00:00 The GameStop short squeeze
29:30 Proud Boys played a key role in storming Capitol Hill Jan. 6
45:00 Social Media Influencer Ricky Vaughn Charged with Election Interference Stemming from Voter Disinformation Campaign, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/social-media-influencer-charged-election-interference-stemming-voter-disinformation-campaign
52:00 GAMESTOP HEDGE FUND MASSACRE CAUSED BY BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ATTACK ON BITCOIN, https://trad-news.blogspot.com/2021/01/gamestop-hedge-fund-massacre-caused-by.html
53:00 ARE THEY PLANNING A “FINANCIAL FALSE FLAG” ATTACK ON BITCOIN?, https://trad-news.blogspot.com/2021/01/are-they-planning-financial-false-flag.html
56:10 How r/WallStreetBets Made GameStop’s Stock Price Soar: Reddit Takes on Short Sellers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH_F7mQIM0M
1:01:30 Gamestop populism, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ToOGrUQ7ME
1:06:00 Babs joins
1:34:00 Twitter troll arrested for election interference related to disinformation campaign, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/twitter-troll-arrested-election-interference-related-disinformation-campaign-n1255864
1:35:00 Gandalf joins
2:15:00 DOJ vs Ricky Vaughn, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1360816/download
2:30:00 Louis Rossman: Gamestop shorts are FULL OF đź’© about closing their short position, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX6-jPy98YA
2:36:00 How Trumpism explains the GameStop stock surge, https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/27/politics/gamestop-stock-surge-trumpism/index.html
2:43:00 John Kerry on the Biden’s administration’s decimation of the American oil industry
2:46:00 GameStop’s stock continues to soar, as small traders team up against big institutions, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/business/gamestop-stock.html
* Hedge funds got too greedy shorting the stock of a pathetic little company they expected to tank even further. And a network of small but feisty stock-players tied together via reddit spotted this overreach and started buying the stock en masse to force the biggest “short squeeze of all time.”
The bigshots are screwed because they have to buy the stock by a certain date — at ridiculously inflated prices — to cover their short position. And they are so deep in the red that they’re liquidating other holdings to cover their bad bet, driving the overall market down.
The key mistake the shorts made was shorting even more shares than actually exist; when the reddit brigade saw this glaring discrepancy they swooped in.
* It’s basically a crowdsourced or “flashmob” stock manipulation organized on Reddit.
The hedge funds are pissed because “we’re the only ones who are allowed to manipulate the market.”
It’s a bit like the old fashioned “pump and dump” technique. Except everyone is clear that the stock is going up only because everyone is deliberately driving it up.
* The following conditions need to be met in order for the redditors to continue to disrupt markets:
1. Lots of stimulus money in the economy, much of it going to people who don’t need it.
2. Lots of people with too much time on their hands.
3. Zero commission trading.
4. Smartphone apps that take advantage of 3) above and make it easy to trade derivatives.
I suspect there’s nothing that can be done in the short run about 1) or 2), so either 3) or 4) will be changed by enforcing a “trading tax” or by restricting trades in certain financial products.
