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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44948 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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In January 2021, and a few times after, meme stocks experienced profound price increases based on little related to fundamentals. The reasons are varied - in some instances, there were many large players who were short the stock (GME, AMC) and waves of buying pressure from retail investors, as well as other hedge funds, caused the prices to cascade upwards in a truly hilarious manner (GME going from $18 in December to $480 at the peak). In other instances (TSLA in summer 2020 for example), it was the case that too many call options (a derivative that allows one the right, but not the obligation, to purchase a specificed security at a specified price, on or before a specific date) were sold, and those who sold options were forced to buy more stock to hedge, in a cascade upwards.

Due to various acts of incompetence by Robin Hood and other brokers, having insufficient liquidity to deposit with the clearing houses which settle stock trades (as exposed in the SEC Report, Robin Hood's head of compliance was unaware of the existence of margin requirements with the clearing houses), various things which appear sketchy occurred in January 2021, and at other times. For example, in January 2021, Robin Hood moved the stocks to "Position Close Only", meaning that one could hold or sell, but not buy any more of the specified securities.

For those who were new to markets, this became a crusade. It has long since ceased to involve any fundamental cause, or even revolve around any sort of evidence, but instead is a venue for a mish-mash of totally wild conspiracies that are reminiscent of QAnon.

Let's look at AMC. AMC is the movie theatre company of which you have likely visited in past. It has a market capitalization today of 4.20B (lol), In September 2019, AMC had a market capitalization of $1.1B. This is a 4x.

When one compares the company's books [1], the discrepancy becomes even more stark. At the end of 2019, AMC had a tangible book value of -3.7 billion. Today, it has a tangible book value of -4.8 billion. In Fiscal Year 2019, it lost 149 million dollars. This quarter, it lost 121 million dollars.

So uh, how is it alive? How does it stick around?

Well, there's a cult backing it, and they have essentially agreed to use the stock market as a Go Fund Me, with the belief that when the End Times/"Mother of All Short Squeezes" comes, AMC's share price will rise as high as $100,000 per share[2]. With 516 million outstanding shares, this would value the company at approximately 51.6 trillion dollars. They believe in earnest that they will be able to cash out from this level, and earn trillions of dollars that their counterparties obviously would not have available to pay them. They believe this is the case because they believe that short sellers have sold billions of "synthetic" or "fake" shares of the stock [3], despite no obvious mechanism for such a thing occurring, and positing a conspiracy that would require likely >10,000 people, all of whom could instantly betray that conspiracy in exchange for vast riches beyond belief, to all keep quiet for over a year and a half at this point. The CEO, Adam Aron, has somewhat played into the meme stock aspects in a way that makes me feel sorry for the cult believers. However, he has also attempted to dispel some of the mythos [4], to little effect. In link 4, the tweet thread, he states this, but says that part of the reason they have done their recent corporate action (issuance of a preferred share to all shareholders - effectively a stock split), is to show that there are no synthetic, or naked shorts.

And so, the preferred share was issued to each shareholder who owned AMC. The AMC "Apes" beforehand stated that this [5] would be [6] the nail [7] in the coffin [8] and The MOASS WOULD HAPPEN as SYNTHETIC SHARES WERE REVEALED.

Predictably, no such MOASS occurred, and the price of AMC and the split-off preferred equity ($APE) have bled since. Predictably, cults do not take kindly to evidence that The Date Was Wrong, and instead, Outside Forces Have Conspired To Ruin Us. [9] [10] [11]. 11 is a good example of the totally false information that runs rampant in these stock cults - the stock $HKD was halted 94 times during its run up and run down. The halts, by the way, are automated and processed by computers on the basis of price swings in short periods - there is no centralized authority who chooses what to halt and when, other than if the company has imminent news and requests the exchange halt the stock.

The reason that I make this post is somewhat of a follow up to [12], and to indicate that the reasons I believe social media is a pretty awful technology, and the reason I support greater censorship isn't solely a matter of politics. It's a matter of homeless people [13] [14] investing in a bankrupt movie theatre stock, because influencers who run Onlyfans accounts and monetize their Youtbe channels make money by being "leaders" of a "movement". Because people are convinced that this bankrupt movie theatre stock is their ticket [15] out of the middle class. Because [16] this is how to get back at the man - how to get revenge for 2008.

This Friday, there are approximately [17] 36,000 call options on AMC that will expire worthless. Given the option prices on AMC, it is safe to assume that these were all purchased for around $100 each. Every week, "The Man" makes $360,000 by selling options to retail traders who are convinced that The MOASS is coming. Prior to the pandemic, The company has sold to date, 200m or so shares after the retail crowd started buying the stock, at an average price of $20. The executives of the company sell all of their shares, as soon as they vest, and have no ownership interest. The CFO unloaded everything he had at $30. When the CEO unloaded at $50, the cult said that it was OK because he was doing "Retirement Planning". His retirement plan is likely "Be Rich".

People are going to lose all their money. People will develop crippling drug addictions. People will kill themselves. People will spend the rest of their lives convinced that the entire world conspired against them to prevent them from becoming millionaires, bitter and poor. Some of them will go postal and harm innocent theatre employees or random bankers, eventually.

And what great benefit do we derive from this? The nature of social media platforms is not a neutral venue in which all speech can be heard - you do not have an email box of "Thought Of The Day from Everyone In Your Town" - you have an intentionally cultivated set of messages sent to you, because they're maximally addicting. Any perceived increase in the "freedom" of your speech is a side effect and an afterthought to maximizing the stock price of BigTech.

It's possible that this is simply the same set of suckers that would have been taken in by any other scam at any other time in history, but the group feels larger and more committed with the passing of time, rather than losing faith, continuing to dump more good money after bad. I doubt the scale of the problem has ever been this large - I've not even mentioned the Gamestop, Bed Bath, BBIG, etc. cults.

I think when people conceive of social media censorship, they react viscerally because they do not want themselves to be silenced. This is the great error - it is never small communities that cause the problem, it is the influencers.. Analogizing to the past, I think that if little people generally want to argue for the virtues of Cannabilism, then free speech should allow them to do so in 1980 or in 2022. However in 1980, Ted Koppel would not appear on Television every evening extolling the virtues of Cannabalism, followed by a 60 Minutes piece on how THEY are keeping you from finding out how good flesh tastes.

Any society that renders it easy for its constituents to be quickly and easily brainwashed, in a fashion so pleasurable they do it to themselves to get the next dopamine hit when they refresh their feed, into anti-social and self-destructive behaviors is doomed.

BigTech does not facilitate this because it acts for Free Speech. It facilitates this because maximizing the quantity of speech makes more money.

Those who confuse the quantity of speech with freedom of speech make the same error as one who would see owning 50 guns as more free than 10, or 10 abortions as more free than 2. A freedom's true import is clear when it is utilized to effect, not when it is worshipped in effigy.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMC/balance-sheet?p=AMC

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/amcstock/comments/mv9tnf/amc_100k_dont_be_fooled/

[3] https://twitter.com/stephmase22/status/1566969527128162304?s=20&t=3K1ye3x0XGHSEKh-Hqyh8Q

[4] https://twitter.com/CEOAdam/status/1555303048989364227

[5] https://twitter.com/userofintellect/status/1556792984821063683?s=20&t=3CaLcH6xyJqf4b-inkSmhA

[6] https://twitter.com/AntonioTheMexi/status/1555395134182785024?s=20&t=3CaLcH6xyJqf4b-inkSmhA

[7] https://twitter.com/AMCcheerleader/status/1559655570776330241?s=20&t=3CaLcH6xyJqf4b-inkSmhA

[8] https://twitter.com/StacksMoney247/status/1557103509866258432?s=20&t=3CaLcH6xyJqf4b-inkSmhA

[9] https://twitter.com/CeccottiFrank/status/1566927882668355584?s=20&t=dviPpKxJTItHcSsFiSgaPw

[10] https://twitter.com/beachbumscali/status/1565014681160257536?s=20&t=dviPpKxJTItHcSsFiSgaPw

[11] https://i.redd.it/9axs30kdvaj91.jpg

[12] https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/ubedpi/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_april_25_2022/i6qlleg/?context=3

[13] https://twitter.com/Michelle801Ape/status/1502217924462927872?s=20&t=zKPElFtnPP5-5qaXq0E0Gg

[14] https://twitter.com/DrJoRoJo/status/1396529297565921280?s=20&t=zKPElFtnPP5-5qaXq0E0Gg

[15] https://twitter.com/trini_amc_ape/status/1567350662026903553?s=20&t=zKPElFtnPP5-5qaXq0E0Gg

[16] https://twitter.com/LTwittington/status/1566509811444875266?s=20&t=zKPElFtnPP5-5qaXq0E0Gg

[17] htt

People are going to lose all their money. People will develop crippling drug addictions. People will kill themselves. People will spend the rest of their lives convinced that the entire world conspired against them to prevent them from becoming millionaires, bitter and poor. Some of them will go postal and harm innocent theatre employees or random bankers, eventually.

...

This Friday, there are approximately [17] 36,000 call options on AMC that will expire worthless. Given the option prices on AMC, it is safe to assume that these were all purchased for around $100 each. Every week, "The Man" makes $360,000 by selling options to retail traders who are convinced that The MOASS is coming.

It's actually $3.6 million, you missed a 0. As someone on the other side who makes money off retail traders I think this cleansing by fire is necessary for the public to realise that when they do these type of trades they are playing a game against people who are smarter than them, have better data than them, have better market understanding than them, have better execution than them etc. and that they will lose in the long run, no different to how it works in a casino.

These weekly losses should be publicly broadcast on TV and made fun of routinely by news anchors etc. until the general public has fully instilled the message that in the long run "you can not beat THE MAN".

These weekly losses should be publicly broadcast on TV and made fun of routinely by news anchors etc. until the general public has fully instilled the message that in the long run "you can not beat THE MAN".

I would strongly recommend a less face-stampy tone, at least.

I have vague accelerationist ambitions and thus encourage it.

There's no point to being coy about it. If you don't like THE MAN and want to resist him, it's very useful to know how he can most easily stamp on your face. This is easiest to learn by watching some poor fool get stamped in your place.

Of course THE MAN can anticipate this logic and expend unreasonable effort, to give the impression of easily stamping on some problematic hard face and save himself trouble in the future. And that's sort of what the Count is proposing with his ideas for mass media coverage. But that's hard to pull off convincingly against a distributed target.

It's actually $3.6 million, you missed a 0. As someone on the other side who makes money off retail traders I think this cleansing by fire is necessary for the public to realise that when they do these type of trades they are playing a game against people who are smarter than them,

I don't think that's the lesson "the public" will learn. It will be another cultural grievance, another reason to hate contiguous and identifiable segments of the overall population.

These weekly losses should be publicly broadcast on TV and made fun of routinely by news anchors etc. until the general public has fully instilled the message that in the long run "you can not beat THE MAN".

...I'm not sure this is a lesson that can actually be comprehended. It runs directly counter to our entire worldview as Americans. Even conceding that in this case it very well may be the lesson that needs to be learned, my mind immediately starts searching for escalation strategies.

Yeah, I don't know how anyone can advocate for broadcasting "society is unfair, get over it" and expect the American people to accept it in this modern climate. Sure, it might be honest and accurate, but it's not likely to turn down the temperature of the culture war. As the OP mentioned, people still do want some payback for 2008, and 2020-onwards has been shaping up to be a repeat of 2008.

I think there is an easy line to see between "stop entering unfair contests of your own volition" and "society is unfair" but maybe that is me.

The $3.6M number could be broadcast the same way that cigarette deaths are.

It's the truth. It's always been the truth. It will always be the truth.

That's enough for me. Ultimately there are no good lies. I'd rather people kill each other over reality than make peace over falsehood.

Because reality always comes back for it's due.

I don't think that you can really call GME/AMC rubes getting fleeced a symptom of an unfair society.

I was thinking more of OWS and the revival of unironic socialism/communism in the 2010's. What do you think would happen if The Man decided to out and say, "yes, we admit it, we are on top, we will continue to be on top, you'll own nothing, and you're gonna have to enjoy it"?

I guess your definition of The Man decides if you believe they already have or not.

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