Here are two shocking headlines that sum up the COVID $CAM:
The wealth tran$fer based on COVID is the greate$t hei$t in all human hi$tory, folks, and that stolen loot is now being used to bribe institutions to participate in their own destruction as they control-freak oligarchs redesign the very fabric of life.
"U.S. equities mounted a comeback from their worst loss since October as moves to limit retail traders’ speculation in some companies opened the door for hedge funds to load up on stocks they had been ditching. The S&P 500 rose 1% after trading platforms restricted activity in stocks whipsawed by internet chatter, from GameStop, AMC, and American Airlines. Hedge funds that had shorted the stocks were burned in recent days, forcing them to reduce holdings in shares they loved in order to cut risk. That reversed Thursday, and a Goldman Sachs basket of stocks favored by hedge funds jumped the most since early November, halting a five-day slide. An index of the most-shorted shares tumbled more than 7%, the most since June. GameStop whipsawed, rising as much as 39% in early trading before plunging as much as 68%. It closed down 44%. AMC sank 57%, American was up 9.3% and Tootsie Roll Industries lost 9.5%. The trading restrictions sparked outrage on the WallStreetBets forum where day traders have convened to drive the manic rallies that burned hedge funds. All 11 industry groups in the S&P 500 traded higher, with sentiment also boosted by solid corporate earnings from the likes of Mastercard Inc. and Comcast Corp. and a surprise drop in jobless claims....."
That's a very sanitized view of the full GameStop that erased billions in the blink of an eye.
"Economy cooled in the fall, but 2020 was better than expected" by Ben Casselman New York Times, January 28, 2021
The US economic recovery stumbled but didn’t collapse at the end of last year, setting the stage for a much stronger rebound this year.
Just in time for Joe Biden, how about that?
Gross domestic product rose 1 percent in the final three months of 2020, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That represented a sharp slowdown from the previous quarter, when business reopenings led to a record 7.5 percent growth rate. On an annualized basis, GDP increased 4 percent in the fourth quarter, down from 33.4 percent in the third.
So the economy was roaring heading into the election and and yet somehow Donald Trump lost.
Looking at the quarter as a whole obscures the full extent of the slump: Many analysts believe economic output declined outright in November and December, as rising coronavirus cases and waning government aid led consumers to pull back on spending and forced businesses to shut down, in some cases for good. Personal income actually fell in the fourth quarter, but four weeks into January, the new year looks different, and the rollout of coronavirus vaccines, though slower than hoped, offers the prospect that hotels, bars, and other businesses hurt by the pandemic will see customers return later this year.
OMFG!
I find the analysts belief hard to believe after I was told less than two weeks ago that the nation’s largest retail trade group said holiday sales soared 8.3%, even as the coronavirus kept shoppers away from physical stores, and once again, I am left absolutely speechless and wonder how in the world Trump did not win reelection.
I mean, I'm told that business starts had best year ever even as pandemic raged, and to be sure, many of the people filing the IRS documents will never get off the ground, and those that do probably will take several months to begin operating, but still, there is reason to think the boom is legitimate even if you only make 10 percent of what you used to while the market again nears record highs.
“That fiscal stimulus is helping push the train of the economy through the tunnel, and the light on the other side is widespread vaccination and inoculation,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at the payroll processing firm ADP.
You f**kers are so goddamn $ick it is making me ill doing this.
The late-year slump was driven by a slowdown in consumer spending, which grew less than 1 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with 9 percent in the third, but parts of the economy that are less exposed to the pandemic helped pick up the slack. The housing market continued to surge, partly because of low interest rates, and business investment was strong, a sign of confidence among corporate leaders.
The economy is still in a significant hole, though.
OH!
Nothing like waiting halfway through the article before totally contradicting the thesis of this stinking swirly.
So what was it, an 8% holiday jump or a less than one percent treading of water?
Still, the rebound has been significantly stronger than most forecasters expected last spring.
STILL!
That word, and others like it, are a BS warning, and they are prolific in my paper.
The stronger-than-expected rebound is partly a reflection of businesses’ flexibility: Retailers embraced online sales, restaurants built outdoor patios, and factories reorganized production lines to allow for social distancing, but it is also a result of trillions of dollars in federal aid, which kept households and small businesses afloat when much of the economy was shut down. Despite the loss of millions of jobs, personal income and saving both rose in 2020.
It's being called a K-shaped recovery, which is really no recovery at all, but we all still got rich(?).
“The fiscal stimulus package was not perfect,” said Stephanie Aaronson, a Brookings Institution economist, “but the truth is both Congress and the Fed acted very, very quickly, and I think that did save the economy from a much worse outcome.”
OMG, they are saying that pork-filled piece of crap saved the economy, and if so, why does Biden need $2 trillion now?
Interestingly enough, the very next day I'm told the US economy shrank by an alarming 3.5 percent last year, and what a change from one day to the next, huh?
I liken the whole load of BS to the German retreat from Russia in WWII or like the water coming into the Titanic.
Good news, Cap'n!
Less water coming into the boat!
We are still taking on water, but not as fast!
Same with the German retreat.
We're losing ground, but not as much as expected so it's a victory(?).
And you wonder why I am sick of this crap, or do you?
Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the same page:
"Unemployment claims show continuing pressure on the labor market" by Patricia Cohen New York Times, January 28, 2021
New claims for unemployment fell last week, the government reported Thursday, but the elevated levels are fueling worries about prolonged damage inflicted on the labor market by the pandemic and the slow rollout of vaccines.
The national figures for newly filed claims are below the staggering levels of last spring, when the coronavirus started its march across the map, but they continue to dwarf previous records.
The impact of the virus on the service sector, particularly leisure and hospitality, is causing the heaviest toll.
“We need the service sector to come back for the economy more broadly to come back,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics.
Well, forget it because it is not happening despite all the false promises from authority.
It's not part of the script, and not part of the plan.
“The longer people are unemployed, the harder it is to get back into the workforce,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief US financial economist at Oxford Economics. “The longer this continues, the more there is a heightened risk of medium-term scarring.”
That is what they are calling the destruction of the middle class and your livelihood?
Medium-term scarring?
The $900 billion pandemic relief bill signed into law last month has provided a bridge of support, but provisions specifically extending relief to jobless workers are scheduled to expire in mid-March.
President Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion emergency relief package that includes a $400 weekly unemployment insurance supplement, although Republicans and a handful of Democratic lawmakers have balked at the cost of the overall proposal.....
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Time to fire off a strongly-worded letter:
"Warren sends letter to SEC over GameStop-Reddit-Robinhood saga, calling for regulation" by Anissa Gardizy Globe Correspondent, January 29, 2021
Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday, asking that the group explain to Congress and the public what they are doing to address the recent market activity surrounding GameStop and other companies.
The Massachusetts senator wrote that the SEC, which oversees the stock market, has failed to control “years of distortion in securities markets,” exacerbating wealth inequalities. She is asking that the SEC respond to her questions by Feb. 5.
Why is she chiming in now?
“The Commission must review recent market activity affecting GameStop and other companies, and act to ensure that markets reflect real value, rather than the highly leveraged bets of wealthy traders or those who seek to inflict financial damage on those traders,” Warren wrote in her letter.
The incoming chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, has already said the panel will hold hearings on the GameStop trading activity.
The video game retailer’s stock is surging because a group of investors — some inspired by a Reddit forum — are trying to squeeze the hedge funds and other professional investment firms that have large short positions in the stock; that is, bets on the company’s downfall. The campaign, which is largely taking place through stock trading apps like Robinhood, has worked, so far. At least one hedge fund has closed out its short position to minimize further losses, and GameStop’s stock has gone ballistic, closing Thursday near $200, up from less than $10 earlier this year.
Uh-huh.
So Liz is firing off a letter because the hedge fund bastards are getting their clocks cleaned?
What a FRAUD is SHE!
Warren has said she thinks the root of the issue is broader than the current saga. She told CNBC Thursday afternoon that “we need an SEC that has clear rules about market manipulation and then has the backbone to go in and enforce those rules.”
“The whole point of having a stock market is so that people across this country, around the world, can invest... so businesses have the money they need to grow and to prosper,” she said. “Instead, what has happened is it has turned into a casino.”
In the case of GameStop trading, Warren said “it appears” there are people trying to manipulate the stock market, but she said it is not clear whom.
“People are liking to tell a David versus Goliath story, but are you entirely sure that is right?” Warren said Thursday. “Are you entirely sure that there aren’t wealthy people on both sides? That hedge funds haven’t moved in on the side of the people who bid up the price of GameStop?”
Oh, man, not only is she shameless, she sounds like a conspiracy theorist!
The people f**king the hedge funds are average people who have had their lives destroyed by the likes of her.
Of course, some stock manipulation is okay.
It happens all the time and nary a word is said because of where the money goes.
That's our $y$tem, after all.
Time to take a $tep back.
But she’s not a fan of the Robinhood platform, either, which has made it easy for first-time investors to invest, but also restricted trading in several companies today, citing “market volatility.” Warren told CNBC such platforms need to be subject to more regulation to make them fair to users.
What a cretin!
Not only do they want to shut down free speech along with the rest of the society, they want trading to be the exclusive province of oligarchs while you are shut out of it in what can only be described as communism!
The SEC declined to comment for this story, but in a statement Jan. 27 it said the agency is “actively monitoring the ongoing market volatility.”
Meet David:
"Here’s why people are talking about GameStop, Robinhood, and a Mass. resident called ‘Roaring Kitty’" by Anissa Gardizy Globe Correspondent, January 29, 2021
Who is the Massachusetts man who kicked off the whole GameStop phenomenon?
Keith Gill is a 34-year-old former employee of MassMutual who, on the Internet chat site Reddit and through YouTube videos, has been pounding the table on behalf of the beleaguered video game retailer since 2019. In doing so, he kicked-off a stampede of fellow Reddit users and other individual investors, sending the once-beaten down shares into the stratosphere, triggering huge losses among veteran hedge fund investors who had shorted the stock, and provoking something of an existential crisis on Wall Street.
The WHOLE HOUSE of CARDS could come down, huh?
Looks like GameStop is going to be a SCAPEGOAT just as COVID was used to cover the collapse of the world economy.
Gill could not be reached for comment, but his game plan on the stock is plain to see on Reddit, where he posts under the name DeepF***ingValue and under the moniker Roaring Kitty on YouTube.
In his first interview since the chaos began, Gill told the Wall Street Journal that he “didn’t expect this.” The trader films his popular YouTube videos from the basement of his Wilmington residence, in front of a multi-monitor set up. Gill used to work for MassMutual, and an archived website shows he worked as an investment and financial professional.
So what happened?
“This story is so much bigger than me,” he said.
Gill, though, has amassed a following of traders that don’t resemble the typical Wall Street mogul: many of them go by unidentifiable usernames, use rocket ship emojis, discuss the stock market by way of memes, and talk about sending stocks to the moon, and indeed it has: from less than $10 a share earlier this year, GameStop’s stock price has gone ballistic, at one brief point trading above $500 on Thursday. It closed Friday at $325 a share.
Uh, Liz?
Along the way, Gill and others have become very rich — on paper, at least. One of his posts from earlier this week purportedly shows that Gill’s investment of $53,000 had ballooned to $48 million, according to published reports, but what started out as a typical argument for a beaten-down stock has morphed into something much larger. Using the Robinhood trading app, where individual investors can buy stocks in small lots, and low-priced options that add to the buying, the Reddit crowd took particular aim at the hedge funds and other professional investment firms that have large short positions in the stock, meaning they bet the shares would decline, but instead, the sharp rise in GameStop’s share price created huge paper losses for those short-sellers, forcing at least one to close out its position to minimize further losses.
They bet against a company and then go out to destroy it so they can clean up on both sides.
That's our $hitty-a$$ $y$tem, and it's always been far from a "free market."
What you are seeing now, and what Reddit and Robinhood brought into, is the government is basically the Sheriff of Nottingham. The Lords called them out when the pea$ants revolted and looted the barn.
Robinhood said it was forced to stop trading in GameStop and several other stocks briefly on Thursday, as did some other trading platforms, triggering a backlash from Reddit investors who see themselves as David to the Wall Street Goliaths shorting the stock. Another Massachusetts resident, Brendon Nelson, filed a lawsuit Thursday against Robinhood, arguing it wasn’t ethical for the platform to bar trading.
Umm, WHO FORCED THEM to STOP?
GameStop’s stock surge also prompted public officials to warn of market manipulation. Senator Elizabeth Warren has voiced her concern, asking the US Securities and Exchange Commission Friday to explain what it is doing to address the recent market activity. The agency later said it was investigating.
All of a sudden they are meowing about market manipulation when it affects the people who manipulate it the most for their own benefit and to the detriment of the rest of us!
Of course, all the Congre$$critters hold stock and engage in inside trading (thankfully, Bill Barr buried all that).
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"A real life Robinhood story (one that might not end well); Some DIY day-traders are making money at the hands of the rich. Should you be worried?" by Larry Edelman Globe Columnist, January 28, 2021
It’s fitting that the online trading app with the name of Robinhood is playing a starring role in the GameStop black comedy.
The story of how GameStop’s stock went from under $20 to above $500 at one point in a matter of days is, after all, one of separating the rich (Wall Street pros) from their money, and we love to root for ordinary folk (DIY investors) — so much, in fact, that we may overlook the darker elements of their actions, but it’s those darker elements that hold an important warning for all investors, even if you’re a buy-and-hold retirement saver who sticks with low-cost mutual funds.
On the off-chance you haven’t consumed any news media in the past week, GameStop is the videogame retailer whose stock had been left for dead until it became the focus of a prank-turned-social media phenomenon in mid-January.
To be honest, I wish I hadn't and I regret getting a Globe every day.
That’s when individual investors who congregate on an Internet forum called WallStreetBets banded together to drive up GameStop’s stock price and inflict losses on the billionaire hedge fund managers and other elite traders who had made a lot of money betting against the company.
This merry band of investing rebels succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations (except, perhaps, their own). Their weapons: commission-free online trading, low-priced stock options, and the gall to believe they could turn the tables on the pros.
How galling!
He isn't really a fan, and he is defending hedge fund para$ites and $cum.
As their buying drove up GameStop’s price, the short-sellers who had bet against the stock had to buy to cover their positions. That further propelled the stock higher, as did market-makers who needed to acquire the shares to facilitate trading.
Estimated losses incurred by the shorts through Wednesday: more than $5 billions, and that doesn’t include other stocks they were betting against, including BlackBerry and AMC Entertainment, that the rebels also targeted.
DIY traders scoring big isn’t new, of course. Remember day traders and the dot-com bubble? And so-called short squeezes — which is exactly what the Reddit raiders did — are as old as short-selling itself.
So will this episode have any meaningful impact on your 401(k)? Most likely not.
“I am viewing this as more of a sideshow,” said Dan Kern, chief investment officer of TFC Financial Management in Boston. “I’m seeing reminders of 1999. Day traders ― by 2001 most of them were doing something other than day trading,” but Kern pointed to the pivotal role social media have played in l’affaire WallStreetBets as a trend investors can’t dismiss.
Uh-huh.
So not only will your FREEDOM of SPEECH be TAKEN AWAY, because of GameStop you will no longer be allowed to buy stocks if you are not of a certain cla$$!
Thank Schwab for "$takeholder capitali$m," 'eh?
Not only did the rebels meet on Reddit, their posts quickly ricocheted across Twitter, FaceBook, and even TikTok. Taking on the hedge funds became the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge of January 2021. The power of social media to rally followers and derail Wall Street whizzes won’t end with GameStop.
“The momentum effect that comes from the Internet can be scary,” Kern said.
It's worse than an alleged insurrection fomented on social media!
For Sinan Aral, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, the GameStop short squeeze is part of a broader — and more ominous — trend.
“We are now witnessing, in real time, the rise of decentralized crowds, coordinated over social media, as a disruptive force in our society,” said Aral, the author of “The Hype Machine,” which examines the profound impact social media are having on politics, the economy, and public health.
Those crowds can do good things, like raise money for ALS or uncover the identity of a criminal caught on security video, but they can also spread disinformation, like the anti-vaxxers, and turn into mobs, like the one that ransacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, Aral said.
This a$$hole flak is beneath comment for God's sake, and the solution is clear.
Social media must either be shut down or citizens are to be given credit scores like in China.
If the Russians could interfere in the 2016 presidential election, there is no reason to think that a social media campaign of fake news and disinformation couldn’t wreak havoc on financial markets.
What do you do when it is a goddamn lying, $elf-$erving, agenda-pushing paper?
So why didn't Russia interfere this time?
This stuff is getting so awful it's disgusting.
No evidence has emerged so far that the Reddit rebels were spreading disinformation, but regulators are looking at issues such as possible market manipulation.
Because they decided to but stock some rich f**ks were short-selling so they could destroy the company and clean up?
On Thursday, Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, and Webull Financial restricted trading on GameStop, AMC, and other “meme” stocks, apparently under pressure from the firms that clear their trades. In the words of a colleague, it seemed like the Empire ― a.k.a. the Wall Street Establishment — was striking back.
The trading restrictions angered traders who decried not being able to buy and sell without warning and with only vague explanations from their brokers about “volatility,” and political leaders from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Ted Cruz demanded to know why the brokers had blocked their customers, while hedge funds could still trade through their own desks.
$trange bedfellows indeed!
GameStop fell 44 percent to $193.60. AMC tumbled 57 percent.
Is the rebellion coming to an end? Perhaps, as far as the meme stocks are concerned. Remember, in most traditional tellings of the Robin Hood legend, the heroic archer is killed at the end, but trading apps, social media, and no-commission trading aren’t going away. They’ve given DIY investors a better chance against the pros.
“Will there be a populist takeover of Wall Street?” asked Jill Fopiano, chief executive of O’Brien Wealth Partners in Boston. “Probably not,” yet Fopiano wasn’t willing to rule out significant changes ahead for Wall Street: “Who knows. We’ve obviously had so many things happen in 2020 that nobody anticipated.”
Except it was all scripted long ago by the Rockefeller Foundation and Event 201, among other things.
Those traders need to be evicted from the market, so to speak, before there are more kickbacks from the ruling cla$$.
Yeah, they ended 2020 on a strong note and recovered nearly all of the global sales lost in the pandemic despite a resurgent virus, but it was costly to get there, and the fast food giant fell short of Wall Street’s earnings and sales expectations for the fourth quarter.
Also see:
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Cloud-software firm Veeva plans to add 200 jobs in Boston over the next 18 months; Most employees will work remotely, a possible sign of things to come for the city’s tech scene" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, January 29, 2021
As cloud-software firm Veeva Systems races to keep up with the growth of its clients in the life sciences sector, the California-based company is turning to the Boston labor market for some help, with plans to add 200 jobs to its local operations over the next 18 months.
Veeva’s expansion could be a sign of things to come for Boston’s tech scene once the pandemic is over and it’s safe to go back to the office. The pre-pandemic routines will not necessarily return to the way they were for many companies that continue to give workers flexibility to stay at home.
I have bad news for them: it is NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE OVER!
Veeva has had a “work from anywhere” policy for years, Veeva chief executive Peter Gassner said.
The Boston office will be an engineering hub. Veeva specializes in software that helps biotech and pharmaceutical companies oversee research and development efforts and communicate with doctors and patients during drug trials.
“We’re about life sciences and software,” Gassner said. “It doesn’t take a genius to realize we should be in Boston.”
The company will be hiring in other cities as well, including Philadelphia, Toronto, and its home base of Pleasanton, Calif. Gassner hopes to double Veeva’s 4,500-person workforce by 2025. The company is on track for $1.45 billion in revenue in the fiscal year that ends Sunday, with a forecast of $1.7 billion for the following year. Veeva’s stock has risen about 90 percent over the last year and is trading in the $275 range, giving it a market value of about $42 billion.
I sure hope no one is manipulating that!
As it expands, Veeva has an unusual offer for recruits: On Monday, at the beginning of its new fiscal year, Veeva will become the first publicly traded company in the country to convert to a public benefit corporation structure. That means, legally, Veeva can put the interests of new and existing employees — as well as its customers — on par with those of its investors. By contrast, traditional publicly traded companies have a duty to put their loyalties first to the corporation itself and its shareholders.
As a public benefit corporation, Veeva will have additional legal protection to make decisions that aren’t solely driven by shareholder returns. Gassner said he’s seeking people who want to work for a well-performing company with a moral compass and a meaningful purpose.
“We make good profits” but that’s not the only motivation, Gassner said. “We’re a mission-driven company.”
What is the mi$$ion?
Related:
"For weeks, as the stock market regularly climbed to records, investors wondered what it would take to snap Wall Street out of its blissful state. The resurgent pandemic certainly wasn’t doing it. Even an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol wasn’t alarming enough to end the rally. GameStop, though? On Friday, the S&P 500 fell more than 1.9 percent, capping a stretch of volatile trading that left the index down more than 3 percent for the week — its worst week since late October. The selling came as Wall Street was consumed by the antics of a group of day traders who have been bidding up a handful of stocks — notably the ailing video game retailer GameStop — and forcing losses on big hedge funds. The traders appear to be mostly small investors who are focused only on a handful of stocks, but they have emerged as a new risk factor for large firms that had bet against those companies with what are known as short sales. For the rest of Wall Street, the worry is that the hedge funds will have to sell shares of other companies to cover their losses on GameStop and AMC — “forced liquidation.” That selling was a factor in the stock market’s 2.6 percent drop on Wednesday."
The market, like the election, is RIGGED!
"It isn’t just GameStop that’s giving investors a reason to sell. They’re also concerned about the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine as countries begin to clamp down on supplies or warn of shortages. The trading Friday reflected some of these concerns. Shares of companies that are sensitive to concerns about the pandemic — including Norwegian Cruise Line, Delta Air Lines and the shopping mall owner Kimco Realty — were among the worst performers on the S&P 500, but the conversation of the week focused on GameStop, and although the Securities and Exchange Commission and several lawmakers have said they’re watching the situation, it’s not yet clear how it will be addressed. “The battle over GameStop is far from over, but there have been huge casualties,” Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at the trading firm OANDA, wrote in a note to clients on Friday. “A solution for this entire market dislocation will take time, and that could suggest this insane trading will continue a little while longer.” The new focus on the market’s disconnect from fundamentals has come after stocks rallied more than 16 percent in 2020 despite the decimation of the economy and the human toll of the coronavirus pandemic. Many investors were already starting to raise concerns about the potential that financial markets had risen far too quickly after the Federal Reserve and lawmakers in Washington took unprecedented steps to shore up the economy and financial markets and as investors anticipated even more spending under a unified Democratic government. To some investors, the week’s turmoil served only as a distraction from those positives. Even as stocks fell this week, several large companies, including Microsoft, Apple and Facebook, reported profit and sales growth....."
CUI BONO from COVID?
Also see:
Turns out the iPhone apps secretly shadow people.
