KCLarkin

If only there was a simple way to test for Flu viruses...

Interesting. In your cherry-picked study, they managed to kill 11/60 on SoC/Placebo? In all the other studies you listed, there was only one death TOTAL in ~450 patients? Seems like Niaee's hospital system is very good at killing Covid patients. Maybe HCQ shouldn't be SoC?

Very nice addition and the formatting is very easy to read. Thanks for the update Liberty.

Gotrocks

My beef with this article is that if you think the financial intermediaries are unfairly profiting, the small guy can buy Goldman, JPM, MS, Schwab, IBKR... In almost all cases, they have mediocre to slightly above average returns. You really want to mess with wall street, buy a vanguard fund or a FAANMG. Trading penny stocks and options on GarbageCos just feeds the beast.

Well the actual content of the article is all based on naked shorts, which are no longer possible (this article is obsolete). So I am just referring to the editorial content as garbage. For GME, the gross shares outstanding look like something like this: 200% long 100% short —- 100% net There are no counterfeit shares.

If you remember who got killed by naked shorts, it was the short sellers. According to Cohodes, naked short selling is not really possible anymore. Short-and-distort (eg Citron) is still an issue, but there is much more manipulation on the long side. And it is usually small investors who get hurt in these pump-and-dump schemes.

This is conspiracy garbage. Has everyone forgotten The WEB SPY vs HF bet? If hedge funds are rich, it is because idiot institutions keep paying for risky, subpar returns. You want to help the little guy? Get them a vanguard account. RH and WSB just feed the beast.

Agreed. It is messed up right now. Sure it will be fixed soon.

Liberty, you should get this guy on koyfin. The charting site he uses hurts my brain...

Between the capital requirements, SIPF, segregation, etc, investors very likely to be made whole even if they exceed SIPF limits. But you are trusting Robinhood to properly segregate assets. Given their history, I don't think that's a wise idea. Disclosure: Long IBKR. Hate Robinhood.

Loved this description. With the DOXXING of DeepF---Value as a CFA, investment advisor, and value investor, does this change your opinion at all? This seems to be a deep value play by DFV, Scion, Chewy guy, combined by some reckless shorts more than a pump-and-dump. Now the charlatans like Chamath, Portnoy, and Elon are piling on. But it started as a really smart deep value trade not a pump-and-dump.

Yes, but you are trusting the broker that stored passwords in plain text to segregate your accounts. I wouldn’t hold any account greater than $500k at RH, but that is just me.

Securities are held in "street name". If your broker goes under, there is no guarantee that you will get them back. As mentioned by others above, full recovery is likely due to SIPC but the process can be prolonged. In practice, the accounts are usually assumed by another broker with minimal hassle to the account owners.

IBKR CEO estimates gains/losses are $10-15B from GameStop options alone. Someone made, and someone lost, $10-15B. As of this time, its not clear who those parties are and if they can sustain those losses - but relying on the US govt to backstop a counterparty so you're business can run as usual is a very poor form of risk management IMO. I am looking at this from IBKR's risk-management perspective. Petterfy owns most of IBKR, so any losses come directly from his pocket. I think OCC has ~$4B in collateral. Not saying it is likely, but if this short squeeze was allowed to play out, it is quite possible that OCC would become insolvent. They would do capital calls to members and you could have a systemic crisis. This is how Petterfy thinks.

My apologies if I don't find $500k sufficient... But IBKR has an obligation to protect their shareholders and clients. They don't exist to entertain YOLO gamblers. Robinhood is the "broker" that: - stored trading passwords in plaintext - allows self-described degenerates to trade options despite KYC regulations - allowed WSB to get "infinite leverage" using a bug - caused the death of a young trader - settled for $65M with SEC for deceptive practices - became the preferred platform for YOLO short squeeze plays Robinhood admitted that they need to block CASH PURCHASES of certain stocks because the capital requirements for their very concentrated positions was more than they could afford. They drew down their credit lines. Allowing more risk to build in the system (at hedge funds, WSB, RH, Clearing house, etc), is absolutely insane. And AOC and Ted Cruz cheering on a bubble is doubly insane. Disclosure: Long IBKR (so I am biased against RH)

Robinhood draws on credit lines from banks - Bloomberg News

IBKR chairman on CNBC today: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/interactive-brokers-restricted-gamestop-trading-to-protect-the-market-says-chairman-peterffy.html He is very worried about a broker or clearinghouse failure. He doesn't mention which counter-party he is worried about, but RH says they are restricting long stock purchases due to CAPITAL requirements. This suggests RH is thinly capitalized. I know RH investors aren't sophisticated enough to understand this, but if I was sitting on $20M paper gains at RH, I'd be very worried about the viability of my broker. Disclosure: long IBKR Edit to add: When you say that IBKR should permit bear call spreads, you are saying that IBKR should accept the counter-party risk on both legs of that trade. The trade might be low-risk for you, but very high risk for IBKR.

IBKR is the best I’ve used. But can only compare to BMO, TD, and itrade.

Ah yes. I fondly remember the Railway Mania days. https://www.winton.com/longer-view/railway-mania

There are some parallels to 1999. But this is also sounds eerily similar to the Go Go Years of the 60s. A new generation of gunslingers...

DD, the deal is already dead: https://financialpost.com/news/canadas-couche-tard-drops-20-billion-carrefour-takeover-plan-after-opposition-from-france-govt

Dr. Fauci understands the difference between In Vitro and In Vivo. That's why he is a respected scientist and not an idiot on twitter.

Let's give Dr. Dalal a bit of credit here. He brought the vitamin D issue to this forum back in the spring. I thank both you and Dr. Dalal for that insight. As I have suggested in the past, it's a classic application of Pascal's Wager. Spend $10 on 300 tablets of vitamin D, at worst you've wasted your money and there's no harm, at best it might save your life or at least reduce the significance of a covid episode. Muscleman also brought this forward a number of months ago, so thanks to him too. SJ I generally agree with this, but the studies I've seen suggest that Vitamin D might be a marker rather than the protective agent. This letter doesn't seem to address this issue? I only see a tiny pilot study. I'm shocked that Vitamin D hasn't been studied more since the correlation is so strong.

Sweden. Given the imminent vaccine arrival, we can officially put the Sweden model onto the list of historical pandemic failures alongside GBD.