"Many people have heard of Nassim Taleb's black swan but fewer understand how few events qualify as black swans. Per Wikipedia, a black swan is an unpredictable or unforeseen event, typically one with extreme consequences, an event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight.
Taleb's black swan theory refers to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences. In other words, if an event was deemed possible but very low-risk, it isn't a black swan. France's Maginot Line offers an interesting example of the difference between events that are deemed low-probability and that play out in ways that weren't anticipated and a true black swan.
The Maginot Line was a defensive line of impregnable fortifications constructed in the 1930s to force any future German invasion of France (i.e. a replay of World War I) to go around the Line to the north, through Belgium. Should the German Army invade as planned through Belgium, the French reckoned that they would be able to mobilize their army in time to meet the invaders in Belgium in a decisive battle that would either result in a French victory or a trench-warfare stalemate like World War I.
The German invasion in 1940 did come through Belgium as anticipated, but the speed of the invading force was not foreseen by French war planners. The German forces pursued a strategy of Blitzkrieg (lightning war) that advanced deep into France in a matter of days, exploiting weaknesses in French communication, planning, logistics and tactics.
The attack came as expected but not in a manner that was expected. The French expected the Germans to follow the World War I script, a script that would lead to the defeat of the invasion. The Germans were understandably keen on doing something other than following a plan that would end in defeat and so they devised a new way of organizing and executing an invasion.
Understood in this fashion, France's rapid defeat was not a Black Swan. The Maginot Line did its job but the French pre-conflict war-gaming failed to anticipate German innovations in logistics, tactics and strategy. Put another way: their assessment of risk and their war-gaming of vulnerabilities were fatally deficient.
So does the crowdsourcing of gamed speculation that we're witnessing in the stock market qualify as a black swan or not? A strong case can be made that crowdsourcing would eventually move from fundraising and political action to gamed speculation in which an opt-in crowd agrees to share resources to stage a coordinated assault on speculative positions. If this could have been anticipated by extrapolating existing trends, it could be argued this doesn't qualify as a true black swan.
But an equally strong case can be made that two dynamics unleashed by the crowdsourcing of gamed speculation are black swans:
1. The effectiveness of the crowdsourcing in crippling the confidence of institutional players in building massive short positions in specific equities and instruments. Establishing massive short positions in equities was a relatively low-risk and highly profitable fiefdom of finance reserved for the privileged few of America's New Nobility (financiers, hedge funds, etc.) These positions were established with relative impunity. This is no longer the case, and the consequences, in classic black swan fashion, are unforeseen and potentially catastrophic.
2. This crowdsourcing has an emotional and politically charged agenda completely outside the conventions of finance and market speculation: participants want to take down the New Nobility. The unprecedented inequality of wealth, income and agency in America has fueled an inchoate rage against those who have benefited so immensely from the rigged system we're forced to accept as the status quo. I covered this recently in "The Coming Revolt of the Middle Class" (1/27/21).
The New Nobility is accustomed to profiteering with impunity, with little to fear from laws, regulations or serf/peasant blowback--case in point, Jeffrey Epstein. Now the peasantry has organized via crowdsourcing a means of eviscerating at least a few of the rapaciously profiteering Nobles, payback that is emotionally satisfying in ways those at the top of America's corrupt "leadership" and New Nobility class cannot understand, as they believe it is their "right" to assemble fortunes exceeding $100 million as super-privileged insiders by "Buying More Than $1 Million In Tesla, Disney And Apple Calls In December".
Let's call this a silver swan, an emergent dynamic with far-reaching and potentially extreme consequences. This silver swan isn't an imaginary comic-book character, it's a dynamic with real-world consequences that have barely begun to become visible. This silver swan is manifesting in a market that is exquisitely fragile, brittle and vulnerable to collapse for reasons I'll explore in upcoming posts.
One way to understand the risk of unforeseen collapse is: our Nobility's assessment of risk and their war-gaming of vulnerabilities are fatally deficient. As an appetizer to this topic, please review my recent posts:
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
"While all attention seems to be focused on GameStop and some other heavily-shorted stocks as they're reaching astronomical highs ever since WallStreetBets traders started to ignite an epic short-squeeze, over the past couple of days, another asset is becoming the newest target of the Reddit-Raiders. As we discussed a few days ago, it seems that the Reddit Rebellion is descending the precious metal market and, apparently, Silver will be their next choice to unleash the world's biggest short squeeze and collapse several major banks along the way. That's what we are going to expose.
Last week, WallStreetBets members started to discuss what could be their next move in what is being called the "Reddit Rebellion". The users started to debate that it was time to make an entrance into the most manipulated market on earth: the precious metals market. They argued that in addition to the enormous gains they could make with the assets, a really appealing plus would be sparking the implosion of several banks that have been manipulating gold and silver to cover real inflation, including JP Morgan. And considering the massive flows into the Silver Exchange-Traded Fund (SLV), it seems that they are already putting their plan into place. SLV witnessed inflows of nearly one billion dollars on Friday, almost double the previous record inflow for this 15-year-old ETF.
Consequently, that helped to induce a spike in SLV off Wednesday's lows of more than 11%. Short-interest in the ETF has also been building. As ZeroHedge reported in a recent article, this upswing has happened right after Reddit user 'TheHappyHawaiian' posted a very detailed thesis on the advantages of buying silver and highlighted that it was possible to make history by triggering the world's biggest short squeeze.
According to the Redditor, currently, those who are shorting silver via the futures markets are a couple of big banking corporations and, the user stresses that "making them pay dearly for their over-leveraged naked shorts would be incredible". This time, it's not a hedge fund that will take the coup, their main target are now major banks and Redditors are going for blood. "It's not Melvin capital on the other side of this trade, it's JP Morgan. It's time to get some payback for the bailouts and manipulation they've done for decades - just look up silver manipulation fines that JPM has paid over the years!" he exclaimed.
In that sense, the squeeze could be set off by forcing a significantly higher percentage of the futures contracts to be actually delivered in physical silver. Taking into account that there is a very small amount of silver in the COMEX vaults or available to be effectively delivered, if massive purchases happen on the open market, the prices will be sent to record-highs since it's impossible to suddenly create more physical silver which is also ready to be delivered. Different from stocks, in which traders are able to just issue more shares if prices rise too much, there's no way to keep up with ramping demands for physical silver.
To provide a clearer picture of how that would occur, let's picture a situation in which a futures seller gets really unlucky with a buyer who demands to take delivery. If the seller doesn't have it and starts to see that will be incredibly difficult to find the silver, he would likely go long a matching number of futures contracts and require actual delivery on those. That would solve the problem in the short-term because the seller would attend to the demand of the buyer with a new seller, but then, that new seller would have the same issue as the previous seller and would likely make the same move, generating a cascade effect and potentially provoking a melt-up. In that way, all the naked shorts would attempt to offload their position to someone who actually own some silver. The Redditor reveals that this is the exact desired effect and says that the goal is to have the silver and do not sell it until it is at a much higher price due to desperation.
Finally, the last dominos to fall as a part of this narrative are inflation and currency debasement. As we repeatedly discussed on the channel, the government and the Federal Reserve have been recklessly printing money which is debasing the value of real dollars. For that reason, investors have been turning to hard assets as a form of wealth protection, which also contributes to drive up the demand for silver. The additional $1.9 trillion bill that will probably be passed over the next few weeks or months, combined with the reopening of the economy, will be the perfect catalyst for hyperinflation, as the Redditor signals, "once inflation starts it often feeds on itself". And altogether, that’s the perfect catalyst for much more financial chaos. Let the buyers beware."
A Comment: If, as Anonymous asserts, "all the banks will fail", and I personally believe they will, it could happen very rapidly, with consequences that will directly affect us all. This will get very ugly, as all the pension funds and insurance companies will also fail. Total systemic meltdown. When all the bank branches are closed, and the ATM system is down, credit cards don't work, what will you do? I'd suggest as a precaution withdrawing as much of your funds now, in cash, as they'll permit, while you can. Consider all your options well. - CP
“The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is nestled within the dusty arms of neighboring spiral galaxy Andromeda (M31), 2.5 million light-years distant.
Seen near the center of this gorgeous close-up of the southwestern extent of Andromeda's disk, the bright, blue stars of NGC 206 indicate its youth. Its youngest massive stars are less than 10 million years old. Much larger than the clusters of young stars in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy known as open or galactic clusters, NGC 206 spans about 4,000 light-years. That's comparable in size to the giant stellar nurseries NGC 604 in nearby spiral M33 and the Tarantula Nebula, in the Large Magellanic Cloud.”
Sylvia Plath describes these rare and precious encounters in her poem "Black Rook in Rainy Weather." "Spasmodic tricks of radiance," she calls them. A "celestial burning" that takes possession of an ordinary object, setting the sight on fire. A wet black rook, arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain: Something utterly ordinary that suddenly flares out as miraculous.
We are not talking about rooks alone, of course. We are talking about the self in interaction with the world. The flare flows both ways. The rook is illuminated by mind. The mind is set afire by rook. Don't go to psychologists or neurologists to explain what is happening; they are a long way yet from understanding. Go to the poets and mystics, who can't explain but do describe. "Hallowing an interval otherwise inconsequent," says Plath. And so it is that we walk blind and deaf through a world that by and large seems commonplace, inconsequent, and mute, whereas in fact even the most ordinary thing - a leaf, a cloud, a face - is miracle enough to exhaust our analytic powers, waiting, hoping, for the touch of grace, the breaking through.
I am aware that the two writers I have quoted, Woolf and Plath, were ultimately overwhelmed by the "dull, ruinous landscape." A particular sensitivity to the contrast between light and dark was surely part of their genius; it would seem that their savage gods demanded the ultimate sacrifice as the price of their Promethean gifts. As for the rest of us, we live without their depths of darkness, but also with the minor lights, those treasured moments of being when we are gifted with the understanding that the apparently ordinary is blindingly special.”
"Today I would like to return to your awareness an aspect of the Human condition that surrenders to a curious state called “normal.” Normal is a cultivated space, fashioned from how we see ourselves and how we’d like others to see us. It’s a weighted measure, balancing self-appraisal against the opinions and judgment of others. It is a dynamic state, subject to change depending on which way society pulls the levers on public opinion and the laws that govern social order. But most of all, normal is an assumed state of cooperation and expectation.
A scant sixty years ago, in the so-called “Bible belt” region of the Deep South, it was considered “normal” to require African Americans to sit in the back of a bus. One can therefore surmise that it must have taken an “abnormal” few to observe and recognize this as wrong. Those that voiced opposition were labeled sympathizers, resistors, agitators and radicals. And those were the nicer words. Of course now it is normal to honor these nonconformists for their courageous efforts in spear-heading the civil rights movement. So you see, “normal” is anything but what it claims to be.
In the following paragraphs we will reexamine the state of normal to see what purpose it serves, if any at all. What is normal now was not necessarily normal yesterday. And what is normal for you may not be normal for me. At any rate, normal is one of the dumbest terms to ever curse the planet. Normally I would not write on such a topic, but I thought I’d make this special exception. After all, it is normal for me to do the unexpected.
Normal This: That’s what I think of normal. The term is a tool. Those who acquiesce to its narrow and ephemeral parameters might also be considered “tools.” Does one seek normalcy because they desire this brand of conformity? If so, then what is their more noble purpose? Is it to go on mirroring and repeating everything they have been told? This regurgitation is what some might call normal - but I call it being complacent and undiscovered. Surely all people have a novel vibration that they wish to share or at least discover within themselves. So why do they insist on merely towing the line and wearing blinders? One could persuasively argue they have little choice. The normal need to earn a living and bucking the system is not the way to do it. So they play along to get along - and many will surrender their hearts ambition for the lure of a paycheck.
Were you ever given the choice to see the world as you like? Probably not. The world as we know it was engineered into our awareness from the moment we uttered our first words. Sad to think perhaps some will never know the feeling of abnormal. A good conformist would never entertain such dirty thoughts anyway. But on the contrary, to label someone as “normal” strikes me as offensive indeed. Normal tells me that one doesn’t really understand their unique place in this world. There is nothing normal about normal. Normal is a conformity stress that can skew and shape the best of us into docile, compliant and mindless little servants. It’s a dead end. There is no need to explore further once normalcy has been achieved.
Yes, we’re all encouraged to operate within templates of normalcy. We go to school, get married, buy a house and hope for normal kids. We work our normal jobs and attend church and maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll have the time and means to take up something truly meaningful and normal - like golf. And just as we begin to get the ever-so slightest inkling of this elusive and artificial state called normal, it’s time for us to retire or to check out of this world all together. You see, on the eighteenth hole we may indeed start asking ourselves what sinking that put was really all about. And though one may take delight in saying they played under par, I can’t help but wonder if the ball somehow played the player and not the other way around. But I’ve digressed.
That which we regard as normal is anything but. The “normal” I see takes the form of an elaborate maze cut though a corn field. We’re not allowed to peak over the stalks because then we might realize it’s all just a game. That would ruin it for you and everyone else. And we’re not allowed to shuck an ear because we might realize the corn is too perfect to be in a natural or organic state. There is something profoundly disturbing about that which is too perfect in this land of normal.
Lies Taste Good: The term “normal” follows us everywhere we go. Our doctor might say our lab test results were normal. They might also say our blood pressure is normal. Well those are the words we want to hear. Normal is good. Abnormal is bad, very bad. I was once told I had abnormally high cholesterol levels and that it was likely a “genetic” anomaly. Surely I was a walking heart attack and I was only in my early twenties. Blood thinners were recommended as were statin drugs. A genetic anomaly indeed and so I thought to do some research.
Turns out I had elderly relatives with the same condition. They took nothing for it and yet they were otherwise healthy and in their eighties. And so I chose to take nothing for my condition. My basis for normal was therefore quite different than the medical assessment. I questioned the well-meaning entity with the white coat and germ laden stethoscope. That was not the normal thing for me to do. I did not take his advice. All these years later, I’m so happy I didn’t. The very latest research now shows higher cholesterol might actually be a good indicator, whereas very low cholesterol could be a serious cause for concern. I take zero medications. Is that normal?
The normal person’s modus of operandi is to never challenge the status-quo. Eat lies like they were made of candy. Believe what we are told about JFK, 9/11, GMO’s, flu vaccinations, fluoridated water and a whole host of other yummy little fictions. Do not ask about “false flag” invasions, chemtrails, printed paper currency, or whether the “Federal” Reserve is indeed federal. Ask not these questions. Remain in this insulated cocoon called normalcy and it will protect you. Step outside of normalcy and expect to be mowed down by flag waving, Bible thumping, hypnotized, zombified lynch mobs that would swear to you that they are the normal ones. Yes, they will call you a kook - or worse. After all, that’s what they called Rosa Parks, Dr. King and so many other prominent and benevolent people of great courage and strength. If this is what being a “kook” is all about then count me in. It’s the sort of company I’d like to keep anyway.
Then there’s the normal behavior thing. A schoolteacher might tell the parents of little Johnny or Amy that their child is behaving normally in class and has a healthy and normal attitude. You should be proud. Your child is normal. What! Why would I find this so disturbing? Did the school suck away the defining aspect that made this child unique as an individual? Perhaps I would ask the teacher if they would mind defining what is meant by normal. Then I would ask if Albert Einstein was normal, if perhaps Nikola Tesla was normal, if Mother Teresa was normal, if Mahatma Gandhi was normal, if Leonardo da Vinci was normal… and anyway I think I’ve made my point. So why would I want little Johnny or Amy to be your little normal? No thank you. Class dismissed!
I understand that some may think I’m taking this whole “normal” thing out of context. I assure you I am not. Unlike the more inert and discretionary term of “typical,” normal belies an acceptable assumption of truth or fact. When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant radiation levels were spiking during the early months of the tsunami disaster, governmental agencies were compelled to redefine what “normal” meant in terms of radiation exposure. Their solution was to simply raise the old level to a much higher one and called it safe. So now people in the Fukushima Prefecture could breathe a deep sigh of relief and relax after being told that radiation levels had been restored to normal. The “typical” readings were way off from where they had been, of course - but “normal” had been redefined to satisfy immediate concerns. Can you see why I don’t care much for that word?
Where Do We Go From Here? There’s a road less traveled that beckons those who seek higher truth. It can be a lonely road indeed. The nonconformist takes the long way home and questions all things along the path. In doing so, they may often feel lost and vulnerable at times. But as their journey continues, they begin to acquire great wisdom. They will question all things synthetic in nature. They will question government and how it controls the masses. They will question organized religion and how it culls the population. They will question education and how is syncopates the minds of children. They will question mass media and its dubious exploitations. So where does the road go from here? Simple. One must remain in a state of knowing. One must continue to question and yet still manage to live their lives with a smile on their face and with love in their heart.
One must allow “normal” people to see you in a proper light. One should be polite and courteous and lend a helping hand. If we are angry and overly-aggressive in our views, we’ll be relegated to that “kook” category of nonconformity. But for those who are highly principled and self-aware, they can usually articulate their views in an open and benevolent manner. Such people live by example. I’m a big fan of civility and the Gandhi-esque manner of peaceful noncompliance, love and tolerance. The most beautiful form of rebellion is to simply fold ones arms and say no. If people of all nations could muster their power and resolve to do this, there would never be another bullet fired upon another. Such a deplorable act would be considered grotesquely insane and absolutely inhuman. So there’s a glimpse of a “real” normal world as I see it. Seems we’ve got a ways to go to get there.
And so to the powers that (think you are) I want to say I am not your “normal” product; I do not believe in your NDAA. I do not believe in your Patriot Act. I do not believe in your torture and preemptive wars. I do not accept this as normal by any definition of the term. And so I say no! And I say it with authority and I say it with conviction. I am one person, but I’m awake and aware and that makes me powerful indeed. I am free to speak my mind and state my cause. I am not your minion. I possess free will and a free mind. I am not ensnared by your tainted vision of a new world order. And as testimony of the Divine, others are now waking from their slumber and are asking questions of a probing nature. I’ve come to this world to know peace - and so I do not accept the guns you hide behind your velvet curtains of deception.
Final Thought: I’m unable to digest this non-organic meatball called normal, so don’t wave it in front of me. What in the heck is rolled up in it anyway? One should think twice before putting that in their body. It pretends to be something it’s not. So what’s it all about? I sense that people have a hunch that they’ve been repeatedly lied to for a very long time. But try as they might, most just can’t quite get a grip on it. Meanwhile, the PTB keep throwing everything they’ve got at us with the hope of keeping us in some kind of a normalizing, mind swept stupor. But why?
There are many who are feeling fearful or panicky for no obvious reason. Chronic fear turns into anxiety. Anxiety may turn into depression. Depression often turns into a doctor’s visit. The doctor’s visit turns into a prescription for an antidepressant. The antidepressant appears to help but soon more is needed. The doctor prescribes a second antidepressant to be taken along with the other. Soon additional meds are sought and delivered. They are “needed” so that one can deal with their depression along with a whole host of other medical issues that seem to be cropping up. Soon one can find themselves quite dependent on that normal person in the white coat who knows better than we do.
But here is what I have found to be true. It is not entirely correct to call it “their” depression. It is “our” depression. If our brothers and sisters are feeling depressed for no apparent reason, then I might suggest we reexamine what is called normal. Society is a seriously flawed, screwed-up, sad state of affairs that tries to pass itself off as normal. We consistently attempt to attune ourselves with this “normalized” societal standard because we’ve been trained to do so. But this creates an asymmetrical tension that can spawn a boat-load of psychological incongruities within - a sort of internal tug-of-war between what we know to be right and what society dictates as normal. So how does one manage this? Well, we can try taking the long way home.”
“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!”
- Robert A. Heinlein
“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.”
- Carl Sagan
And always remember...
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
"The stock market has just been punctured by the thin blades of truth. It is fatally wounded but nobody dares notice. The wounds are barely visible, but the internal damage is mortal. The stock market is already stumbling and will soon crash.
The banquet's participants ignore the faltering market because the rules are we never reveal the truth, or acknowledge it, or discuss it, no matter how obvious, because truth is fatal to fraud. So the stock market's vital signs are in free-fall but the conversation remains upbeat and light: stimulus, rapid growth in the second half, etc., all the patter of a carefully constructed illusion that fraud is forever as long as the truth never comes out.
Alas, the truth has emerged from the shadows, despite the silence of the insiders and the financial media. Here are the truths that have emerged like karmic genies:
1. The stock market is nothing but one giant fraud. The entire market is corrupt and rigged from the ground up. The fraud is systemic, designed into every tendril of the market. It was a useful deception to blame it all on "bad players," but now the truth has been revealed: the market is nothing but a rigged game enriching insiders.
2. The Fed is a fraud. All the Federal Reserve has accomplished in 13 years of goosing the stock market is unprecedented wealth and income inequality as the fraud of the Fed has boosted the fraud of the market, which has fatally undermined America's social and economic orders. Please read this short paragraph and let it sink in. Monopoly Versus Democracy (Foreign Affairs): "Ten percent of Americans now control 97 percent of all capital income in the country. Nearly half of the new income generated since the global financial crisis of 2008 has gone to the wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens. The richest three Americans collectively have more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans."
Thanks to the tightly bound frauds of the Fed and markets, the bottom 90% of Americans own essentially zero capital that produces income and the vast majority of all income gains since 2008 has been siphoned off by the top 0.1% Three monopolists own more wealth than half the nation's citizens. Yet the fraudsters in the Fed laughably insist their policies haven't created inequality on such a vast scale that is has destabilized the nation. The Fed's credibility is zero, yet the financial media tiptoes around, proclaiming the glory of the Emperor's illusory clothing.
3. America's system of governance is a fraud. What can we say when powerful politicians are worth over $100 million and are active participants in the most speculative excesses of the stock market, Buying More Than $1 Million In Tesla, Disney And Apple Calls In December? Do we even need to ask where their interests lie?
What can we say about a regulatory system that immediately bails out the most corrupt and destructive financiers/speculators but stands aside when the public loses trillions of dollars? The financial regulatory system is a complete fraud, devoted to bailing out the biggest insiders while ignoring the losses of the bottom 99.9%. America's financial regulations protect the corrupt, not the citizenry.
4. The wealth effect is a fraud. The Fed's entire fraudulent policy holds that if the stock market is goosed higher by Fed rigging, the phantom wealth handed to the top 0.1% will magically trickle down and benefit the bottom 90% who own no productive capital.
There is no magic; the wealth effect is a fraud. If one $5 stock (GameStop) can be pushed up to $400 in a week, why not push every $5 stock to $400? This is the essence of the wealth effect: all capital is phantom capital, a fraud balloon awaiting a pin.
The wealth effect failed, the Fed failed, regulations failed, politics failed. But thanks to the Fed and the self-serving political class, the entire U.S. economy is now utterly dependent on this completely corrupt and destabilizing fraud - the stock market. If the stock market stumbles and collapses, the economy - now totally dependent on phantom capital - also stumbles and collapses.
It didn't have to be this way, but this is the reality we must now face: truth is fatal to fraud, and our entire financial-political system is a fraud. The stock market is pale, and blood is seeping through the tuxedo, but the insiders, politicos and their toadies and apologists are nervously averting their gaze.
The market's bleeding but it can't possibly die, can it? Yes it can, and yes it will: truth is fatal to fraud, and the truth has escaped and is now free. We can't unsee what's behind the curtain."
"Hoist with his own petard " is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" that has become proverbial. The phrase's meaning is literally that a bomb-maker is blown up ("hoist" off the ground) by his own bomb (a "petard" is a small explosive device), and indicates an ironic reversal, or poetic justice."
"Here's the problem: the short squeeze led to massive losses for some funds. It may or may not be over. But now come the redemption requests and funds will see billions cash out, forcing them to liquidate top longs."
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This may prove interesting, even amusing, as events develop:
considering this is what THEY do every day, all day long!
"Stipendium peccati mors est..."
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"GameStop Short Squeeze Explained - Jeff Carlson:
Why Govt Shouldn’t Step In - Epoch Times"
by Jan Jekielek
"Recently, small investors organized online to buy large amounts of GameStop stock and caused billions in losses to Wall Street hedge funds looking to short that stock and benefit from its declining price. GameStop had been sinking for years. But in January of this year, prices soared to over $300 a share. On January 28, the online stock trading platform, Robinhood, suspended all GameStop buying activities, crashing the price. Investors accused Robinhood of manipulating the market in favor of hedge funds, and a class-action lawsuit was filed. But this is just the surface. To understand what’s really going on, we sit down with Epoch Times contributor Jeff Carlson. He’s worked for 20 years as an analyst and portfolio manager in the high yield bond market. At the center of the Gamestop controversy is one key question: who gets to decide the value of a company?"
"We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so."
