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You're right, here's an article cut from Barrons, it's a long read, but it sure shows Gensler as the Weasel he is, have at it....if you care.
SEC’s Gary Gensler Has a Big, New Vision for the Stock Market. There Are Too Many ‘Inherent Conflicts of Interest.’
By Avi Salzman
Updated September 6, 2021 / Original September 3, 2021
The plumbing of the U.S. stock market, like actual plumbing, tends to operate quietly in the background.
In January, as if a wall had been ripped open, the market’s tangled and decades-old pipes were suddenly exposed to millions of retail investors who had given little thought to them before. They had piled into stocks like GameStop (ticker: GME).
Illustration by Ryan Melgar
Then, at the height of the mania, some brokers, including Robinhood Markets (HOOD), whose explosive growth has been fueled by new investors, restricted trading in those stocks. The newbies cried foul, and lawmakers called for change.
Now, a new Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, Gary Gensler, has made it clear that he is interested in the mechanics that burst into the open during the meme-stock turmoil. He seems intent on overhauling market structure in ways that he thinks will make it fairer for the new retail traders and everyone else.
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The infrastructure that allows investors to tap on a phone and instantly buy stocks and options has been revolutionary for investors and the financial industry. Yet the trading system is extremely complex underneath, and it could be in for a remake.
“ We cannot take for granted that the U.S. equity markets will always be considered the most efficient, the most liquid in the world. ”
— SEC Chairman Gary Gensler
Gensler is particularly concerned that the market for executing stock trades has become segmented, with nearly as much order flow going to “dark pools” and other less-transparent venues as goes to exchanges.
It’s not clear how much change Gensler and the SEC can push through. Resistance from the industry and possibly Congress would need to be overcome. Still, his vision for the stock market could lead to its biggest overhaul in decades.
“We cannot take for granted that the U.S. equity markets will always be considered the most efficient, the most liquid in the world,” Gensler told Barron’s in an interview this past week. “We have to be realistic that technology changes, and we’ve got to update things.”
The current trading regime, he said, has too many “inherent conflicts of interest” that are putting investors at a disadvantage.
Among the most prominent of those conflicts are the payments that brokers get from the market makers that process their clients’ trades. So-called payment for order flow could be banned in the U.S., as it is in the United Kingdom and Canada, and it may not be the only change coming.
It’s an important moment to examine how the market works and how trades are processed, because more people than ever are participating. Since the start of 2020, more than 20 million people have opened brokerage accounts in the U.S., a record pace. If the trend continues, it could cause a fundamental shift in the nature of wealth in the U.S.
The changes are also rippling through the financial industry. Retail trading now makes up 22% of trading volume, Bloomberg Intelligence estimates, more than double the share of a decade ago. The influx of all that new money has enriched brokers, market makers, and other players. Fidelity just announced plans to hire an additional 9,000 people to keep up with the growth.
Proponents of the current system say that the increased participation in the markets is evidence that the markets are becoming fairer. Robinhood, which has signed up the largest share of the new investors, doesn’t charge commissions or have account-size minimums. Its business model depends on getting paid on the back end of trades.
When a client makes a trade, Robinhood sends it to one of a handful of market makers, which match buyers and sellers internally instead of sending them to exchanges. Those market makers, like Citadel Securities, Virtu Financial (VIRT), and Two Sigma Securities, profit off the spread between the bid and the ask, and then send a portion of that profit back to Robinhood.
Most other major brokers do this, too, although it accounts for a much smaller percentage of their revenue. At Charles Schwab (SCHW), for instance, payment for order flow accounted for about 5% of revenue in 2020. At Robinhood, it accounts for 75% to 80%.
Trading on the market makers’ platforms happens largely out of the public eye, though the companies have to publish monthly data about their trade execution. What that data show is that they are getting better prices for stocks than the exchanges are. The market makers that execute retail trades, also known as wholesalers, got more than $3.6 billion in price improvement for retail investors in 2020, according to Virtu.
Gensler, however, doesn’t think it’s a fair comparison. Because so much trading happens off exchanges, the “best price” on an exchange may be different from the best overall market price.
“Nearly half of our market is in dark pools or wholesalers, not lit,” he said. Even the orders that go to stock exchanges, a “fair amount of that’s not lit, either,” he said. “So price improvement versus the lit part of the market is not a full measure of the efficiency of the market. And it is not a full measure of best execution. So much is being left out of the measuring stick. It’s sort of like if I was going to measure the height of my children, but I left some of the parts of the ruler out.”
People who want the industry to change say that liquidity on exchanges has suffered as more trading has moved off exchanges, and that is causing price spreads to widen, making the overall market less efficient. Segregating retail trading on its own venues reduces liquidity and transparency in the entire market, says Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets, a nonprofit that focuses on financial reform.
Some wholesalers think the critics are mischaracterizing their role and how they help the market. Virtu said in a presentation to the SEC this year that the benefits that retail investors get from their operations are probably understated, not overstated. If all of those benefits were included, the value of Virtu’s price improvement would probably be three times as much as the company discloses in securities filings, the company has argued.
Virtu CEO Doug Cifu responded to Gensler’s comments about market structure this past week by warning that “drastic changes to the market ecosystem are not warranted and would likely result in worse outcomes for retail investors.”
Gensler’s concerns are not just about retail brokers and their market makers. He is also critical of the payments, known as rebates, that exchanges pay for certain kinds of orders. Gensler wants more transparency in the market and for trades to compete on an “order by order” basis, as opposed to being segmented based on where the order originated, or to be routed based on how they are paid for.
When markets are opaque, and customer orders are processed differently, the investing public could be at risk. He thinks it is affecting prices.
“It provides an opportunity for the market maker to make more, and for ultimately the investing public to get a little less when they sell, or have to pay more when they buy,” Gensler said. “I think it also affects companies raising money,” he added, because it impacts the efficiency and fairness of those markets.
Does that mean that Gensler wants all trading to happen on exchanges? He wouldn’t say in the interview with Barron’s, speaking more about the principles the agency plans to follow, but not the specific route of each trade. “If, when I place a buy or sell order, I know that it’s going to be in a competitive pool among other investors that are seeking to buy and sell and there’s that broader competition—that’s the tenet of a competitive, efficient market,” he said.
Experts in the field aren’t so sure where Gensler is heading.
“That’s the $64,000 question,” Kelleher says. “Or, I actually think it’s the $40 billion question.”
Kelleher expects that the SEC will float several options and “put them all out there to get a maximum amount of information and make a decision.” He favors a system that requires brokers to get the best price for their client at any given moment, instead of directing trades to a few companies.
“Whether you’re in the dark market or lit market, it doesn’t matter,” he says. “What matters is the best available price at the time. It’s forum-agnostic, but the duty is uniform. And then you require disclosure so that people can see that, in fact, they’re getting the best available price at the time.”
Others want to make sure any rules allow for flexibility. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said at a hearing earlier this year that “best execution is not a one-size-fits-all concept.”
“For most retail investors, price might matter most, but institutional investors often have a larger set of considerations,” she added.
Changes to payment for order flow in particular would be controversial. The payments are legal and have been used for decades. The SEC has been expressing concern about them since at least 1984. But Robinhood’s rise has shined a new spotlight on how they work.
There is no evidence that the payments had anything to do with Robinhood’s decision to temporarily ban purchases of GameStop in January. The company has said it was forced to halt purchases because of capital demands from its clearinghouse. And other brokers also limited trading in some stocks or options, though not to the same extent as Robinhood.
Nonetheless, the episode infuriated some retail traders, and led to congressional hearings where the payments became an issue. At a February hearing, Rep. Brad Sherman (D., Calif.) likened it to Facebook’s business model. “When you’re not paying for it, it’s not free,” he said. “You’re the product; someone else is the customer.”
Others have also criticized the practice because they say it gives brokers an incentive to encourage more trading even if that is not the best investment strategy.
Last year, Robinhood settled administrative charges about payment for order flow with the SEC. The regulator found that the company had misrepresented its business model to customers and routed orders from 2015 to 2018 in a way that hurt them—in some cases it cost them more than an up-front commission would have. Robinhood paid $65 million and neither admitted nor denied the findings. It says it has changed its practices since.
Robinhood has vigorously defended payment for order flow as beneficial to customers.
“We think payment for order flow is a better deal for our customers versus the old commission structure,” its chief financial officer, Jason Warnick, said during a virtual road show the company held before its initial public offering. “It allows investors to invest smaller amounts without having to worry about the cost of commissions.”
Robinhood has said that it doesn’t push investors to trade or offer advice—it simply gives them access to markets that had previously been closed off to them.
Dan Gallagher, Robinhood’s chief legal officer, said in an interview with Barron’s that Gensler’s statement about conflicts of interest is nothing new. Gallagher, himself a former SEC commissioner, said that the SEC has accepted that conflict, and has been comfortable with it as long as it is disclosed to customers. But he thinks the rhetoric around it is overblown.
“The idea that the revenue we do receive from payment for order flow is somehow the result of some unmitigated conflict or not earned money is inappropriate,” he said.
He called the idea of banning it “pretty draconian,” and expects that it would result in up-front commissions coming back, at least for some brokers. That’s one reason that Gallagher doubts it will happen. “They are going to realize that payment for order flow is an amazingly good thing for investors,” he said. If it did get banned, “we’d have to seriously consider” legal action. “We’d have to get in line for that, though. There would be a long line of folks who would sue.”
Some competitors that focus on retail trading have managed to get by without accepting payment for order flow. Fidelity, for instance, doesn’t take the payments for stocks, though it does for options. And a start-up called Public decided earlier this year to do away with it, too.
Public’s chief operating officer, Stephen Sikes, says the company now directs orders through a “smart order router” to several venues. And the company now gets better prices than when it was routing only to wholesalers. “What we’ve found is that a meaningful portion of the orders find better prices than what they would have gotten in the old way,” he said.
There is, of course, a downside to brokers of not accepting the payments. Public has more than one million customers but is still figuring out how to make money.
One way it replaced payment for order flow is “tipping,” which allows users to decide how much to pay for the service. It also makes money from securities lending and interest on uninvested cash.
Banning payment for order flow is “on the table,” Gensler said in the interview this past week. But his vision clearly encompasses more than that. When Gensler was chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2009 to 2014, he moved the trading of a derivative product called swaps—which he said contributed to the financial crisis—onto more highly regulated and transparent venues.
A similar change could be coming for the broader stock market.
In 1975, Congress authorized a national market system that the SEC has put into effect in sections over the subsequent decades, establishing how stocks are routed and traded. One former SEC chief says the work is unfinished, opening a door for Gensler. Harvey Pitt, who was SEC chairman from 2001 to 2003, says that “even today, we really don’t have” a national market system.
“Going back to 2002 and 2003, we held public forums where we asked people what the structure of the markets ought to look like, what would you like to see the marketplace look like,” Pitt says. “We just weren’t able to—too many other things took over our attention span. I would say it’s very possible for Gary Gensler to mobilize the commission to do that. It’s not easy. And along the way, he’s going to be met with a lot of opposition. No one who’s part of the status quo wants to change the status quo until they figure out how they’re going to profit from the status quo.”
Carleton English, Evie Liu, and Bill Alpert contributed to this article.
Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com
Nice call
Listen people to what I say
I say everybody's got to have their day
And don't you know that
Futures Expiration Date Deadline of Futures Rolling
March 19th March 11th
June 18th June 10th
September 17th September 9th
December 17th December 9th
I'm not tired of buying their fake shares, I just ran out of money. That little weasel Gensler would do something if I used counterfeit money to buy Citadel's counterfeit shares, so I just sit, hodl and wait.
20 million shares in 20 minutes, we're doing the rope on the dopes, keep writing those counterfeit shares, HOLD
Neb, check these dates and AMC's history. I believe you can make yourself some money.
Futures Expiration Date Deadline of Futures Rolling
March 19th March 11th
June 18th June 10th
September 17th September 9th
December 17th December 9th
Jimmy Joe, I completely agree with you when you said " This isn't even about the business which some folks keep bringing up. Has absolutely NOTHING to do with how the movies are doing, how much popcorn the "popcorn guy" is selling. Absolutely nothing at all to do with anything $AMC other than the FACT that the company has a massive amount of cash and can sustain itself for a couple of years just on that."
But it has to sting like hell that AMC is breaking attendance records while Citadel is breaking counterfeiting records
Someday, those shares have to be bought back, someday soon.
You weren't alone watching those movies!
Disney’s Shang-Chi Breaks Labor Day Box Office Records
Movies and the theaters have struggled to recover from the pandemic but the waiting is over. Disney’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings grossed $94.4 million over the Labor Day weekend in the U.S. and Canada, more than triple Halloween’s take on the same holiday weekend in 2007.
Even without the Monday holiday, Shang-Chi raked in $75.5 million in ticket sales from Friday to Sunday, just behind Black Widow’s $80 million at its July debut. While Black Widow was also streamed on Disney+, Shang-Chi was shown only in theaters, to an audience of nearly 7 million.
AMC CEO Adam Aron tweeted “thanks to Shang-Chi, @AMCTheatres posted a new Labor Day Weekend admissions revenue record,” breaking 2013’s record. For the first time, AMC’s theater attendance beat prepandemic numbers for the same days in 2019.
Colliers Securities analyst Steven Frankel said the Disney flick’s sales beat industry forecasts. Shang-Chi also grossed $83.5 million internationally through Monday, though that excludes China, where authorities have not approved it.
Nearly 60% of the audience saw the movie in a regular theater, 23% saw Shang-Chi on IMAX and 13% chose a premium large format experience, Deadline reported.
What’s Next: After Shang-Chi’s totals came out, Sony moved up the debut for Venom: Let There Be Carnage to Oct. 1 from Oct. 15. Originally slated for October 2020, Venom’s release was repeatedly delayed during the pandemic.
That was around June 10th, the deadline for rolling Future Contracts, September 9th is the deadline for rolling this quarter's Future Contract that expires on 9/16, we'll see what this week brings. I'm believe it's all green.
I believe this Triple/Quadruple Witching date may be 9/16; but it's the deadline for rolling out the Stocks Index Futures, that starts all the fun,that's this Friday. HODL
Gensler is a weasel from Goldman Sachs, he's going to do what is best for the 1%ers, while covering his backside in case he has to go before Congress and explain the what and where all of his administration.
Apes will see change, but it won't be because of anything that the Weasel does.
Exclusive: SEC Chair Gensler eyes corporate disclosures to curb consolidation
Brian Cheung
Brian Cheung·Reporter
Tue, September 7, 2021, 7:00 AM
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler will lean on corporate disclosures as the Biden administration sets its eyes on curbing anti-competitive behavior.
In a meeting of the newly-formed White House Competition Council set to take place later this week, Gensler will also emphasize the agency’s examination of the impact of revenue models like payment for order flows, a senior SEC official told Yahoo Finance.
The SEC is one of six independent agencies scheduled to meet with eight cabinet secretaries in the council’s first-ever meeting on Friday at 10 a.m. ET, according to sources familiar with the matter. The White House announced the formation of the council in July, aspiring to “address overconcentration, monopolization, and unfair competition.”
Gensler plans on telling the council that the SEC’s role in promoting competition will involve potential rulemaking on corporate disclosures and low-cost investor access to equity capital markets.
Since joining the SEC as chair in April, Gensler has advocated for increased transparency — specifically on climate risks and human capital. He has called for mandatory and standardized disclosures amid the rising popularity of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds.
“Investors are looking for consistent, comparable, and decision-useful disclosures so they can put their money in companies that fit their needs,” Gensler said in July.
Mandate of the SEC
On climate-specific risks, the agency has solicited public comment and gathered staff input. Proposed rules could come in the fall, the SEC official said. Gensler has also urged greater disclosure on “human capital,” which would require companies to detail its workforce turnover, workplace safety, and diversity, among other factors.
In Friday’s meeting, the SEC chair also plans on highlighting the agency's work on equity market structure. In the aftermath of the GameStop mania earlier this year, the SEC said it was looking at the concentration of retail order flow and the revenue models that $0 fee brokerages and market makers rely on. The SEC has not ruled out the possibility of a full ban on the model, known as payment for order flow.
Ensuring competition in the spirit of the new council is not directly within the mandate of the SEC; the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) serves as the main agency tasked with handling antitrust law. But the SEC official said leveling the playing fields in corporate disclosures, in addition to fostering capital markets competition that lower the cost of investing, are related to the SEC’s mission of “protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitating capital formation.”
The competition council does not directly instruct the agencies to create any specific rules. But those inside the DC beltway have interpreted the council’s formation as important posturing from the Biden administration on consolidation, particularly in the tech and banking industries.
“While the Competition Order does include several specific initiatives that various agencies may adopt, much of the Competition Order is quite broad and, rather than enacting specific changes, directs or encourages federal agencies to consider potential rulemaking,” noted Davis Polk in a July 12 note.
The law firm added that it could take years for any rules to go through the rigorous rulemaking process before finally taking effect.
Could Movie Theaters Get A Lift On 'Shang Chi's' Possible Box Office Record?
4:55 pm ET September 3, 2021 (Benzinga) Print
Labor Day marks the end of summer and brings last-minute vacations and outdoor activities. Could a Marvel movie break the holiday's box office record even with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to weigh on movie theater performance?
What Happened: “Marvel’s Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” hits theaters this weekend and has a chance to break the Labor Day weekend record currently held by “Halloween" from 2007.
Most predictions call for the movie to gross between $45 million and $50 million domestically, which would easily pass the $30 million posted by the “Halloween” remake. Last year’s Labor Day weekend was topped by “Tenet” with $9.35 million.
Walt Disney Co (NYSE: DIS) is hoping to have the usual success it has had with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The lowest opening weekend for the Marvel universe is $55.4 million from “The Incredible Hulk.”
"Shang Chi" features a character from the “Doctor Strange” movie that grossed $85.1 million in its 2016 release, which went on to gross $232.6 million domestically and $677.8 million worldwide.
Related Link: Disney Strong Beat, Theme Park Recovery Ahead Of Schedule: Analysts React To Q3 Earnings
Why It’s Important: The release of “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” could be a big test for theater chains like AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE: AMC) and Cinemark Holdings (NYSE: CNK).
The movie will be exclusive to movie theaters for 45 days before streaming on Disney+. “Jungle Cruise” and “Black Widow” were released with a hybrid model in theaters and as a premium option on Disney+. “Jungle Cruise” grossed $35 million and “Black Widow” grossed $80.4 million.
“Black Widow” grossed around 40% of its opening weekend total on Disney+, as subscribers skipped theaters and paid $30 to watch at home.
Many of the largest movies of the year have been released under a hybrid model of theater and streaming including “Space Jam” and “Suicide Squad,” which were released in theaters and free on HBO Max, owned by AT&T Inc (NYSE: T).
Strength from “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” would add to the success theaters saw from “Free Guy,” which grossed $28.4 million in its opening weekend and fell only 34.8% in its second weekend. “Free Guy” has been exclusive to theaters before hitting streaming services.
“Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” could have lasting power due to its exclusive run and the fact that there are now other wide-release movies scheduled for the next two weekends.
IMDB, a movie database owned by Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN), is showing increased searches and interest for the movie and is tracking higher interest than “Black Widow,” which could be a positive sign for a strong box office performance.
That's not the link, here's from an email to a friend:
Before he lost it all—all $20 billion—Bill Hwang was the greatest trader you’d never heard of.
Starting in 2013, he parlayed more than $200 million left over from his shuttered hedge fund into a mind-boggling fortune by betting on stocks. Had he folded his hand in early March and cashed in, Hwang, 57, would have stood out among the world’s billionaires. There are richer men and women, of course, but their money is mostly tied up in businesses, real estate, complex investments, sports teams, and artwork. Hwang’s $20 billion net worth was almost as liquid as a government stimulus check. And then, in two short days, it was gone.
relates to Bill Hwang Had $20 Billion, Then Lost It All in Two Days
Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, April 12, 2021. Subscribe now.
Photographer: Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg
The sudden implosion of Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management in late March is one of the most spectacular failures in modern financial history: No individual has lost so much money so quickly. At its peak, Hwang’s wealth briefly eclipsed $30 billion. It’s also a peculiar one. Unlike the Wall Street stars and Nobel laureates who ran Long-Term Capital Management, which famously blew up in 1998, Hwang was largely unknown outside a small circle: fellow churchgoers and former hedge fund colleagues, as well as a handful of bankers.
He became the biggest of whales—financial slang for someone with a dominant presence in the market—without ever breaking the surface. By design or by accident, Archegos never showed up in the regulatory filings that disclose major shareholders of public stocks. Hwang used swaps, a type of derivative that gives an investor exposure to the gains or losses in an underlying asset without owning it directly. This concealed both his identity and the size of his positions. Even the firms that financed his investments couldn’t see the big picture.
That’s why on Friday, March 26, when investors around the world learned that a company called Archegos had defaulted on loans used to build a staggering $100 billion portfolio, the first question was, “Who on earth is Bill Hwang?” Because he was using borrowed money and levering up his bets fivefold, Hwang’s collapse left a trail of destruction. Banks dumped his holdings, savaging stock prices. Credit Suisse Group AG, one of Hwang’s lenders, lost $4.7 billion; several top executives, including the head of investment banking, have been forced out. Nomura Holdings Inc. faces a loss of about $2 billion.
Hwang is anything but the larger-than-life figure one might expect at the center of a financial fiasco. There’s no penthouse overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park, no hillside chalet at the Yellowstone Club, no private jets. “I grew up in a pastor’s family. We were poor,” he said in a video recorded at New Jersey’s Metro Community Church in 2019. “I confess to you, I could not live very poorly. But I live a few notches below where I could live.”
relates to Bill Hwang Had $20 Billion, Then Lost It All in Two Days
Hwang
Photographer: Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg
Hwang owns a suburban New Jersey home and drives a Hyundai SUV. His is the paradoxical story of a man devoted to his church and driven to give generously, with a consuming taste for casinolike risk in his professional life. For now, Hwang isn’t saying why he played such a dangerous game, and neither are his bankers. But pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.
Modest on the outside, Hwang had all the swagger he needed inside the Wall Street prime-brokerage departments that finance big investors. He was a “Tiger cub,” an alumnus of Tiger Management, the hedge fund powerhouse that Julian Robertson founded. In the 2000s, Hwang ran his own fund, Tiger Asia Management, which peaked at about $10 billion in assets.
It didn’t matter that he’d been accused of insider trading by U.S. securities regulators or that he pleaded guilty to wire fraud on behalf of Tiger Asia in 2012. Archegos, the family office he founded to manage his personal wealth, was a lucrative client for the banks, and they were eager to lend Hwang enormous sums.
relates to Bill Hwang Had $20 Billion, Then Lost It All in Two Days
Robertson
Photographer: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images
On March 25, when Hwang’s financiers were finally able to compare notes, it became clear that his trading strategy was strikingly simple. Archegos appears to have plowed most of the money it borrowed into a handful of stocks—ViacomCBS, GSX Techedu, and Shopify among them. This was no arbitrage on collateralized bundles of obscure financial contracts. Hwang invested the Tiger way, using deep fundamental analysis to find promising stocks, and he built a highly concentrated portfolio. The denizens of Reddit’s WallStreetBets day trading on Robinhood can do almost the same thing, riding such popular themes as cord cutting, virtual education, and online shopping. Only no brokerage will extend them anywhere near the amount of leverage billionaires get.
To anyone who asked, Hwang liked to say he divided his time evenly among three passions: his family, his business, and his charity, the Grace & Mercy Foundation. “I try to invest according to the word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit,” Hwang said in a 2019 video for his foundation. “In a way it’s a fearless way to invest. I am not afraid of death or money.”
Sung Kook Hwang immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea in 1982 and took the English name Bill. Raised by his widowed mother, he attended the University of California at Los Angeles and eventually earned an MBA at Carnegie Mellon University. At a videotaped business school reunion that was posted online in 2008, Hwang recounted his one objective upon graduation: moving to New York. In 1996, after stints as a salesman at two securities firms, he landed an analyst’s job at Tiger Management.
Working for Robertson, a titan of the industry, was like playing for the New York Yankees. Many of Hwang’s colleagues at the time went on to start several of the world’s most successful hedge funds, including Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global Investors, Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management, and Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management.
As Hwang recalled at the reunion, Robertson taught him a key lesson: to live with losses. At one point, Tiger had burned through $2 billion in a wrong-way bet against the Japanese yen, and “everyone was panicking.” Robertson entered the room and, according to Hwang, said, “Guys, calm down. It’s only work. We do our best.”
When Tiger closed in 2001, Robertson urged Hwang to start a fund and offered to seed it with capital. In the early days, both Tiger Asia and Coleman’s Tiger Global were on the same floor at Robertson’s Park Avenue offices. Hwang and Coleman would sometimes have lunch together to share views on the market. One former Tiger Asia employee remembers Hwang returning one day. He and Coleman had decided against paring back some investments amid market volatility. “I think Chase and I are very similar. We need to go on the offense,” Hwang said, according to the former employee.
None of Hwang’s former colleagues or employees agreed to be named speaking about him. Some remain friends and don’t want to appear disloyal. Others are constrained by pledges of confidentiality. The people familiar with Archegos, both its accounts and positions, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to comment.
relates to Bill Hwang Had $20 Billion, Then Lost It All in Two Days
Tiger Management, run by Julian Robertson, became one of the first widely famous hedge funds. Many former Tiger employees went on to open their own shops. Hwang’s onetime colleagues at Tiger Management include (from left): Andreas Halvorsen, Viking Global Management; Philippe Laffont, Coatue Management; and Chase Coleman, Tiger Global Management.
Photo Illustration: 731. Photographers: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images (Halvorsen); Kimberly White/Getty Images (Laffont); Amanda L. Gordon/Bloomberg (Coleman)
Hwang initially sought to differentiate himself by investing only in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese companies that generated all of their revenue domestically. Former clients and colleagues say Hwang concentrated the Tiger Asia portfolio in a small number of stocks and levered it. Some of his 25 or so positions were longs (bets on rising prices)and some were shorts (bets on declining prices). And he was secretive, often concealing particularly large holdings from his own analysts, the former employee says. He’d repeat these patterns years later at Archegos.
In 2008, Tiger Asia was shorting Volkswagen AG when takeover speculation sent the shares soaring. The stock quadrupled in two days, and Hwang had to close his position at a loss. He ended the year down 23%, and many investors pulled out, furious that an Asia-focused fund was gambling in European markets.
At least once, Hwang stepped over the line between aggressive and illegal. In 2012, after years of investigations, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Tiger Asia of insider trading and manipulation in two Chinese bank stocks. The agency said Hwang “crossed the wall,” receiving confidential information about pending share offerings from the underwriting banks and then using it to reap illicit profits.
Hwang settled that case without admitting or denying wrongdoing, and Tiger Asia pleaded guilty to a U.S. Department of Justice charge of wire fraud. His mother, who’d become a missionary in Tijuana, Mexico, called to ask about the penalties. Hwang recounted the moment in a 2016 talk in South Korea. When he informed her that the fines and disgorgements totaled more than $60 million, she replied, “Oh, dear. You did well, Sung Kook. Our America is going through a difficult time. Consider the amount you are paying as a tax.” He had to close the fund.
In 2013, Hwang started Archegos as a family office. There were no outside investors this time, only his money. Some friends, thinking back, figured he wanted to prove himself after the SEC settlement. Others saw no interest in redemption. Risk-taking is to Hwang as basketball is to LeBron James, something in his nature.
“I try to invest according to the word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit”
Although little known on Wall Street, Hwang has been a pillar of his church community. His Grace & Mercy Foundation gave millions of dollars a year to mostly Christian causes. The Fuller Foundation and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., and Washington’s Museum of the Bible are two of its biggest beneficiaries. Others, in New York, include the Bowery Mission and the King’s College, a Christian liberal arts school.
Hwang hosted three Scripture readings a week at his foundation offices in Midtown Manhattan—a 6:30 p.m. dinner on Monday, a 12:30 p.m. lunch on Wednesday, and a 7 a.m. breakfast on Friday. He paid for another at Metro Community Church, too. Between listening to scripture and reading himself, Hwang said he spent at least 90 hours over the course of every year digesting the entire Bible.
Hwang is closely involved with a group called Liberty in North Korea, or Link, that has helped about 1,300 North Koreans escaping the regime. “He doesn’t use God as a cover,” says Jensen Ko, a colleague at Archegos. “He lives that out.”
In February 2016, Hwang’s name appeared on an invitation emailed to members of the Financial Services Ministry, a group affiliated with New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church that connects Christians in finance. It advertised a weekend retreat at the Princeton Theological Seminary “to explore the Gospel’s power to transform who we are and what we have been called to do in this industry.” The highlight was a dinner on a Saturday with three of the ministry’s advisers: Cathie Wood, whose ARK Investments was then a startup money manager; Paul Gojkovich, a former director at Merrill Lynch; and Hwang.
For a while, Wood and Hwang shared a similar trajectory. As Archegos piled up winning trades outside the public eye, she became an investing sensation. Wood’s flagship exchange-traded fund, a technology-heavy portfolio open to any retail investor, wowed the market with a 148% return in 2020. Hwang is also one of Wood’s investors, and, according to one of his former employees, Archegos and ARK collaborated on industry research. ARK declined to comment.
The seminary retreat offered a glimpse of how Hwang reconciled faith with finance. One person who attended recalls talking to him about the Archegos portfolio, which then included Amazon.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Netflix. As Hwang explained it, cutting-edge companies were doing divine work by advancing society. He told congregants in his 2019 appearance at Metro Community that God loved Alphabet Inc.’s Google because it provided “the best information to everybody.” Archegos had owned the stock for five years. “God also cares about fair price, because the scripture said God hates wrong scales,” Hwang says in the video, invoking the multiple references to just weights and balances in the Old Testament. “My company does a little bit, our part, bringing a fair price to Google stock. Is it important to God? Absolutely.”
U.S. rules prevent individual investors from buying securities with more than 50% of the money borrowed on margin. No such limits apply to hedge funds and family offices. People familiar with Archegos say the firm steadily ramped up its leverage. Initially that meant about “2x,” or $1 million borrowed for every $1 million of capital. By late March the leverage was 5x or more.
Hwang also kept his banks in the dark by trading via swap agreements. In a typical swap, a bank gives its client exposure to an underlying asset, such as a stock. While the client gains—or loses—from any changes in price, the bank shows up in filings as the registered holder of the shares.
That’s how Hwang was able to amass huge positions so quietly. And because lenders had details only of their own dealings with him, they, too, couldn’t know he was piling on leverage in the same stocks via swaps with other banks. ViacomCBS Inc. is one example. By late March, Archegos had exposure to tens of millions of shares of the media conglomerate through Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Credit Suisse, and Wells Fargo & Co. The largest holder of record, indexing giant Vanguard Group Inc., had 59 million shares.
Damage to Hwang’s Lenders
Share price
Data: Compiled by Bloomberg
There’s no evidence Archegos did anything improper. The atmosphere maintained in its offices was notably sober. One former employee says there was no cursing tolerated, a policy borrowed from Robertson’s Tiger that stands in stark contrast to the profanity common on most trading floors. The same source also recalls Hwang toting a backpack like a college student and praising Uniqlo, the fast-fashion brand, because it’s cheap and comfortable—a utilitarian ideal.
The clash of humility and audacity played out on the 38th floor of 888 Seventh Ave., high above Central Park. On one side was Grace & Mercy, on the other Archegos. People familiar with Hwang’s investments the first few years he ran Archegos say they included Amazon; Expedia Group, the travel-booking engine; and LinkedIn, the job-search site Microsoft would acquire in 2016. A winning wager on Netflix Inc. netted Archegos close to $1 billion, one former colleague estimates. Hwang appeared to be channeling the same thesis Wood was applying at ARK and which millions of retail investors were beginning to embrace: technological disruption.
He was on a hot streak. By 2017, Archegos had about $4 billion in capital, according to a former banker who helped oversee its account at his firm. Hwang was sharing few financial details with his lenders, but no one raised any red flags. His leverage at the time was about the same as a typical hedge fund running a similar strategy, or two to two-and-a-half times, this person says.
One problem with stockpicking at Hwang’s scale is hedging. Many sophisticated stockpickers try to reduce their risk by balancing long positions with shorts on similar names. That way they’ll make up some losses with profits if the market tanks.
In principle, shorting is simple: You borrow shares and sell them, making money if the stock declines. In practice, it’s often hard to find enough shares or borrow them cheaply. Another way to hedge is what’s known as a portfolio short, a broad bet against the stock market, often made through an options or futures contract on the S&P 500. It’s relatively easy to execute, but the hedge doesn’t work if the market doesn’t drop. The ex-banker says he recalls Archegos having a portfolio short.
At some point in the past few years, Hwang’s investments shifted from mainly tech companies to a more eclectic mix. Media conglomerates ViacomCBS and Discovery Inc. became huge holdings. So did at least four Chinese stocks: GSX Techedu, Baidu, Iqiyi, and Vipshop.
Although it’s impossible to know exactly when Archegos did those swap trades, there are clues in the regulatory filings by his banks. Starting in the second quarter of 2020, all Hwang’s banks became big holders of stocks he bet on. Morgan Stanley went from 5.22 million shares of Vipshop Holdings Ltd. as of June 30, to 44.6 million by Dec. 31.
Leverage was playing a growing role, and Hwang was looking for more. Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley had been doing business with Archegos for years, unperturbed by Hwang’s brush with regulators. Goldman, however, had blacklisted him. Compliance officials who frowned on his checkered past blocked repeated efforts internally to open an account for Archegos, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
At the close of every trading day, Archegos would settle its swap accounts. If the total value of all positions in the account rose, the bank in question would pay Archegos cash. If the value fell, Archegos would have to put up more collateral or, in industry parlance, post margin.
The fourth quarter of 2020 was a fruitful one for Hwang. While the S&P 500 rose almost 12%, seven of the 10 stocks Archegos was known to hold gained more than 30%, with Baidu, Vipshop, and Farfetch jumping at least 70%.
All that activity made Archegos one of Wall Street’s most coveted clients. People familiar with the situation say it was paying prime brokers tens of millions of dollars a year in fees, possibly more than $100 million in total. As his swap accounts churned out cash, Hwang kept accumulating extra capital to invest—and to lever up. Goldman finally relented and signed on Archegos as a client in late 2020. Weeks later it all would end in a flash.
Damage to Hwang’s Investments
Share price
Jimmy Joe, Did you know that "Many fish bite if you have good bait,
here's a little tail I'd like to relate"
Use good bait this weekend and enjoy.
See everyone back next Tuesday.
Bio, let me know what you think of Whang. Thanks
I looked back at my past posts, I'm guessing it was deleted. I had copied the article, I believe the one I read is down below because it's the most recent date.
I believed it's related to AMC for JP Morgan started the fall of Hwang's Archegos, CS wanted to give Mr. Hwang more time, it cost CS dearly. If you like this article, keep reading about Hwang. He got burnt with the VW squeeze, Hwang learned from that VW experience, he has a keen eye on looking for high shorted companies, kind of like AMC. Mr. Hwang is going to make a comeback, I wouldn't be surprised it he's an Ape.
Hwang used SWAP's, they are an interesting tool, I believe Citadel is also using them. We'll see.
Where Is Bill Hwang, the Man Who Lost $20 Billion After
https://www.bloomberg.com › news › features › where-...
Aug 9, 2021 — Hwang named his firm Archegos, an ancient Greek word for leader or author, a reference to Jesus. The names of two of the new funds reflect the ...
Bio, I'm not sure if you've been reading my posts about Bill Hwang's, I feel that the last strong run AMC had was due to Triple (not quad) Witching
Whatever, I believe September 9th is going to be a hard day for Shorts. I'm not saying it's the beginning of the squeeze, I'm also not saying it isn't the beginning of another assault on 72
Neb, you look at these dates, you'll see where we broke out of single digits, too
Futures Expiration Date Deadline of Futures Rolling
March 19th March 11th
June 18th June 10th
September 17th September 9th
December 17th December 9th
The Deadline is the important date, your Prime Lender checks what's going on a lot closer than on your average daily close. Like I said, we'll see, however, it doesn't make any difference if you just HODL
Neb and everyone else can do with their money whatever they want, I just don't think Neb should be writing calls for next week. (but, no, I'm not going to reimburse him, if I'm wrong :)
Clouse mentioned different contracts with suppliers, wonder if they have their hands in the wrong cookie jar from time to time, KFT got caught, made millions and get a tiny little fine, Old Gensler sure is cleaning things up. The Old Boy system is never going to stop!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Kraft Heinz Company and two former executives will pay penalties of more than $62 million to settle charges they falsified supplier contracts to achieve cost savings, the U.S. securities regulator said on Friday.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged that the consumer products giant engaged in an array of accounting misconduct from the last quarter of 2015 to the end of 2018 during which it improperly inflated key earnings for investors.
Kraft restated its financials in June 2019 after the launch of an SEC probe, correcting $208 million in improperly recognized cost savings from nearly 300 transactions, the regulator said in a statement.
Kraft, which did not admit or deny the SEC's findings, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. The company agreed to pay a $62 million civil penalty and not commit future violations as part of its agreement with the SEC.
The company's former chief operating officer Eduardo Pelleissone, who was accused of negligence-based anti-fraud and other controls violations, agreed to pay a penalty of $300,000 and another $14,000 in disgorgement.
Kraft's former chief procurement officer Klaus Hofmann agreed to pay $100,000 and was barred from serving as a public company officer or director for five years in a settlement that is pending court approval.
Neither executive admitted or denied the SEC's findings. Lawyers for both did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
My son-in-law gifted me with a book about Amazon, it's very interesting. Fulfillment-Winning and Losing in One-Click America the author is Alec MacGillis
I wouldn't work at Amazon, and certainly not with Uncle Joey giving me money not to.
There's a reason that hedgies are not aware of it, the SEC is lead by a weasel from GS.
I understand that you do not own enough of the Float to take this issue to the American Embassy, but that sure would do more than us US APes complaining to the weasel Gensler.
LCBM's group may get there, we'll all wait and see. Apes do have power.
I agree with Poooor,
We are much Richer by you being side by side with us Pooooor US APes
I am personally glad you, Karl, Lcbm68 and other posters not in the US of A are willing to come on this AMC message board and share their opinions with others from around the world. Together we stand a chance of getting justice and possibly a fair market for all.
Have you studied Sung Kook Hwang (Bill)? It would not surprise me at all if part of his comeback in on the back of AMC.
Mr, Hwang clearly understands the importance of rolling over Future Contracts, plus the behind the curtain details involving Prime Lenders in so going.
I'm calling Sept. 9th as an important date for the lives of APes. I just hope new rich Apes behave better than the wealthy in the past.
We'll see.
I'm guessing that our Asian Ape friends take another wack at them at them this afternoon...2-4 PM
Yea Pink, I really, really hate it when they cut me off after I've hit my 50 million limit, don't you?
Bio, thanks, I looked at AH close at 8PM, someone gobbled up everything, I never dreamed today would be a down day, but I also didn't know who was doing what. AMC sure is interesting.
I posted the article about Bill Whang and his troubles, it all surrounded Futures, there was only one reply about what I thought was a great learning article; anyway, these dates are important.
Futures Expiration Date Deadline of Futures Rolling
March 19th March 11th
June 18th June 10th
September 17th September 9th
December 17th December 9th
These guys are shorters, the market has done well.
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter
Remember laughter?
(from stairway to heaven)
Bio, do you recall how many shares traded AH yesterday? I'm guessing that we can now guess who that nefarious creature was that knew something. They didn't sucker me in to buy more for I'm flat broke, but I do think there was a lot of trading going on, wasn't there?
Why Robinhood and Other Brokers Care So Much About Payment for Order Flow -- Barrons.com
3:59 am ET September 1, 2021 (Dow Jones) Print
By Bill AlpertBill Alpert
The retail trading industry got a jolt earlier this week when Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said that a ban on the contentious payments that brokerages such as Robinhood Markets rely on to subsidize free trading was "on the table."
Those dollars, called payments for order flow, are a vital artery in the infrastructure that handles most retail traders' orders for stocks and options. Industrywide, these payments could reach record levels of $2 billion this year for stock trades, and $4 billion for options trades, according to Bloomberg Business Intelligence. The payments are Robinhood's main revenue source and help pay for its zero-commission approach that other retail brokers have followed.
But such payments have long stirred controversy and are banned in countries like the U.K., Canada, and Australia. The concern is that the payments could discourage brokers from obtaining the best trading prices for their customers -- violating the broker's duty to get a customer the best execution on a buy or sell order. Gensler wants the SEC to examine whether traders are getting the best deal .
How Payment for Order Flow Works
To understand the debate, it helps to know what happens behind the scenes when you place a trading order at a broker like Robinhood or Charles Schwab (ticker: SCHW). Say someone wants to buy 100 shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC) through her broker. Brokers like Robinhood pass the order along to a trading venue where it can be matched with orders of other traders seeking to sell the stock. The broker chooses the venue, or market maker, in part by how much it can get paid.
Market makers, in turn, make money by paying less to buy a share than what they can sell it for moments later. Their profit is the spread.
Once upon a time, the market maker handling the trade for an NYSE-listed stock like AMC would be at the New York Stock Exchange. In recent years, however, off-exchange market makers like Virtu Financial (VIRT) or Citadel Securities have taken an increasing share of retail trading volume from exchanges like the NYSE. Those off-exchange operators now process more than half of all retail market orders. That's because off-exchange market makers give retail traders slightly better prices than the exchanges and pay brokers for the order.
In exchange, these market makers get small orders from a multitude of individual traders that are less likely to throw them for a loss than are the massive and sometimes complicated moves of savvy institutional traders. The smoother retail trades can even be computerized, so market makers are willing to compete for retail volume.
Virtu says that retail traders saved $3 billion from its "price improvements" in 2020, by giving the traders slightly better prices than what exchanges were quoting.
Order-flow payments are what allowed Robinhood to offer commission-free trading. The payments have soared this year, as individuals banded together on social media to trade meme stocks. SEC reports tabulated by Bloomberg BI show that payments received by Robinhood shot to $160 million in the month of February 2021, well ahead of the $100 million reported by the more established TD Ameritrade.
While Robinhood has built its business on order flow payments, some brokers -- notably Fidelity Brokerage Services and Interactive Brokers Group (IBKR) -- mostly refuse them.
Impact on Brokers
If payments for order flow were banned, it would impact Robinhood, Schwab (which now also owns the firms TD Ameritrade and TD Clearing), and E*Trade's owner Morgan Stanley (MS), says Larry Tabb, who founded the market structure consultancy Tabb Group and now works at Bloomberg BI.
"The one hurt the worst will be Robinhood," Tabb says. "Morgan Stanley and Schwab have a lot more ways of making money."
Robinhood didn't respond to queries from Barron's on its order flow payment receipts. In its latest earnings call, the company said it could adapt to regulatory changes.
It won't be easy. Robinhood got 80% of its June quarter revenue from these payments. For the first half of 2021, according to its order flow payment reports, it got paid $185 million for equity order flows and $600 million for its option orders. The total for Schwab's various brokerage operations in the first half was $360 million on stocks and $998 million on options. The industry's hefty order flow payments on options come from market makers at options exchanges, not the off-exchange firms.
Critics and regulators like Gensler worry that order flow payments create a conflict of interest. There are a number of factors that brokers are supposed to consider when deciding where to route their customers' orders for the best execution. Among those is the speed of execution, the likelihood of matching the entire order, and -- perhaps most important -- the price per share obtained on the trade.
Retail brokers have always insisted that order flow payments don't deter them from routing trades to the markets where they'll be best executed. They argue that the payments have helped subsidize the steady decline of trading commissions in the last two decades, with Robinhood pulling the industry's commissions down to zero.
Robinhood has been able to get paid a higher rate than other brokers for its order flows. Bloomberg BI's data show that in the 12 months ended June 2021, Robinhood received an average of 60 cents for an options contract and 48 cents per hundred shares of an order for one of the large-cap stocks in the S&P 500. By comparison, E*Trade got 45 cents for options and 21 cents for S&P stocks, while TD Ameritrade got 58 cents for options and 17 cents for S&P stocks. Payments for non-S&P stock orders are smaller because those orders are harder to match.
Regulators haven't always concurred that these order flow payments benefit individual traders. In December, the SEC filed administrative charges alleging that Robinhood had sent its customers' orders to market makers that executed trades at inferior prices in exchange for unusually high order-flow payments from the market makers. Even after accounting for Robinhood's free commissions, its customers were left $34.1 million worse off, said the SEC. Without admitting the SEC charges, Robinhood paid $65 million to settle the case and promised to improve its disclosure and execution. The broker had previously settled a regulatory action alleging poor trade execution without admitting the charges.
Possible Side Effects
Off-exchange market makers give price improvements and order flow payments for retail orders because the trades are less risky to handle than institutional orders. That has had the curious effect of giving better trading prices to individual investors than to the big money.
"If all retail orders were put on exchanges, the most likely outcome is that retail traders would be harmed and professional traders would benefit," says Tabb.
Tabb believes that traders would be best served by improved disclosure of order-flow payments and execution quality, not by discarding the market's current structure. Otherwise, retail trades will be swallowed up in the flow of big money from mutual funds and hedge funds like Millennium Management or Steven Cohen's Point72 Asset Management.
"If you kill payment for order flow, then my Schwab order subsidizes Stevie Cohen," says Tabb. "How is that fair? He's got better traders, better research, and way better technology. All of a sudden I'm competing against Millennium and the head trader at Fidelity Research."
Write to Bill Alpert at william.alpert@barrons.com
Another 1K @42.32, Biden better be listening to Clouse about labor costs, CPB have 6% open jobs, CPB needs more innovation to reduce labor needs.
Lastly, Clouse needs to juice up his style, or have I just been listening to him to many times? He can't keep blaming COVID.
How can a stock with a few billion shares shorted be overbought?
What did someone know?
I'm sure you've seen AF prices, some nefarious stuff is going on, it's all good with me when the price is going up, yet someone knows something.
This is for those of us that want to be as wise as the MasterofDisaster.
Short exempt refers to a short sale order exempted from the uptick rule regulation, as governed by the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Regulation SHO. The current implementation of this regulation contains a modified version of what was known as the uptick rule.
I'll explained this so stupid people like me can understand, Master is saying that Market Makers sold about 350,000 shares that they do not have, but sooner or later, they need to find those shares. When they do, ZEV should ZIP right up.
I personally believe Master is a very conservative person, I'd guess that those nefarious MMers sold more than a million shares they do not have, counterfeit shares, if you will.
I also added, little batches on a thousand shares. Plus, what is it with this three cent spread, that pure BS. 28 million shares traded and they have a three cent spread, Gensler is really doing a fine job, I'm serious, too. He's helping the MMers as best as he can!
Weasel!
Why Lightning EMotors Stock Is Trading Higher Today
11:34 am ET August 31, 2021 (Benzinga) Print
Lightning EMotors Inc (NYSE: ZEV) is trading higher Tuesday after the company reported a partnership with REV Group Inc's (NYSE: REVG) Collins Bus subsidiary to manufacture and deploy zero-emission, all-electric Type A school buses.
The all-electric Type A school buses will have a gross vehicle weight of 14,500 pounds and feature NMC batteries using industry-leading battery thermal management and safety systems.
The buses will feature a modern digital-dash display, hill-hold functionality, advanced telematics and analytics, as well as a mobile app for drivers and fleet managers.
"We believe Collins’ leadership can be a strong catalyst for the market to move to all electric. Together, we are ready to bring zero-emission school buses to a neighborhood near you," said Tim Reeser, CEO of Lightning EMotors.
Lightning EMotors is engaged in the manufacturing of electric fleet medium and heavy-duty vehicles including delivery trucks, shuttle buses, passenger vans, chassis-cab models and city transit buses.
Thanks, very glad to be here, I sure hope they sell a lot more buses while the shorts try to cover.
It appears that volume picked up, also appears that ZEV is all fired up to take off.
I do not see HTB on mine, but I'm looking about an hour after you posted.
They still have to buy back billions of shorted shares, Apes Hodl until we get paid.
Another note, those that are going to the movies aren't the least bit concerned about covid, ticket sales are doing well.
Teens are dating, life is good.
Adam Aron
@CEOAdam
Many of you continue to be concerned about the AMC share count. In early June, we announced an all-inclusive share count total of 513,330,240 legally issued shares. Precisely zero new shares have been issued by AMC since then.
Doesn't address anything about how many outstanding shares there are, nor did AA seem interested in some of the creative ideas some APes had to reel in counterfeit shares. I understand that many Apes like AA, I just don't understand why they do! Apes saved AMC, AA likes to give his "great management team" credit for securing new favorable loans, which is all nonsense, it wouldn't have happened if AA was still dealing with a single digit share price.
AA didn't even give the Apes their mascot, which would have had a profit margin that rivaled pop corn, plus he doesn't need shelf space, he has a web site; all he needed to do was use it. Amazon could have sold and shipped the Mascot, would add revenue to AMC and not cost it a cent, huge screw up by AA.
dmerc, how many shares do you think are outstanding that are naked (counterfeit) or fake electronic shares?
With that said if all the actual numbers were kept up with on the first set of books and buys and sells were actually all done properly then yes the PPS would be more.
Yea, I'd say that's a safe statement, it would be much much more. I agree with you about this second set of books, too. As for how much more SP would be, depends on how many shares you believe have been shorted, I believe BILLIONS have, so yea, much much higher! That's before any damn squeeze, to boot!