I couldn't help but just put a screenshot up. I can't believe that CBS is being this open about the news! But hey, it's not the Biden administration's "miss step," so it's OK to report it.

‘Nuff said.

Note: You DO NOT need to register to leave a comment.

Robinhood just shot itself in the foot, but did it really? Apparently Robinhood makes it's money from hedge funds. Robinhood is taking the clients' purchasing data, and selling it hedge funds.

This is a double slap in the face for Robinhood users. Not only did Robinhood disrupt purchases in GameStop and a few other stocks, at the request of the hedge fund masters, but they are using their customers' trading data to better rig the market!

This is opening a whole new can of worms. I love this, of course, because it's proving what the stock market is. A big fraud, manipulated on the back end by people you never see, to guarantee that they are going to win.

This has caused quite a bit of action on the part of hedge fund managers.

(Bloomberg) -- Hedge fund titans Ken Griffin and Steve Cohen boosted Gabe Plotkin’s Melvin Capital, injecting a total of $2.75 billion into the firm after it lost about 30% this year.

Citadel funds and firm partners will invest $2 billion, while Point72 Asset Management’s investment will be $750 million, the firms said Monday. In return, the investors will get a non-controlling revenue share in the six-year-old hedge fund. Melvin Capital may receive an additional $1 billion infusion from other investors on Feb. 1, according to a person familiar with the plans.

The capital infusion comes after Melvin Capital, which started the year with about $12.5 billion in assets, has seen its short bets, including GameStop Corp., go awry, spurring the losses, people familiar with the firm said.

This year’s stumble is rare for Plotkin. His firm has returned an average 30% a year since it was started in December 2014 after nearly a decade working for Cohen.

The house of cards is falling. How might you ask could one company own so much of the market?

Citadel Securities estimates that it commands 27% of equity volume market share in the U.S., according to the presentation, up from 21% in 2017. It’s particularly dominant in retail order flow, with 46% of the market.

The firm’s balance sheet has swelled along with its profits. At the end of the third quarter it had assets of $84.2 billion, a 61% increase from the end of 2019, while its equity capital was up 37% in the same period.

Citadel Securities owns more than a quarter of the equity market in the United States? That doesn't sound at all like the formation of a monopoly does it? Is it a stretch to believe that Robinhood wouldn't ask, "How high?" if Citadel said, "Jump." To me this was obvious.

To get down to how it all went down; there are a few things to consider. First you'll have to know how short selling works. I wasn't entirely sure myself because the inner workings of it sound illegal; at the very least they are immoral.

Thanks to Kane over at "CitizenFreePress.com" for posting a link to this article over at "market-ticker.org". Karl Denninger has a brilliant explanation of how this all went down.

If you want to short a stock you are supposed to first borrow it. That is, ordinary people cannot sell what they don't have, so if you wish to short you must first borrow that which you want to sell. This is one of the ways brokers make money; they keep all the stock their customers have in "street name" and keep track of who has what. They can (and if supply is limited do) charge you to borrow that stock. There's nothing wrong with this, provided the stock borrowed is real. It's one of the things you agree to allow if you have a margin account; as part of the "price" of that privilege the broker can loan your stock to others for the purpose of shorting it. However, since you own it if you demand it back because you wish to sell it the broker either has to find some other set of shares to replace what he lent out of yours or the short-seller is forcibly bought-in at the market because they have to return your shares. If that causes to take a loss, tough crap.

Yes, I've been forcibly bought-in before. It's a risk of the game.

There is an exception to this rule: If you are a market maker then you can short naked, that is, without borrowing first. Why? Because a market maker's job is, as the name implies, to make the market -- that is, to take the other side of whatever the customer wants to do. If I want to be long something in order to do it someone else has to sell it. Now in the physical security market this is easy; there either is or is not what I want to buy out there on the sheet offered by someone else. But in the options market there is no physical security; the entirety of it is synthetic. This means if someone wishes to buy a CALL someone else has to sell one. The MM's job is to, when necessary, be that other person.

Well, that's dangerous because naked short options positions are obligations to deliver. Specifically if you are short an IBM CALL @ $100 (for example) then you are obligated to deliver 100 shares of IBM stock on demand at any time before expiration for $100 each. It does not matter what IBM's stock is worth; if the holder of the CALL exercises their option you must deliver them. If the shares cost $500 at that time you're ****ed.

Likewise I can buy a $20 PUT on some stock. This gives me the right to PUT that stock on the other person for $20/share up until expiration. IF the price is under $20 I of course have every reason to do that -- I can buy the shares for $10 and make you pay me $20! Who doesn't like that deal? Likewise, the market maker never wants that directional bet either since on the short side of an options trade you're obligated to perform if demanded by the long side.

Nobody would stay in business being a market maker if this sort of thing could happen to them, so as soon as they take the opposing side they execute a balancing trade on the other side. In short if you're a market maker you always want to be neutral on every security you make a market in; you make a (very) small profit on each transaction but you never, ever want to be exposed directionally because the amount you get paid is tiny compared to the risk, and one mistake will bankrupt you.

Therefore if you're a market maker you can short without locating first for this explicit reason. This doesn't lead to a problem generally because nobody in their right mind as a market maker wants a directional exposure, ever. As a result the failure to locate is transient and does not accumulate; you will lay that risk off and remove the imbalance if you have to since you can construct synthetic positions that perform financially the same as real ones.

So how do you get 130% of the available shares short? It would seem impossible and is unless someone cheats.

There are some players in the market who have "market maker" status but also trade their own books or have cross-interests with those who do. Allegedly there are "Chinese walls" between those pieces (or interconnected entities.) Quite obviously that is a load of crap because otherwise what you've seen would be impossible but it clearly not only has happened before but is still happening to this day. These entities are how you wind up with short sales where the locate and borrow hasn't happened first and the position remains open across time. This is supposed to be illegal but other than a few hand-slaps in the futures markets for physical commodities I'm not aware of any criminal prosecution for doing it.

And let's be clear here: This practice is counterfeiting.

So we have quite a bit of illegal activity going on here. But will ANY of the culprits be held accountable? I think not. There's not enough people that really understand what happened to create the sort of public outcry needed -- to make anything happen.

However, quite a bit more people are now hip to the jibe when it comes to these sorts of things happening in the market. As more of this comes out, it's liable to have a negative effect on the market. I think it's going to lead people to some pull their money out of the market and move it into real estate, or some other physical asset.

Note: You DO NOT need to register to leave a comment.

Xi Jinping must get along great with Jao Bai Din.

China is flexing it’s muscle. Don’t believe me, just look at Davos.

The atmosphere this time around was no less surreal, at least at first glance. What is the strongman leader of the largest communist nation in the world doing headlining the premier event for the world’s free-trading liberal internationalist elite?

China is positioning itself the world's new exchange currency. They seem to feel that with Biden in office, they have a much better change of achieving their goals.

All in all, the script was thin on policy specifics and thick on textbook platitudes about globalization, as is often the case with WEF speeches. What will prove more important than what was said will be the message sent by Xi’s appearance. Davos has always been a primarily European event, and the Chinese premier was flanked this year by heavyweights such as French President Emmanuel Macron and outgoing Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel, as if symbolic of the growing ties between the EU and China.

In short, Xi wants the world to believe that it is now China, not the U.S., that forms the linchpin of the international order. He is warning Joe Biden to keep well away from Donald Trump’s belligerence, lest the Biden administration be discredited in the eyes of the kinds of people who would attend Davos.

What might a Chinese-led international order look like? According to Xi, it is one free of “ideological prejudice.” In other words: worry less about tyranny or totalitarianism and focus on keeping the gravy train running. That line surely got an extra round of applause out of Klaus Schwab.

Here's the video of the Chinese professor explaining how the Chinese government has people at the top of the U.S. "core inner circle."

All of this points to something I mentioned in 2011. It all comes down to who holds the Exchange Currency.

Note: You DO NOT need to register to leave a comment.

Amazon is worried about the union votes being performed by mail-in ballot, instead of being done in person. I wonder why that is?

Amazon.com Inc. is asking the National Labor Relations Board to consider having workers vote in person -- rather than by mail -- on a proposal to form a union at an Alabama warehouse.

The company formally requested a postponement of the vote so the labor regulator can reconsider its earlier ruling. Under the current plan, workers will have most of the next two months to vote by mail.

A group of workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse filed paperwork in November for an election to decide whether to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a rare step for workers at a company whose U.S. workforce isn’t unionized. The NLRB, which oversees union votes, earlier this month said the vote would be conducted by mail, citing standards set up during the pandemic to keep workers and staffers safe.

The world’s largest online retailer said that a mail election raised the risk of fraud and the coercion of workers. It also said the process would depress turnout, arguing that as many as 29% of its more than 5,800 employees eligible to vote wouldn’t do so or would return incorrectly completed ballots.

You can't make this stuff up.

For a full year, all we've heard about in the news is how safe and secure mail-in voting is. Not just states in the U.S., but how safe mail-in voting is as a concept. When it's obvious to anyone paying attention that mail-in voting is NOT safer and more secure than in-person voting. "But don't pay attention to logic and facts, just listen to what we tell you, and believe what we tell you."

Remember. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released a statement about the integrity of the elections and the voting machines used in the election. They state, "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." Of course they didn't mention anything about mail-in voting in their statement, after all that's not cyber security related.

The people at Amazon know that the mail-in votes are subject to fraud -- they have admitted it, that's why they are pushing against it. Amazon has a stake in keeping the union out of Amazon warehouses. Collective bargaining agreements always cost the employer more money, so it's understandable why Amazon want's to keep the union out.

"But I thought the left is always pro-union?" Leftists never operate like "good" leftists when their own interests are at stake.

Just another illustration of absurdity.

Note: You DO NOT need to register to leave a comment.

Trump won because conservatives were fed up with the Republican Party. Trump won because people knew that Washington was not working for them.

Conservatives were tired of Republicans eloquently telling them --what they were never actually going to do.

The left doesn't have this problem. The left can go further to the left and it's NOT going to hurt them. The Bernie Bros are never going to vote for a Republican, Libertarian, or Conservative.

Democrat representatives for the most part follow through with their promises. They aren't scared to push and push endlessly to try and get what THEY want (I emphasis “they” because their constituents usually don’t know what leftist goals truly entail). Democrat politicians don't have to worry about what they say and when. With the help of the media the Democrat base doesn't pay attention to what the Democrat politicians are SAYING only what they are ACTUALLY DOING.

The majority of Americans who vote for leftists actually live their own lives rather conservatively, they don't want their own small children watching R-Rated movies and men using the women's restroom. We all know that there is a very small minority of people who actually think that's a good idea.

The Republicans have the opposite problem. The Republican base DOES pay attention. Republican voters notice when people commit double-speak and start to contradict themselves. Because of this, Republicans are held to a much higher standard by their constituency. This is why the Republican Party needed Trump.

Trump suffered less from his contradictions because he actually accomplished things. Republicans forgave Trump for the things he said and didn’t do --because of the things that he DID do.

I experienced this when talking with a far-left person at work. He lives his life conservatively but voted for Joe Biden and always votes for leftist candidates. When arguing, he sounds like a conservative complaining about a leftist candidate only he's talking about Trump. He sees all of the contradictions that Trump has said over time and points them out --while I am focused on all of the things Trump has accomplished.

We’re arguing the exact same points from two different sides, BUT IN THE EXACT SAME WAY! I suppose it’s just human nature, but it brings me to my next point.

I don’t know if Trump thought all of this through and was truly playing “4D chess.” I don’t believe that. I believe it’s simpler than that. It’s keeping people focused on what you want them focused on. Directing their focus is how you get elected. Convincing enough people that what you are proposing will actually become reality. That’s where Republicans have failed for years now, largely because they haven’t been getting anything done. Even when they had the ability to do so. Republican voters called their bluff.

It's the same way Obama was elected. He had an incredible ability to convince people that he was onboard with what THEY were proposing, when in reality, he was never going to implement any of their ideas. He just made people feel comfortable that he would.

On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds. After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish. The coalition that has propelled his quest -- African-Americans and affluent white liberals -- has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking -- Canetti's feeling of equality within the crowd. The day after, the crowd will of course discover its own fissures. The affluent will have to pay for the programs promised the poor. The redistribution agenda that runs through Mr. Obama's vision is anathema to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the hedge-fund managers now smitten with him. Their ethos is one of competition and the justice of the rewards that come with risk and effort. All this is shelved, as the devotees sustain the candidacy of a man whose public career has been a steady advocacy of reining in the market and organizing those who believe in entitlement and redistribution.

A creature of universities and churches and nonprofit institutions, the Illinois senator, with the blessing and acquiescence of his upscale supporters, has glided past these hard distinctions. On the face of it, it must be surmised that his affluent devotees are ready to foot the bill for the new order, or are convinced that after victory the old ways will endure, and that Mr. Obama will govern from the center. Ambiguity has been a powerful weapon of this gifted candidate: He has been different things to different people, and he was under no obligation to tell this coalition of a thousand discontents, and a thousand visions, the details of his political programs: redistribution for the poor, postracial absolution and "modernity" for the upper end of the scale.

It was no accident that the white working class was the last segment of the population to sign up for the Obama journey. Their hesitancy was not about race. They were men and women of practicality; they distrusted oratory, they could see through the falseness of the solidarity offered by this campaign. They did not have much, but believed in the legitimacy of what little they had acquired. They valued work and its rewards. They knew and heard of staggering wealth made by the Masters of the Universe, but held onto their faith in the outcomes that economic life decreed. The economic hurricane that struck America some weeks ago shook them to the core. They now seek protection, the shelter of the state, and the promise of social repair. The bonuses of the wizards who ran the great corporate entities had not bothered them. It was the spectacle of the work of the wizards melting before our eyes that unsettled them.

It's worth noting that that last paragraph was the group that Donald Trump attracted. It was because he said things without ambiguity.

Even if he didn't do everything he set out to do, he did do, what I consider to be the most important thing of all.

THE BIGGEST THING THAT TRUMP HAS ACCOMPLISHED IS TO PROVE THAT THE POLITICIANS IN WASHINGTON ARE LARGELY FRAUDS! Trump has been able to turn things around in just a few years, when Washington politicians have been complaining, and promising to fix them for as long as I can remember 30+ years. That's why he must go, and I believe that's why Republicans and Democrats would like to see him gone. The "Swamp" is flooded with politicians from both parties. The Swamp exists entirely on broken promises. Trump broke the first rule of The Swamp, actually getting things done.

Note: You DO NOT need to register to leave a comment.