same nonviolent behavior for our Military that's has been raining down hyper violence and death in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syris..etc..etc?
In short...how do you square being peaceful and nonviolent when the very Imperial country we currently reside in is steeped in never-ending, horrific violence and destruction that's been regularly unleashed on more than half the countries of the world in the past century?
“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.” -Peter Ustinov
Posted by: time2wakeupnow | Jan 29 2021 0:28 utc | 66
GME Resources, an Australian mining company, was caught up in this frenzy:
Any ASX mining company with battery minerals like nickel and cobalt is a good bet. Also the 'critical minerals list' miners, the Australian government is spending hundreds of millions supporting them with a dozen different taxpayer funded schemes. Lynas, a rare earth miner and processor has been given many millions by both the US and Australian governments. Each new F35 fighter jet needs over 400 kilos of various rare earths minerals.
Posted by: Paul | Jan 29 2021 0:42 utc | 67
Shares in Australian mining company GME Resources (GME on the Australian Stock Exchange) were also affected by the Game Stop trade surge.
GameStop trade mania sends Aussie mining junior’s stock soaring
"... GME Resources managing director Peter Sullivan told the Sydney Morning Herald the surge caught him by surprise. “When I opened my share tracking app and saw it was at 9.4 cents, I was stunned,” he told the newspaper.“It just went bang, and I thought: ‘Well, what’s going on here? Is there something about my own company that I don’t know?’”
“There are people buying the stock for shits and giggles, just because of the ticker symbol,” market analyst Kyle Rodda of brokerage IG Markets in Melbourne told Reuters.
“It’s got nothing to do with the company and entirely to do with this mad phenomenon that we’re seeing at the moment where these Redditers looking to swarm into these stocks and play around with the market a little bit for their own amusement,” Rodda said.
“Eventually my brother’s son, who works in Sydney, told us it was about speculation to do with the ticker GME,” Sullivan told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“I was hoping to be able to say it was more to do with our world-class nickel projects.”
Well at least we know where Kyle Rodda would stand with the Reddit investor group WallStreetBets ... not tall at all.
Posted by: Jen | Jan 29 2021 0:50 utc | 68
Thierry Meyssan:
"...President Biden is fuelling division and is in turn marching towards civil war."
https://www.voltairenet.org/article212053.html
Posted by: Alex | Jan 29 2021 1:20 utc | 69
Short sales are when you sell a stock that that you think will go down in price that you own.
The only way you can sort of short a stock you own is to sell calls on it.
In theory naked short selling is illegal.
"Naked shorting is the illegal practice of short selling shares that have not been affirmatively determined to exist. ... Despite being made illegal after the 2008–09 financial crisis, naked shorting continues to happen because of loopholes in rules and discrepancies between paper and electronic trading systems."
Way back in the robber baron days they often did bear raids on a stock and profited by driving it so low they frightened most holders into selling their shares usually on the lows.
The PTB changed the rules to you can only sell short on an uptick (a price higher then the last sale)..
This stopped the bear raids.
Fast forward to today. The reddit crew and Robinhooders decided to do a reverse bear raid. A bull raid on a stock that was heavily shorted ( and for pretty good reasons).
IMO, this is kind of illegal. In no way is this buying or selling a stock because someone thinks it is undervalued or over valued.
Was talking to my son about this and I have to give his thinking a plus. He thinks that a couple of big funds that have been accumulating gamestock planned to get these redditers/robnhooders on side and bull raid the stock.
Makes sense. Most of the robinhooders don't have a clue about the stock market and would not dream something like this up themselves.
Posted by: arby | Jan 29 2021 1:29 utc | 70
Short selling which involves selling a stock which you don't have and buying back the same number at a later date after the price goes down, in theory. It was illegal on the Australian ASX and the NZX but is now legal. It is incredibly stupid and only the big operators try it. Don't bet the house on it.
Posted by: Paul | Jan 29 2021 2:24 utc | 71
anyone who pans short selling doesn't know what it is...
"The book also highlights the eccentric nature of the type of person who bets against the market or goes against the grain."
read the book, or watch the movie.. learn something...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short
alternatively, read nassim talebs book
the black swan for a similar insight...
Posted by: james | Jan 29 2021 3:16 utc | 72
@james
"anyone who pans short selling doesn't know what it is..."
And also...anyone who unquestionably defends it without paesing exactly all the mechanisms of what it is, who it is used and/or abused it...also doesn't know what it is..or at least doesn't want everyone else to know the intricacies of what it is - both positive, nuetral, or in many cases, highly destructive....
For more info on this: Read Taibbi's Substacks piece today on this entire financial comeuppance: appropriately titled: "Suck It, Wall Street"
"In a blowout comedy for the ages, finance pirates take it up the clacker"
Posted by: time2wakeupnow | Jan 29 2021 3:38 utc | 73
One thing for potential, inexperienced short-sellers to keep in mind is this: the theoretical amount of loss on any naked short sale is infinity.
Posted by: AntiSpin | Jan 29 2021 3:40 utc | 74
The fascist/color revolution/regime change playbook has successfully found new applications outside the world of geopolitics:
Step 1: Rile up an unhappy mass of disenfranchised but idealistic youth ("young and foolish") and sic them on a target.
Step 2: Keep pumping out the memes/propaganda until "organic" growth snowballs and it fuels itself with more memes and strong emotions, achieving critical mass.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: PROFIT!!!
Qui bono?
Posted by: Anonymouse | Jan 29 2021 3:59 utc | 75
Even tho I got the gamestop thing arse about face last night (sun well over the yardarm cough, cough), had only read one article that only set out the barebones - that the stock value had jumped by several orders of magnitude but no mention of reddit or robinhood, today I would venture to suggest that the days of any internet hive mind out-witting & defeating wall st greedheads are well & truly over.
I wish that were not true but I'm pretty sure it is.
A great deal will have happened since the old boy network shutdown of ordinary human trading in GameStop, Nokia, AMC etc.
Remember the reddit threads such as WALLSTBETS were also closed for a time, an unrelated issue according to reddit - "yeah r-i-i-i-ght reddit".
During the time that the reddit stock threads were down, Big Investors would have deployed apps to scrape those threads the moment they came back up, according to business insider:
"One data scientist at a fund told Insider they created a scraping tool this weekend to monitor tickers being discussed on the site to make sure their fund's short book isn't caught in the next "YOLO" trade, parlance on the subreddit for a high-stakes wager, often involving stock options. Thinknum, a web-scraping data provider, is in the process of building a Reddit-specific dataset after "insane client demand," according to cofounder Justin Zhen. The new tool will track ticker mentions in certain subreddits including Wall Street Bets."
The data on all announced trades will be analysed, weightings calculated for definables such as number of followers, the methodology a particular poster seems to advocate and many other things.
You can be sure that as well as learning how these 'normals' have been discovering what stocks are being shorted and by who - apparently the poster who identified these shorts did so by accessing the SEC returns institutional investors are required to make when running a short - we can be certain that the hedge fund greedies will be examining posts in the hope of discovering something anything counter to 'the markets' insane & arcane rules.
Lawsuits can run both ways, so let us hope that the architects of this beautiful scam cannot be shafted by a rulebook whose primary purpose seems to be ensuring wealth get wealthier and the poor get the blame. As I understand it individual investors are not held to as many strictures as institutional ones, but sll it would take would be for a wall st owned judge to decide that a few thousand individuals cursing, laughing, investing and stirring on a sub-reddit should be considered as 'an institution' and many posters would be screwed for the treasonous and un-amerikan crime of helping other strugglers to make a dollar as well.
I also bet that however many committees and enquiries are going to be created to tell us all the circumstances leading up to the reddit, discord, robinhood shutdowns, none will be commissioned to report on exactly what occurred during the shutdown.
We know that institutional investors were permitted to trade however while individuals could only sell & worse as the stock prise fell those who had bought stock 'on tick' had their stock sold immediately without their consent.
What else went on though? Did the hedge funds get provided with an opportunity to recoup by having a managed short market over those hours - remember these greedies cab buy, sell and buy again in a fraction of a second, that whatever their position is at the end of play may in no way indicate all the transactions that went down during those hours.
The greedy bullies who have been given the power to control amerikan industry are not nice humans - they will be looking for two things 1) To keep on making money as per usual and 2) Punish all those normal human beings who had the gall to try and take them, 'The Masters of the Universe' on.
Arseholes! But the creeps can be beaten as we have seen, but it is foolish to imagine they gan be taken the same way twice.
HiveMind Inc must find ways to securely communicate and discover other flaws accepted by the old boys networks which are vulnerable. The first part will be the hardest as it is inconceivable that the creeps haven't planted some moles already.
Judging by the sheer volume of trades towards the end it is probable some of the 'white hats' were really just 'black hats' in drag.
Plus the SEC and the NYSE will be certain to modify their reporting rules, or at least only make the reports available to Big Hedge.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Jan 29 2021 4:28 utc | 76
"Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald - 13:49 UTC · Jan 27, 2021
To review:
- Politics is to be manipulated only by K Street.
- The stock market is to be manipulated only by Wall St.
- Dissemination of information is to be manipulated only by corporate media outlets.
Those are the rules."
Oh, there are a lot more rules:
- Law is to be manipulated only by the rich and famous.
- Money is to be manipulated only by the Federal Reserve.
- Foreign politics is to be manipulated only by the "Intelligence" community.
- "Truth" is to be manipulated only by the "Fact" checkers.
- Election is to be manipulated only by the incumbents.
Posted by: d dan | Jan 29 2021 4:35 utc | 77
"The Enemy Within"
I was wondering whether the Dems would come out with this one, and now they have. It what Thatcher called the miners when she took them on to destroy the working class and the old labour movement in the 80s.
Posted by: Ash naz | Jan 29 2021 4:38 utc | 78
You see this? Robinhood CEO grants interview to CNBC… It doesn’t go well…. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cuCcchMOsKE&feature=emb_title
Good take from the retail trader purview.....D
Daily Thought Crime-Permanently Banned from Twitter & YouTub
1:44 pm
From Little Big Man to WallStreetBets
When it’s Bear Hunting Season and Wall Street nor the 7 Hoods doesn’t Know It
https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/from-little-big-man-to-wallstreetbets
Posted by: Dogon Priest | Jan 29 2021 5:30 utc | 79
@73 timetowakeupnow
That is an excellent article by Matt Taibbi on the Reddit play. It's useful because Taibbi reminds of us important highlights from the 2008 crisis and ties it all very well to the current event, especially since some of today's quoted outrage and hypocrisy comes from the very crooks bailed out 13 years ago.
The article offers a clean understanding of the dynamics of this market activity, in Taibbi's typical, easy-to-read and pretty funny writing. He makes it clear that short selling is not necessarily a good or bad thing in itself, it depends on whether it's cleaning dead flesh off the carcass or attacking the vital organs of a living entity. The real story is why it gets shut down, as it did in 2008, and now. Lots of irony here.
Taibbi does mention incidentally that the prime brokers who supplied the shares to the short sellers may not have actually, uhm, possessed all those shares - that would be "naked shorting", both illegal and of course highly customary among the big players.
Link: Suck It, Wall Street - Matt Taibbi
Highly recommended for the larger perspective on this story.
Posted by: Grieved | Jan 29 2021 5:34 utc | 80
Welcome to the Wild Wild West. Without rules and regulations anything goes. An internet group collectively shafted a hedge fund and may have suddenly but briefly transferred the flow of wealth downward towards the people from the upward tsunami gushing to the top 1% since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
Nancy Pelosi buys Tesla 25 call options which will benefit from the new Biden Electrical Vehicle plan. She rigs the system to enrich herself. But, on January 6th, Capitol politicians were traumatized by violence and fear. A big reason they can’t deal with the trauma is they brought it on themselves with their acceptance of the loss of American family supporting jobs. To deal with the damage, they must acknowledge their guilt and make amends to others. But instead they resort to cult think i.e. 1) Russia interfered with the 2020 election but there was absolutely no fraud, 2) Senator Ted Cruz objected to accepting the electoral votes, so he is a cause of the sedition and unrest, or 3) 75 million Trump voters must be pacified.
With Wall Street and the economy on the point of collapse, the US postal service unable to deliver the mail, in midst of the Pandemic’s Dark Winter with new variants on the doorstep, and a dying Empire reinforcing its occupation of Syria’s oil fields; literally, everything is out of control.
Posted by: VietnamVet | Jan 29 2021 5:43 utc | 81
look guys lawsuits are no longer valuable <=the justices are on the side of the wealthy.. Unless you are wealthy perpetrator you do not have access to fair justice at least in the USA governed America.
I have six hundrend acres in harms way, 4 grand an acre.. under option in Florida.. but can not find a partner or financing source..to help develop it. Parties in control of the local government [but not the government] have twice interfered. .. its like you cannot make money if you are not a vicious, corrupt, wealthy insider..or unless you give the lions share of your effort to them. They insist you put your money in their stock market or you don't have a prayer. I have come to the conclusion that forcing all savings into the stock market makes them subject to manipulation corruption. so that is why no one but no one is to permitted to progress in private ventures any more.
Clearly the focus of source of corruption and denial of independence and democracy should be on the Oligarch (personal and corporate), the governments (intl, fed, state, county, city, and neighborhood) are just pawns in the hands of the oligarch.
Posted by: snake | Jan 29 2021 6:00 utc | 82
Stonebird | Jan 28 2021 20:04 utc | 22
Did hedge fund speculators forget that they could also lose?
It is their divine right to make a profit without contribution anything but destruction.
Obviously, outsider trading cannot be allowed.
Posted by: Norwegian | Jan 29 2021 7:03 utc | 83
: Grieved | Jan 29 2021 5:34 utc | 80
Nakedshort-selling is theoretically illegal, but there is no real-time registry of who exactly is the owner of the unemcumbered shares [that have not been pledged by multiple "owners" for purpose of short-selling]. So who can prove what, if only interested-parties are investigating? ["interested" as in participating in the trading.]
I knew of this practice 60 years ago, before ubiquitous computers and hi- speed/volumes; always been an invitation to fraud. Likewise with front-running trades [broker receives order to buy 1,000 shares of XYZ. He first buys modestly for his own account, bumping the price for increased demand, then buys for his client at the inflated price...at which point broker sells his own inflated shares...often to his client!]
But I was "above" low-down moneymaking in those naive days.
Arguably, the biggest change in investing occurred when .gov broke-up the legal monopolies, such as ATT [Atlantic Telephone & Telegraph...an approximate monopoly on all US domestic & international calls, etc].
In exchange for total .gov oversight/control, ATT was guaranteed an exact, predictable profit % on all revenues, less expenses, with a guaranteed dividend! Thus a safe invest for "widows-and-orphans"who could NOT LOSE.
When the legal-monopolies were broken-up and "financialized" [public-owned utilities, etc sold to private owners for a cash payment today equal to a few years of estimated profits], goodbye to guaranteed investments that also could appreciate as the company grew. Today there are few, .gov safe investments besides US Treasuries, which are fixed-term, low-interest paybacks...while real-life expenses inflate faster.
BTW, From dictionary, "finance" is the handling of money, usually large amounts. I.e., how the money-flows are handled. So "financialized" often refers to the less honorable kinds of handling.
Posted by: chu teh | Jan 29 2021 7:05 utc | 84
Was talking to my son about this and I have to give his thinking a plus. He thinks that a couple of big funds that have been accumulating gamestock planned to get these redditers/robnhooders on side and bull raid the stock.
Makes sense. Most of the robinhooders don't have a clue about the stock market and would not dream something like this up themselves.
Posted by: arby | Jan 29 2021 1:29 utc | 70
-----
Looking at a list of Top 5 Gamestop Shareholders, its certainly not an implausible scenario
Top 5 Gamestop Stockholders
- Fidelity Management & Research Co... 13.67%
- BlackRock Fund Advisors 11.32%
- The Vanguard Group, Inc. 7.43%
- Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP 6.27%
- Dimensional Fund Advisors LP 5.66%
Top 10 Mutual Funds Holding GameStop Corp
- Fidelity Series Intrinsic Opportu... 9.75%
- iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF
- Fidelity Low Priced Stock Fund 2.87%
- Government Pension Fund - Global ... 2.60%
- Vanguard Total Stock Market Index... 2.11%
- iShares Russell 2000 ETF
- DFA US Small Cap Value Portfolio 1.61%
- Vanguard Extended Market Index Fu... 1.17%
- Vanguard Strategic Equity Fund 1.01%
- Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund 0.91%
Posted by: Triden | Jan 29 2021 7:14 utc | 85
That the system used to be rigged for a long time isn`t really the point here. Most people in the USA - in particular the political right/right-populists who supported Trump - did beliefe that the markets works. Like they used to beliefe just a few years ago that media generally tell the truth, elections matter etc. etc.
Posted by: m | Jan 29 2021 7:27 utc | 86
Re:85
..... on the other hand:
Some Asset Managers May Have Profited Wildly From the GameStop Short Squeeze
- Retail investors may not be the only ones profiting from the epic short squeeze on shares of GameStop (NYSE:GME) that has captivated market audiences everywhere.
The world's largest asset management company, BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), held a roughly 13% stake, or 9.2 million shares, in the video game retailer at the end of 2020, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Since then, retail investors fueled by the subreddit WallStreetBets, who noticed the amount of short interest on GameStop, have banded together to drive the stock higher by pledging not to sell shares.
The surge in GameStop shares forced short-sellers to repurchase the shares they borrowed at a higher price, only adding fuel to the stock's upward momentum. At one point earlier today, GameStop briefly touched $500 per share, plummeting all the way to $135 in the late morning.
There has been no filing yet to suggest that BlackRock has sold its position, although it certainly could have.
But assuming it didn't, shares of GameStop traded for less than $19 per share on the last day of 2020, when BlackRock last reported its position, which would have given BlackRock a nearly $175 million stake in the company.
Now, that stake could be worth anywhere from $2.8 billion, when GameStop traded at $300, to $4.6 billion (when it briefly touched $500).
Another asset management company that looks like it benefited from the squeeze on GameStop is MUST Asset Management, based in South Korea. The company revealed a 5% stake, or 3.3 million shares, back in March of 2020.
GameStop's stock closed at $4.19 on March 19, 2020, valuing MUST's position at roughly $13.8 million. On Jan. 27, a new regulatory filing showed that MUST no longer owned any shares of GameStop
Posted by: Triden | Jan 29 2021 7:27 utc | 87
@Grieved
Glenn Greenwald also has a short piece - along with a video about this very subject as well titled: The Reddit Revolution, GameStop and Melvin Capital
Posted by: time2wakeupnow | Jan 29 2021 7:29 utc | 88
Yankistan is the only country that has the right to bear arms against tyranny in its constitution, but the majority of yankistani's seem content to shoot each other for recreation and live under a tyrannical cartel.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jan 29 2021 8:16 utc | 89
I'm sorry if this sounds astonishingly stupid to the financially-astute amongst you all, but can someone explain the argument used by Robinhood to pull this move?
Robinhood: "We continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary."
That's a motherhood statement. It means exactly nothing. It explains exactly... nothing.
Robinhood: "In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only"
Pardon me? I'm confused. Volatility is a feature of the system, it is not a bug. It is how profits are made, and it is how money is lost. How much volatility is too much volatility? And if "volatility" is the problem that why allow closing, but not buying? Why not just suspend the stock completely?
I mean, this must be spelt out in the Terms And Conditions when you sign up with Robinhood, correct?
Because if it isn't then what the f**k gives Robinhood the messianic right to decide this on behalf of its customers?
I mean, honestly, this stinks so much that it demands an explanation from them as to how they made this decision. Because, let's face it, this isn't their money that they are f**king around with.
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Jan 29 2021 8:45 utc | 90
Reading news this morning I am getting the idea that we (USA) are finally giving up on trying to sell the F-35. New versions of F-15 now being flogged vigorously.
Anyhow, Jim Dean on Trump's scorched earth exit from the Presidency:
And this on the GameStop comedy:
Posted by: Bemildred | Jan 29 2021 8:53 utc | 91
An interesting article by RT about the pro-global-finance pivot of the Left in the USA.
Posted by: m | Jan 29 2021 9:27 utc | 92
Posted by: Bemildred | Jan 29 2021 8:53 utc | 91
I nice take on civil disobedience. Something the USA needs a good deal more of. I guess the US needs an American Spring, a kind of Occupy Wallstreet redux in addition to an OccupyWashington and OccupySiliconValley. Let's identify the financial, political and misinformation terrorists for who they are.
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Jan 29 2021 9:27 utc | 93
"[...] Before you buy into the David versus Goliath saga of GameStop, it would be wise to step back and do some homework on what’s really going on." From:
Posted by: teri | Jan 29 2021 9:40 utc | 94
Posted by: teri | Jan 29 2021 9:40 utc | 94
Yes, the story is fun but it reeks of bullshit and we should remain critically engaged.
Posted by: Bemildred | Jan 29 2021 9:53 utc | 95
I mean, honestly, this stinks so much that it demands an explanation from them as to how they made this decision. Because, let's face it, this isn't their money that they are f**king around with.
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Jan 29 2021 8:45 utc | 90
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The how & why has already been provided
See: Posted by: Triden | Jan 28 2021 20:55 utc | 29
One can hardly expect Robinhood to publicly admit that they got royally fucked by their business partners
Posted by: Triden | Jan 29 2021 10:03 utc | 96
@96 Triden: "One can hardly expect Robinhood to publicly admit that they got royally fucked by their business partners"
Oh, I understand that part.
What I am asking is what e.x.c.u.s.e. is Robinhood putting forward to explain away why they are bending over with their pants around their ankles.
Because so far their excuse seems to be that We Are Doing This Because We Are Doing This, and none of the talking heads seem willing to do a double-take and say "Wow, care to expand on that?"
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Jan 29 2021 10:22 utc | 97
Starting in the late 1800’s and the persecutions of Eugene Debs, the unions have been neutered and eliminated, with the Democrats jumping on board the effort after the disaster at the ‘68 Chicago convention.
Once that was done, street protests against power were neutered, with the castration of Occupy Wall St. being a good example. That effort is still going on, now under Democratic aegis, with Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer declaring war on both demonstrations and free speech.
But like love, the voices of the oppressed always find a way. Could this episode presage massive retail market efforts to neuter the plutocracy? If so, can the kleptocrats shut down that effort, like it has unions and public demonstrations, without creating an even worse backlash?
Already Robin Hood has had to reverse its suspension of trading and has a class action suit being brought against it by its own customers.
If the public uses the rules of the House to defeat the House, will the House still be able to change the rules in its favor?
That’s the big question right now. Everybody is watching, learning, and waiting.
There are a lot of angry people out there who are not going to buy into “Hope and Change,” “Democracy,” or crap about a free market.
The maneuvers that worked in 2008 aren’t going to pan out so well this time around.
Posted by: Joseph Dillard | Jan 29 2021 10:50 utc | 98
What I am asking is what e.x.c.u.s.e. is Robinhood putting forward to explain away why they are bending over with their pants around their ankles.
Because so far their excuse seems to be that We Are Doing This Because We Are Doing This, and none of the talking heads seem willing to do a double-take and say "Wow, care to expand on that?"
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Jan 29 2021 10:22 utc | 97
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Well at least one Class Action lawsuit has been filed so hopefully we will all get to hear the Legal arguments Robinhood will have to make, should the case(s) be allowed to proceed.
https://www.rt.com/usa/513956-robinhood-class-action-lawsuit-gamestop/
I imagine their justifications for what looks like illegal actions, will be highly inventive and entertaining.
Posted by: Triden | Jan 29 2021 11:40 utc | 99
@librul #17
@Triden #29
I have noted before that RH was not only founded with hedge fund and HFT, it derives most of its ongoing revenue from selling its retail customer behavior to the industry.
I have also written - a number of times - how the social media coordinated pump and dumps are being employed by the RH'ers.
That this (previously illegal) public collusion has turned around and bit its master's hand should not surprise anyone. Nor that the reaction is to shut down this illegal activity now that it is hurting the donor class.
The only real question in my mind is when and specifically how the RH lemmings will be stampeded off which financial cliff.
Posted by: c1ue | Jan 29 2021 11:43 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
Ah good, I was wondering if you were going to mention this at some point. Warren has also stated she wasn't happy with messing up common people's access to stock trading. Not sure it'll have any impact at higher level, the Biden administration and SEC will more likely support and protect the hedge funds - like most MSM whose coverage is abysmal.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jan 28 2021 18:22 utc | 1