Why post this portion of GME in this thread instead of GME thread? Is it you hoping more sympathy/understanding here since you may have felt you weren't making progress in the other thread? Just wondering aloud.

Honestly, the broker could have asked the short sellers to stop short selling and increase their margin. And/or put a halt to all trading for the time being  while working on a better solution (instead of prohibiting buying from the common folks, some of which are buying 100% using their own cash while allowing them to sell their existing position). Wouldn't this be a fairer alternative.

By the brokerages doing what they are doing, they are aiding the short sellers, allowing them to buy cheaper and kill the buying momentum. In the process also, angering millions of people which would cause them to want to hold for higher prices or buy more  when they are angered.

If we were to replace the large hedge funds who shorted recklessly with the common folk (collectively holding as much short interest as the hedge funds), would the brokerage behave the same way. I doubt it. Most likely the brokerage would suspend the short seller account, disallowed any more short selling from them and ask them to top up their margin etc, thus reducing the collateral problem thingy.

Not all of us who buy GME are against hedge funds etc or unable to think rationally. None of us  want a repeat of LTCM or MFGobal. Don't let fear of LTCM /MFGlobal /anger or other reasons cloud your ability  to think or really find out a best solution (instead of trying to avoid the  problem  by just caving in to the biggies as its an easier way out).

With technology, faster internet, smartphones etc--more and more existing hidden issues/problems will surface and people power will be more obvious--this is unavoidable (unless the country want to get more dictatorial)--so stay ahead of the curve by putting our brains to find better solution instead of taking the easy way out by caving in to the biggies. Peace.

PS: When one choose to be fair and focus on finding an equitable solution for all, we'll get better and better at problem solving. However, if one choose to not rock the boat as it will affect our rice bowl, then don't put it as something else and just admit it as it is or choose not to say anything. 2nd option is always easier and I believe most if not all of us do it at one point or another. Only the brave, optimistic , stubborn ones will choose the 1st option.

LOL. Nobody here says trade settlement is a simple affair. And neither did we here said its all David vs Goliath (I don't think anyone here is so dumb as to assume that especially if you look at the volume). And there's certainly some truth in what we have said so far. You just got upset and decided to post the earlier article in this thread and assume that we are all rumor mongering etc. I think its best that we agree to disagree so as not to cause friction here. Peace

Is etrade opened for Malaysia? Webull is restricting Malaysian for now

Why do the clearing firms care about restricting trades? Don't they just settle transactions?

They have capital requirements based on the notional value that the firms that clear there trade. The notional value is max exposure of a firm, So the firms were asked for larger sums on deposit with regulatory . Some were unwilling or unable to meet those calls, thus they shut down trading!


TradeZero makes money on short interest and short locates. RH doesn’t allow shorting. Every firm out there must post their 606 report for order routing. We make about .$70 per 1000 shares while the boys at RH make $2.60 per 1000. That difference translates to price improvement for our clients and not $ for us! In addition, non marketable limit orders are routed directly to exchanges like NASDAQ. This can be verified by viewing the 606 reports on every brokers website. Including ours. We also make $ on margin interest and finally on platform subscriptions.

FULL TRANSPARENCY

Ant Group Co. and Chinese regulators have agreed on a restructuring plan that will turn Jack Ma’s fintech giant into a financial holding company, making it subject to capital requirements similar to those for banks.

The plan calls for putting all of Ant’s businesses into the holding company, including its technology offerings in areas like blockchain and food delivery, people familiar with the matter said. One of Ant’s early proposals to regulators had envisioned putting only financial operations into the new structure.

An official announcement on the overhaul could come before the start of China’s Lunar New Year holiday next week, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which owns about a third of Ant, erased losses in Hong Kong trading on Wednesday after Bloomberg reported the agreement. The stock closed with a 0.4% gain.

Wall Street trading firms paid almost $3bn to retail brokers such as Robinhood to handle their trades last year — a practice that is attracting rising scrutiny in Washington.

Monthly regulatory filings collated by Bloomberg show “payment for order flow” earned US brokers $2.9bn in 2020. TD Ameritrade generated fees of $1.1bn between its broker-dealer and clearing divisions, while rival Robinhood grew fastest, earning fees of almost $700m.

The lucrative practice allows brokers catering to amateur investors to earn substantial fees without charging a commission for bets on equities and options. It has shot into focus after chaotic trading ignited by users of Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum, leaving many small investors surprised to find that their trading was feeding another part of the financial machine.

Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat senator, said this week she had “troubling concerns” about the companies that execute Robinhood’s trades, singling out Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities. Warren said she was worried the market maker had forced Robinhood to restrict trading in certain shares during last week’s tumult.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Securities and Exchange Commission Democratic commissioner Caroline Crenshaw said a key question for the Wall Street regulator was whether brokers’ “incentives are properly aligned with their customers’ interests”.

“The things I am focused on right now are looking at broker-dealers and how they are treating customers, whether their practices are fair, whether they are equitable, whether they are transparent,” she added.

Payment for order flow involves a trading firm known as a market maker paying a broker in return for orders for shares or options from retail traders. Market makers such as Citadel Securities, Virtu Financial and Susquehanna agree in turn to execute the trade at or better than current market prices.

The market makers, which use computing power to execute trades at extraordinary speed, have elbowed traditional investment banks out of the market. They now sit on one side of more than three of every 10 trades that take place outside traditional exchanges, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

The practice, which is all but banned in jurisdictions such as the UK, has been the subject of intense controversy.

As we edge closer to the end of Q1, I noticed my PSTH position is getting bigger by the day, and even slowly going into March and June call options. Anyone having a strong conviction as me?

Even if it’s not Stripe, barring any shitty companies, don’t see the downside to be significant, in fact it might still rise upon an announcement.

Anyways, it’s stripe

Sold some puts on IPOC/CLOV $10 strike.

Am up by a lot on IPOE as I got in at near NAV. But as usual, really tough to value these SPACS. Sometimes feel like taking profits but then with the whole Robinhood fiasco, SOFI might stand to gain a lot with chamath promoting it. They need to enable options trading though.

If the next flash crash occurs, I think these SPACs that have ran 100-400% will be the first one to have a mass sell off (along with genomics companies that have zero revenue), so am threading with caution here.

Btw, There are so many confirmation bias in r/PSTH. Really good to ease the heart during the weekends when there’s a big sum riding on this.

Tesla bought bitcoin. What do you guys think about this?

Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) today deployed a multi-modal autonomous driving MaaS (mobility as a service) platform that will provide AI-driven city transportation services in Guangzhou. Utilizing a fleet of Apollo Robotaxis and Robobuses along with three other model types of autonomous vehicles, this initiative will allow local users to order smart transport services on demand, starting in the Chinese New Year holiday period. The implementation of both Baidu Apollo and the ACE Transportation Engine is a testament to the promising commercialization prospects of smart transportation in the intelligent era.

From Reddit insider, Tesla starts to buy BTC in Jan. And gradually accumulated.

Some said the reason for tesla hold some BTC is to save some tax. How does the BTC see in accounting terms?

Vanguard added another 14,532,762 shares / 11.7billion

Source : https://ir.tesla.com/_flysystem/s3/sec/0001...eslainc-gen.pdf

when one said bubble or overvalued....share price valuation was set at what year? This year? Or next year? One thing, for explosive earning growth monsters, valuation might probably set for 3 years from now, or even 5 years, because the EPS may grow 2 or 3 folds within a 3 to 5 years period. If that growth didn't happen, then yes, they are at bubble now. Well, the eyes of the future who decide who is winner or loser. They might be all wrong, then these stocks are bubble, and may clash back to the ground. 

Let’s assume that by the end of this quarter, their car business is as big as Toyota ($250B). Let’s say their energy division is as large as Shell ($145B). Let’s say their autonomous driving division is as big as Uber ($105B). That generously values Tesla today at $500B. How is it still not overpriced?

That happens when major change of human's life appears, such as personal computers (evolved into today's smartphone), effective communications and efficient transportation etc.

So things have gotten rocky with your brokerage. Maybe they’ve betrayed your trust. Or maybe it’s just lost the spark that got you interested in investing in the first place. Whatever the case, Public.com is here for you.

Our friend, rockstar, and legendary love ballad belter Michael Bolton, who knows a thing or two about breakups, is here to help you through it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/17/interest-ra...omists-say.html

https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/02/27/3...-next-3-months/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-the-st...ink-11612916422

what do you guys think

rates go up, companies with high gearing ratio will have more struggle to serve their loans, thereby reducing profit avenues, expect short/mid term correction especially for stocks with insane PE eg Tesla?

There comes a point in any big selloff in Treasury bonds when the move becomes so pronounced that it starts to feed on itself. Increases in yields force a crucial group of investors to sell Treasuries, which in turn leads to further increases in yields.

Two months into this rout, that moment appears to have arrived, and it’s beginning to send shudders throughout all corners of U.S. financial markets.

The forced sellers are investors in the $7 trillion mortgage-backed bond market. Their problem is that when Treasury yields -- which strongly influence home-loan rates -- suddenly rise sharply, many Americans lose interest in refinancing their old mortgages. A reduced stream of refinancings means mortgage-bond investors are left waiting for longer to collect payments on their investments. The longer the wait, the more financial pain they feel as they watch market rates climb higher without being able to take advantage of them.

Their answer: unload the Treasury bonds they hold with long maturities or adjust derivatives positions -- a phenomenon known as convexity hedging -- to compensate for the unexpected jump in duration on their mortgage portfolios. The extra selling just as the market is already weakening has a history of exacerbating upward moves in Treasury yields -- including during major “convexity events” in 1994 and 2003.

Berkshire annual shareholder letters is out 

So correct me if im wrong but i think what is happening now is fed will continue easing (which is a good thing for equities) but then market is pricing in all this liquidity will create runaway inflation and hence need to force fed to raise interest rate else there will be a liquidity crunch / demand evaporation for treasuries/fixed income instruments.

But if market were to hear Powell say they would stop easing by april, i bet market will go down also.

So my take is either way, the market will still correct just cause valuations has gone up high and people is just using any reason to secure their gains and sell out. Jittery investors and fund managers.

Bond bulls hoping Japan’s deep-pocketed investors can arrest the global debt rout are in for a surprise — they are furious sellers, to a degree that’s causing problems for crucial parts of the market’s plumbing.

Japanese funds sold a record $34 billion of foreign bonds in the two weeks ended Feb. 26 as the nation’s fiscal year-end in March approaches — enough to cause reverberations in U.S. repurchase markets for 10-year Treasuries.

What started out as a re-balancing of books by Japanese funds has added to the volatility in global markets, with Treasury yields rocketing to levels seen before the pandemic, as a vicious cycle unfolds as selling begets more sales. The dumping from Japan, one of the biggest owners of debt, triggers hedging by dealers on the other side of the trade, which in turn impacts crucial funding markets relying on bonds as collateral.

Yen-based investors have been liquidating so-called older Treasury positions, according to traders in Asia, who asked not to be identified as they aren’t authorized to speak publicly. After four straight weeks of losses in U.S. sovereign debt last month, the investors are often selling at a loss, albeit one that is offset by profits from the equity market, added one of the traders.

China’s top banking regulator has warned of the risk of bubbles in international markets and within the country’s own real estate sector, in the latest sign of mounting concerns over elevated global asset prices.

Financial markets in Europe and the US are out of sync with their economies and fuelled by monetary and fiscal policy, Guo Shuqing, chairman of the country’s banking and insurance regulatory commission, said on Tuesday in comments that pointed to a potential spillover into China’s financial system.

“I’m worried the bubble problem in foreign financial markets will one day pop,” he said. “China’s market is now highly linked to foreign markets and foreign capital continues to flow in.”

China’s regulators are telling banks to trim their loan books this year to guard against risks emerging from bubbles in domestic financial markets, said people familiar with the matter on Friday.

The banks, including foreign and state-owned lenders, have received guidance from the central bank in the past few days telling them to restrict the overall size of their lending this year, said three bankers on condition of anonymity.

The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) is also “seriously” looking into the misuse of business loans to individual borrowers for personal investments, two of them said, which violates Chinese regulations.

“A large amount of money in the name of business loans had flown into the property and stock markets during the pandemic last year,” said one of the bankers.

A sophisticated attack on Microsoft Corp.’s widely used business email software is morphing into a global cybersecurity crisis, as hackers race to infect as many victims as possible before companies can secure their computer systems.

The attack, which Microsoft has said started with a Chinese government-backed hacking group, has so far claimed at least 60,000 known victims globally, according to a former senior U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation. Many of them appear to be small or medium-sized businesses caught in a wide net the attackers cast as Microsoft worked to shut down the hack.

Victims identified so far include banks and electricity providers, as well as senior citizen homes and an ice cream company, according to Huntress, a Ellicott City, Maryland-based firm that monitors the security of customers, in a blog post Friday.

Here are some more highlights from Wang’s briefing:

Xinjiang issue: “The claim that there is genocide in Xinjiang couldn’t be more preposterous. It is just a rumor fabricated with ulterior motives and a lie through and through.”
   
Europe relations: “China and Europe are two important players in this multipolar world. The relationship is equal. It is open. It is not targeting any third party or controlled by anyone else.”
   
Vaccine diplomacy: “We’re also ready to work with the International Olympic Committee to provide vaccines to Olympians.”
   
Hong Kong crackdown: “Hong Kong’s shift from chaos to stability fully serves the interests of all parties. It will provide stronger guarantees for safeguarding Hong Kong citizens’ rights and foreign investors’ lawful interests.”
   
Trade: “The answer is not to retreating to protectionism, isolation or decoupling, but to work together to make globalization open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all.”
   
Japan tensions: “I hope that Japanese society will embrace a more objective and rational conception of China, and solidify public support for long-term steady progress in China-Japan relations.”
   
Indian border: “The rights and wrongs of what happened in the border area last year are clear, so are the gains and losses. The facts once again prove that unilaterally creating confrontation will not solve the problem.”
   
South China Sea disputes: “The U.S. and other Western countries frequently stir up troubles in the region, trying to drive a wedge using the South China See issue. They have only one purpose: to sabotage peace and disturb regional stability.”
  
Russia cooperation: “We will set the example of strategic mutual trust by firmly supporting each other in upholding core and major interests, jointly opposing color revolutions, countering disinformation, and safeguarding national sovereignty and political security.”

“The can of worms is open,” says Eric Liu, head of research at Vanda Research, which has turned its attention to tracking the behavior of amateur investors. “If you break free of this belief that fundamentals matter to markets, then you look to this.” Hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, banks and other market professionals are poring over this kind of data, he says.

The burning question on Wall Street is whether this burst of hyperactive retail trading is a temporary coronavirus-inspired phenomenon that will inevitably ebb once markets next crash — as happened after the dotcom boom and bust — or the start of a new regime driving the US stock market.

“Powerful waves of passive and systematic investment long made retail investors largely irrelevant when framing market forecasts . . . until now,” says Alain Bokobza, head of global asset allocation at Société Générale. “Rather than criticizing retail investors and their behavioral patterns, it is better to slot them into the money equation.”

Many in the industry point out that the market-moving power of amateur traders is more than a fleeting fad focused on a narrow set of stocks. Vanda’s Liu compares it to the transformative shift away from active money managers into passive investing that followed the 2008 financial crisis. “We are on a moving train,” he says. “In the past year, we have yet to see a major thematic move that’s not been sponsored by retail.”

For other participants seeking to divine retail traders’ next steps, Liu’s analysis suggests that the amateurs are drawn “from one hot theme to the next”. Last spring, for instance, they hopped on to the so-called “reopening trade”, buying shares in airlines such as Delta and cruise ship operators such as Carnival in the expectation — or hope — that lockdown conditions would lift quickly. At times they accounted for a half or more of all trading in these stocks.

Many times, share prices don't reflect realities. To a certain extent fundamentals are pretty much bullshit and it has been for years. So many companies out there making money quarter after quarter, hitting their targets and yet their shares never move the right way because of analysts' / Wall Street sentiments. It's all about hype and market sentiment. The market makers have always manipulated that from the backroom with all sorts of dealings, hit jobs and old-boys connections. Retail investors are increasingly getting organized and throwing a monkey wrench into the old ways. The recent action on stocks like GME, AMC etc could be a taste of what's to come. We live in interesting times.

But that’s not the only way people try to play the market.

The Securities and Exchange Commission just unveiled fraud charges against a trader allegedly trying to profit by manipulating a stock higher.

He’s Andrew Fassari, a 33-year-old Orange County resident. According to the SEC, he staged a vigorous campaign in December using the Twitter handle “OCMillionaire” to suck penny-stock investors into shares of Arcis Resources Corp., which had been defunct for years.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve said temporary limits on dividend payments and share buybacks will end for most banks after June 30, following the completion of annual stress tests to determine their resilience to a hypothetical downturn.

“The banking system continues to be a source of strength, and returning to our normal framework after this year’s stress test will preserve that strength,” Randal Quarles, the Fed’s vice chairman of supervision, said Thursday.

The move is a vote of confidence for big banks from the Fed, which placed restrictions on bank payouts last summer, citing the need to conserve capital during the coronavirus-induced downturn. It initially barred buybacks and capped dividends so that they would not exceed a bank’s recent profits.

The central bank has repeatedly extended the restrictions on dividends while it allowed buybacks to resume in the first quarter of 2021, though banks still can’t return to shareholders more than they have been making in profit over the past year. The aggregate dividends and repurchases can’t exceed the average quarterly profit from the four most recent quarters.

In a sign of the uncertainty facing the industry and the economy, the Fed required big banks to go through two rounds of stress testing last year. It said after the latest round in December that U.S. banks remain strong enough to survive the coronavirus crisis but warned that a prolonged economic downturn could saddle them with hundreds of billions of dollars in losses on soured loans.

Before the Fed imposed its payout restrictions last summer, the biggest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., had voluntarily halted share buybacks through the second quarter of 2020. Buybacks are the main way U.S. banks return capital to shareholders.

Some officials such as Janet Yellen, who pressed for tougher restrictions on bank payouts before she became Treasury secretary, have said banks are now in a strong enough position to distribute dividends to shareholders and buy back stock.

“Financial institutions look healthier now, and I believe they should have some of the liberty provided by the rules to make returns to shareholders,” Ms. Yellen said in Senate testimony Wednesday.

The annual stress tests were introduced following the financial crisis of 2008-09, when the U.S. government bailed out some of the largest financial institutions. The tests are intended to ensure that banks have enough capital to continue lending during a possible economic downturn. Results for this year’s test will be released by July 1, the Fed said Thursday.

The Fed imposes limits on payouts for banks deemed on their stress tests to have insufficient capital to absorb losses. In its announcement Thursday, the Fed said any bank that falls below any of its minimum risk-based requirements in the coming test will remain subject to the additional restrictions for three more months, through Sept. 30. A firm that remains below the capital required by the stress test at that time faces even stricter distribution limitations under Fed rules.

Didn't know about this movie, thanks for sharing