The Rich Got Richer: GameStop’s Trading Frenzy Benefited Wall Street’s Elite

While GameStop’s surge has been heralded as a victory for underdogs, “Growing evidence casts doubt on the idea that the episode mostly benefited small-time investors…” reports the Washington Post. (Alternate URLs here and here “And, in at least some cases, novice investors lost their shirts.” Giant mutual funds that own the largest stakes in GameStop saw the biggest gains in value….

Was GameStop’s Rise Actually Orchestrated By Hedge Funds?

Robert J. Shapiro advised senior members of the Obama administration on economic policy, and served as an Under Secretary of Commerce under Bill Clinton. Now a senior fellow at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown, he’s suspicious of the surge in GameStop’s stock price:
Allegedly, this is the tale of scrappy, small online day traders buying shares of a beleaguered company…

Wall Street Is Keeping Very Close Tabs On WallStreetBets

Registered Coward v2 writes: Wall Street has decided if you can’t beat them, at least watch them. They’re paying for data that shows which stocks are most talked about on Reddit stock forums, ostensibly to allow them to adjust their positions or take advantage of opportunities to trade based on Reddit. Nothing could go wrong there, since Reddit would decide to…

Hedge Fund Third Point Urges Intel To Explore Deal Options

Activist hedge fund Third Point LLC is pushing Intel Corp to explore strategic alternatives, including whether it should keep chip design and production under one roof, according to a letter it sent to the company’s chairman on Tuesday that was reviewed by Reuters. From the report: Were it to gain traction, Third Point’s push for changes could lead to a major…

Are Cryptocurrencies Becoming Mainstream Investments?

The last time the price of bitcoin hit $20,000 was December of 2017. But Matt Luongo, the CEO of a crypto venture builder, points out to NBC News that this time the market is seeing “significant, high-conviction plays from [a few] large funds and even CEOs of publicly traded companies.” “Names like Guggenheim Partners, [hedge fund managers] Paul Tudor Jones and…

Bitcoin at $100,000 in 2021? Outrageous To Some, a No-Brainer for Backers

Bitcoin investors, which include top hedge funds and money managers, are betting the virtual currency could more than quintuple to as high as $100,000 in a year. From a report: It’s a wager that has drawn eye-rolls from skeptics who believe the volatile cryptocurrency is a speculative asset rather than a store of value like gold. Since January, bitcoin has gained…

Is Bitcoin’s Growth Driven By Speculative Investors?

“Bitcoin is now trading near $18,000, up almost 100% in six months,” notes Bloomberg columnist Lionel Laurent, “and it’s flirting with an all-time high reached in 2017 (which, given it was followed by an ugly crash, faithful Bitcoiners would rather forget)…” . But what exacty does that mean? He challenges the notion that Bitcoin is the new wealth-protecting investment like gold,…

What Twitter’s Worst Hack Means For Its Bottom Line

The breach revealed Twitter’s engineering prowess and management practices as subpar. Hedge fund Elliott Management can’t be happy about its investment. From a report: Even if Twitter’s user growth is relatively unaffected, shareholders shouldn’t overlook what the latest in a long series of security incidents says about the how the company works and why its stock has been such a disappointment:…

Major Republican Donor Seeks Ouster of Twitter’s CEO

Jack Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006, coding up the first prototype (with the help of a contractor) when he was still in his 20s. Dorsey’s now it’s CEO — but “A major Republican donor has purchased a stake in Twitter and is reportedly seeking to oust him,” reports the Guardian. Bloomberg News first reported that Elliott Management has taken a “sizable…

Reputation Management Firms Bury Google Results By Placing Flattering Content

Prominent figures from Jacob Gottlieb to Betsy DeVos got help from a reputation management firm that can bury image-sensitive Google results by placing flattering content on websites that masquerade as news outlets. The Wall Street Journal reports: Jacob Gottlieb was considering raising money for a hedge fund. One problem: His last one had collapsed in a scandal. While Mr. Gottlieb wasn’t…