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KCLarkin

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Posts posted by KCLarkin

  1. Congrats, you discovered all influenza deaths are counted as "Corona" deaths. Most heart attacks are even counted as Corono deaths. How else could they inflate the numbers to such a ridiculous degree with a common cold infection?

     

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

  2. Is this the best Lancet (the best medical journal supposedly) can deliver?  Thats what scares me most.

     

    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?

  3. 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.

  4. Well the actual content of the article is all based on naked shorts, which are no longer possible (this article is obsolete).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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. I posted some thoughts on the WSB/GME phenomenon in the intro of this:

     

    https://libertyrpf.substack.com/p/84-my-thoughts-on-wsb-phenomenon

     

    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.

  8. Robinhood is not a trade executor, how are their paper gains in any danger? Unless you mean the service itself goes dark preventing them from selling their shares before the bubble pops....

     

    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.

  9. But my understanding was that the OCC clears every options trade. So IBKR's counterparty on my options trades is always the OCC. If the OCC went down that would be a systemic risk, and I think there is a 100% chance the US government would bail them out. And IBKR reducing GME volume probably doesn't make any difference to OCC's solvency.

     

    These aren't OTC derivatives with a specific counterparty like the Bear/Lehman issues.

     

    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.

  10. Robin Hood accounts are protected by The Securities Investor Protection Corporation, up to 500K/account; worst that happens is that it takes account holders a few months to get their money out. IBKR is just pissed that they would be assessed a portion of the restitution, and that Robin Hood would just be the first domino of many that collapse.

     

    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)

     

  11. I would suggest that isn't serving any actual purpose.

     

    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.

  12. Back in the day steam replaced sail. The 'go-go' stocks of the time were the railway, steamship, and arms companies, plus anyone supplying materials to those rapidly growing industries. The dogs were the those supplying material to the displacing industries. Same thing is happening today - yes the darlings are overvalued, but fundamentally? by not as much as many think.

     

    Ah yes. I fondly remember the Railway Mania days.

     

    Speculative fervour pervaded all sections of society and blurred class divides. ‘Men who were known to have been penniless a year before, suddenly kept their broughams or started barouches. Valuable diamonds gleamed from fingers which had hitherto been guiltless of the bright adornment.’ Female speculators also became a common sight, ‘Duchesses’ delicate fingers handled scrip; old maids inquired with trembling eagerness the price of stocks; young ladies’ eyes ceased to scan the marriage list – deserting this for the table of shares, and startling their lovers with questions respecting the operations of bulls and bears.’

     

    https://www.winton.com/longer-view/railway-mania

     

  13. It's getting to the point that if I get a phone call from someone I haven't heard from in a while and they are not a professional investor, I am just going to have assume they are calling me to ask one of two things:

     

    1. How much of their investments should they liquidate so that they can buy ARK funds instead?

    2. How much should they borrow so that they can buy options on Tesla on margin? As a follow up question, is it a problem that they don't understand what an option is?

     

    After I have done my best chicken little/Debbie downer impression regarding their proposals they frequently follow up with some feelers regarding whether they could give me money to manage. Of course questions number 1 and 2 would play heavily in to my feelings regarding the third question.

     

    This is NOT normal.

     

    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...

  14.  

     

    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.

     

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