Afternoon Tea 1.28.2021 - Orbital Bombardment

Y’all really need to get more fiction into your diet. The enemy never lets our heroes get away that easily, they were just taking time to spin up response teams. MarKet Defense Systems have stemmed the bleed, but not before particularly overexposed hedgies took serious damage. Gonna blast you from orbit with info on what the financial system did in response to Reddit, why it’s related to Occupy Wall Street, and why the Real Wall Street used to call blobs like r/WSB the “dumb money.” Also QAnon Marjorie thinks the 2018 California wildfires were started by a space laser, and the Bronx remains undefeated. It’s Thursday, January 28th 2021, and this is the Tea.

Hedge-Fund Titans Lose Billions to Reddit Traders Running Amok (Bloomberg) & Senate Panel to Hold Hearing Amid GameStop Frenzy, Brown Says (Bloomberg) Titans of financial parasitism like Point72 Asset Management have lost 10-15%, with others, such as the now infamous Melvin Capital, down 30%. The incoming Senate Banking Chair is gonna get to the bottom of this clearly. At this point, it should become clear what all of that lobbying buys you.

Nasdaq CEO Friedman says the exchange will halt trading in a stock if they link unusual activity to social media chatter (Business Insider) & Know Who Your Enemies Are (Dan Sheehan) This little Main Street vs. Wall Street knife fight happening as the 10 year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street approaches is quite interesting to me. The same people who talked unending shit about the Cassandras of Zucotti, calling attention to the exact conditions that gave rise to Trump, are now desperately trying to hold on while gov’t & the market comes to their aid.

Hedge Fund “Idea Dinner” with 2 Million Guests (Reformed Broker) In the ye olden days of 2003, I was an intern assistant investigator for the American Stock Exchange. Some of the shenanigans the hedge funds did at scale this week, I helped investigate when random brokers did it. They, much like r/WSB and robinhood traders, didn’t have the institutional fire support hedgies do. This type of financial brigading has gone on for almost as long as financial markets have existed, we’re just too old to have gotten our Motley Fool in the mail, or subscribed to weird newsgroups for stock tips or pump & dump schemes.

Amateur Investors Flood The Wrong AMC Subreddit In Search For ‘Stonks’ (Jalopnik) There’s a reason why Wall Street calls it the “dumb money,” folks.

Robinhood Is a Bouncer Who Works for the Guys Who Own the Club (Esquire) & Robinhood’s Customers Are Hedge Funds Like Citadel, Its Users Are the Product (Motherboard) Robinhood is the Facebook of online trading apps, if that helps you to understand. Your trade, and the right to be the “other side” of it, is also a thing Robinhood makes money on.

The Republican Retreat From Governance (New Republic) They went from being the party of “No” to the party of “Burn it down” in my adult lifetime.

Marjorie Taylor Greene penned conspiracy theory that a laser beam from space started 2018 California wildfire (Media Matters) In “non-financial crazy, just regular crazy” news, that QAnon Congressperson wrote that the 2018 California wildfires were ignited by lasers from space. For serious, solar space lasers, from a sitting member of Congress. Can we get Dan Quayle to comment?

Thieves steal unmarked NYPD vehicle in the Bronx, strip it for parts (Fox 5 NY) Hubris like this makes my week. The Bronx remains undefeated. That part of the city remains no joke. Do not, I repeat, do not come for the Bronx.

An Oral History of Disney’s ‘The Emperor’s New Groove’ (Vulture) Understanding how impossible this movie was to make, and how wonderful it came out, makes me appreciate one of my favorite Disney movies even more.

Anti-Virus: The COVID-19 FAQ (CovidFAQ) Since that whole pandemic thing is still going on, here’s the best, data-driven, informed FAQ about COVID-19, truth, myth, and fact checking I’ve found in some time. Thanks to the doctors who took a look at it to make me feel comfortable enough to post it.

Song of the Tea: If you’re not familiar with George Carlin, I’m so sorry. This is a withering visualization of the last special he did, in 2005. I can’t imagine how he would have described the Trump era.

Don’t follow the lights.

Yours,T