Afternoon Tea 1.27.2021 - Hunter x Hunter

Strong "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" x "it's an army, it's just not your personal army" vibes

January 27, 2021

I don’t own any stock in Gamestop, Blackberry, or AMC, but I’ll be explaining how the hunter became the hunted as best as I can. India’s farm protests continue, why pump & dumps are bad ideas, mortality rates were lower in unionized nursing homes, and Mike Pence is homeless! It’s Wednesday, January 27th 2021, Hunter x Hunter is severely underrated, and this is the Tea.

How r/WallStreetBets Gamed the Stock of Gamestop (TheVerge) & The GameStop stock frenzy, explained (Vox) & The Investment Genius (Where’s Your Ed At) Hedge Funds are complaining that a giant pile of online day traders from a sub-reddit called WallStreetBets have been able to drive up the price of Gamestop to nonsensical levels. While the Verge & Vox article are great sober explainers, this summary from Ed is wonderful:

The whole Gamestop thing is interesting because the pearl-clutching seems to be entirely based on people who are offended that someone else found their rigged dice supplier and started using rigged dice….

It’s funny, because the original idea of day trading was that ‘anyone could get involved,’ with the quiet part being that they would also get screwed over because the stock market is generally controlled and organized by those who can make decisions with computers in miliseconds, or at the very least had the legal kind of prior knowledge. Seeing people on Reddit fuck with the markets at scale annoys them because it interferes with their profits and their ability to sell their services.

Which rocks. But it’s also similar to the whole crypto thing in that those who got in really early are the ones who are going to make tons of money, and those who get in now are likely to be the ones that lose it. The moment something becomes obvious enough that you should do it, it’s already passed the point of profitability.

Think the cartoon is nonsensical? This whole debacle has already burned up $3 billion in capitol from a few hedge funds that were aggressively shorting the Gamestop stock. And even if the sub-reddit is shuttered, the r/WallStreetBets Discord might as well be a digital trading floor:

BlackBerry stock rockets again, as company says it is ‘not aware’ of reason for recent trading activity (Marketwatch) While the Gamestop war rages, Executives at Blackberry & AMC woke up this week seeing their stock jump in similarly perplexing ways. I can’t wait to hear how many times “Reddit” comes up on next quarter’s earnings calls.

Semantic Density, Algos, & Gamestop: This Time It’s Different (ETF Trends) & How a Penny Stock Explodes From Obscurity to 451% Gains Via Chat Forums (Bloomberg) If you’re interested in how this happens or just want to keep shoveling FOMO into your mouth about all the get rich quick tips you might have missed, this pair of links is for you. But I have to warn you, you’re not going to like how you feel at the end of it.

Violent clashes as Indian farmers storm Delhi’s Red Fort (The Guardian) That farmer strike in India? Still going on! This video is quite enthralling, given the insanely anachronistic tech involved. Tractors, dudes on horse with swords and pikes, riot gear, tear gas, and modern HK anti-kettling tactics, all in about two minutes.

Dark-money think tanks dominate House Foreign Affairs witness list (Responsible Statecraft) Think Tanks and policy analysis orgs do great work, but they really do need to be honest about their funding. Especially the Heritage Institute, which is gross.

Just Wait Until Marjorie Taylor Greene Finds The Person Who Used Her Facebook Account To Like A Post About Executing Nancy Pelosi! (Vanity Fair) & Exclusive: Proud Boys leader was ‘prolific’ informer for law enforcement (Reuters) QAnon Congress Marjorie liked FB content calling for the murder of Democratic leaders, and one of the Insurrectionist leaders is a massive government snitch. Funny that.

Mortality Rates From COVID-19 Are Lower In Unionized Nursing Homes (Journal of Health Affairs) COVID-19 mortality rates were 30% lower in nursing homes staffed by union workers. Those facilities also had much better access to PPE, so they also saw lower infection rates. Funny that.

Facebook’s secret settlement on Cambridge Analytica gags UK data watchdog (TechCrunch) & Silicon Valley’s double standard (RestOfWorld) If you thought the Cambridge Analytica story was buried, it kind of actually was? I wasn’t aware a government could make a secret arrangement between them and a tech company, precluding them from sharing the results of an audit. The point being made about Trump across SE Asia will be hard to ignore. Modi’s party, BJP, includes many members who have called for violence, and they have not been deplatformed. If Trump can’t do this, why can they?

How ‘Lord of the Rings’ Shaped A Hopeless Generation (MelMagazine) Included for the sheer volume of friends and colleagues I have that will use the LOTR extended editions as a warm blanket in the winter.

Joe Exotic Now Wants President Biden to Pardon Him (Complex) Given we’re about to hit the 1yr anniversary of lockdown, might as well turn Season Two of the Netflix special into a reality show.

Mike Pence, wife Karen reportedly homeless, couch-surfing in Indiana (TheGrio) The best news of the week. If Mike & Mother can’t find a place to stay, maybe they can use one of the fabulous shelters that LGBTQ youth, HIV positive people, citizens down on their luck in need of generous social serv…oh. Right.

Oklahoma trying to return its $2m stockpile of hydroxychloroquine (Read Frontier) Anyone know someone looking for $2,000,000 in hopefully-not-expired hydroxycut-quine? Asking for an OK friend.

Song of the Tea: Yoji Biomehanika is one of those artists I only bring up when someone’s pretending they listen to “harder” music than anyone else. This track, sampling “Hackers” the seminal 1995 movie, has all the energy you need to get through the rest of your day.

If you’re good at something, never do it for free.

Yours,T

P.S. Netero & I love you.