LC

I would imagine settlements can be netted. And brokers fronting $ is money good, I would imagine that is not a source of major instability or there are deeper issues in the plumbing, so to speak. I don’t find either explanation adequate, frankly.

I have no comment on the veracity (or the legality - CFDs are illegal in the US so they would have to have a legal structure that is right-on or over-the-line), I just thought it was an interesting take on the situation, that perhaps folks here would not usually be exposed to, perhaps for good reason! :D

I wasn't sure where to post this, but saw an interesting piece over on WallStreetBets which attempts to make clear some of the GME trading experience, I suppose informed by the recent congressional hearings on the topic:

VNT looks interestingly GARP-y.

Yeah, I would prefer the same thread, but the problem is that people won't know which books have notes and which ones don't unless people check out each book thread. Cheers! Perhaps there is a way to flag threads in the title? A star, or different color text, or some other means, to indicate that someone has (generously) posted their notes.

I think it is a good idea, but do we really need another sub-forum, or we can just post any notes in the same thread of the book?

We both must be happy today. "LATHAM, N.Y., March 16, 2021 -- Plug Power Inc. (NASDAQ: PLUG), a leading provider of turnkey hydrogen solutions building the global green hydrogen economy, announced today that it will restate its previously issued financial statements for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 and its quarterly filings for 2019 and 2020, which will be disclosed in the Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 (the “Prior Period Financial Statements”)." Sheesh! Thanks for sharing. Frankly I hadn't checked any financial news after noon, will make the night's cocktail extra tasty :D And more generally, thanks for sharing the overall idea. You were able to articulate it well. I found this one attractive because it stacks quite a few things in my favor, essentially taking a directional bet + a hedge, all in one: -A bet against the crappy underlying business, and a crazy overall valuation, as you described previously. Normally I wouldn't short something just based on valuation or disagreeing with the underlying business/technology. -A downside bet on Memestocks/WSB exhuberance in general -Inverse exposure to both (1) rising rates and (2) a market rotation out of the tech sector, and therefore a hedge against my substantial long positions in "stable" tech co's eg. MSFT -A highly volatile stock where you can get a lot of potential exposure for little upfront costs I think if you can find effective portfolio hedges (similar inverse market exposures), which also agree with your view on the individual name, and if you can get that exposure cheaply, then that is a pretty attractive bet.

Not sure but they do have some Toyota testimonial on their website, and published Sprint as a sponsor back in 2018 (not sure if still a sponsor). I would imagine you could start watching a bunch of documentaries on the service and see which corporate pre-rolls pop up :D

I wouldn't say bad, I would say very inconsistent. For example: 2020 I moved a lot of accounts over to IBKR and as such triggered some knowyourcustomer baloney. So someone at IBKR reviewed my accounts, the timing/amount/source of money transfers, etc. and I received some standard email asking questions and requesting account statements about the such. Now, I am a reasonable person. I'll sit down for 5 minutes and reply to your questions, but I'm not about to spend an hour digging up old account statements to verify money flows. So I simply ignored that aspect of their request. To my relief I received a response next day, saying "all good! thank you for the explanation!", and that was that. Anecdotal but make of it what you will.

Start a thread! It looks interesting. I bought some CURI last week. Bit pie/sky -ish in terms of subscriber growth potential but it seems like the product is a good value and has ancillary markets (libraries, schools, museums, etc.) rather than a home consumer target. Also bought some Alibaba, for reasons everyone has mentioned. The market is already pricing in all the regulatory worry and none of the growth potential. Maybe the market is right but I feel the current price already reflects that. But wait, there's more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-asks-alibaba-to-shed-its-media-assets-11615809999

Oh this is a good one :D Thanks for the morning (and 1hr sleep deprived) laugh!

Perhaps it would be an instructive exercise to create a ledger (heh) of the best use cases for a blockchain/crypto-ledger. To me, the best use case seems to be public asset ownership records (home deeds, car deeds, etc.). Followed by semi-private asset ownership records.

+1

Completely agree! But Wood is no chump either in the competition for the prize. I've just seen a video of her where she uses the treasury yield as a discount rate for equity. Seriously? There's no risk premium anymore? Either she's selling to idiots or thinks we're all idiots. What's even more amazing is that the video was monitored by someone from her compliance team. I do not have a morning wood for Cathie wood but I recall this is also how Buffett thinks about DCF/value as well. Got to dig out that interview/letter. Buffett discounts by the treasury yield and adjusts for the equity risk premium through his margin of safety. E.g. riskier stocks would have to trade at 50% below his calculated value but he doesn't discount the risk at the DCF stage. Not quite sure what advantages this has as opposed to discounting for the risk at the DCF stage. It's from one of his early letters in his Partnership days.

What options are you looking at?

Similar

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html Currently costs about $19 per BTC transaction.

I went with puts on PLUG as essentially a short on a baloney business and also a hedge against other high-tech stocks I bought on whims (<1% positions each, stuff like AI), essentially netting out.

There are a few interesting debate points which are presented in this article, which I will reproduce here. Apologies in advance for the wall-of-text:

Thank you for the reply, SD. I am not sure I have the cojones to try and trade BTC, but I do agree with your approach of (1) growing the investment over time as the use case popularizes ; (2) Trying to decide between your first two approaches (e.g. spread amongst moderate sized players vs. consolidating in larger players performing the implementations). Good food4thought.

Wow- tragic. He was a hero to everyone who ever laced up a pair of skates. RIP

https://michael08.medium.com/why-visa-and-mastercard-will-continue-to-reign-supreme-in-an-increasingly-digital-world-5c4a9adf0a0e

I find the transactional improvement argument a more attractive investment thesis compared to the "store of value" argument. Question then is, what is the most direct investment vehicle to express that thesis? I would guess ethereum?

Thanks Cubs - appreciate the commentary.

Quite a sensationalized title and only if you extrapolate November 2017's monthly 25% energy growth rate over 3 years (as that part of the article mentions). The full analysis is found here: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption Which estimates that today, the bitcoin network uses about as much energy as Chile. On a per-transaction basis, each bitcoin transaction uses 741 kWH of energy as of 2020, up from 686 kWH in 2019. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/) By comparison, 741 kWH would power approximately 497,000 transactions on Visa's network. Some further figures: Bitcoin uses ~78 terawatt hours of energy as its current run-rate. JP Morgan used 2 terawatt hours of energy in 2019.