Feb 6, 2021. By Andrés Arellano Báez
Nassim Nicholas Taleb abandoned anonymity since the launch of his book "The Black Swan". In an interview to promote the text with Charlie Rose, the author shared that "a stockbroker on Wall Street may have no more predictive capacity than a cab driver" about his market. And he spoke about the matter from experience, as it was precisely in that mythical place where his first job would be located. For decades, the humans inhabiting that corner of Manhattan made the world believe that Taleb's ideas were ridiculous: they boasted that they were wizards capable of navigating the turbulent waters of the financial world thanks to their vast knowledge. And the story seemed credible; until a group of uneducated citizens beat them in a billion-dollar game, on their terms and conditions, and sank many of those proud boatmen.
There is always wisdom to be found in history. According to investor Dylan Ratigan, a connoisseur of the US market like few others and author of "Greedy Bastards", George W. Bush's attempts to privatize Social Security in the United States must be framed in the context of the ongoing desire, mainly by Wall Street, to convince the small investor to become a stock market player. The desire of the sharks of the financial world, always hungry to expand their business, made them see those citizens without significant monetary resources as weak prey that, once they managed to unite, would become truly juicy portions. But the bait failed to catch the victims and the public's disconnect with the world of finance remained intact. That is, until one company hit upon the root of the problem: the interface. Ratigan's words on the matter are illuminating: "A new investor would come to the market and find an interface that looked as complicated as driving a 747. The appearance of Robinhood, presenting a platform apparently developed under the slogan "investments for dummies", which also did not charge commissions to its users, attracted and convinced millions to participate.
In August 2019, Mexico's El Financiero accidentally stumbled upon a story that would grow into an unpredictably mind-blowing one. In an article focused on how the next big financial stratospheric leap would be in South Korea and some small companies, the U.S. newspaper revealed that Michael "Burry asked Gamestop, a video game retailer, and Tailored Brands, a men's clothing retailer," to buy back all of his shares. At the time, the investor turned celebrity after being played by Christian Bale in "The Big Short", owned 5.3% of the video game retailer through his hedge fund Scion Asset Management, which he acquired at a price per share of between 2 and 4.2 dollars, according to the media.
Although Barry had become a major player on Wall Street, he consecrated his title by betting on two unpredictable crashes, both in markets certified as AAA by the major rating agencies: the dot. com debacle in 2001 and the global financial crisis caused by the loss on mortgage-backed securities securitized as credit default swaps in 2007, in Gamestop's case it seems that it was not its ability to foresee the future that led to its success, but its already earned influence in the markets that was the reason for having a third winning bet. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. As soon as the guru took a position in Gamestop, another major investor, Ryan Cohen, made a significant purchase of the stock, and then a massive number of smaller investors, many of them fans of the brand and initiated into the stock market thanks to Robinhood, followed in his footsteps. One of them deserves special mention: Keith Gill, known online as "DeepF-ingValue". A crazy and unprecedented story was beginning to unfold.
Nothing indicates that Burry foresaw the debacle. According to Business Insider, after taking a strong position in Gamestop, the financier promoted far-reaching changes in the company. His bet seems to have been to transform the company's fundamentals, price the stock and generate a large profit over the long term. He had already stated his vision of "investing heavily in undervalued and overlooked stocks", as "asset managers have orphaned lower-value stocks globally". All of the new investors, many of them brand lovers, wanted the same thing as the financial guru. Gill confessed to The Wall Street Journal that "people were doing a quick take, saying Gamestop was the next Blockbuster," referring to another chain fallen from grace. "It seemed like a lot of people just weren't digging deeper," the interviewee continued. It was a gross misclassification of opportunity." All the small investors, led by Gill, saw Gamestop as a company that would have a second life.
But along came the pandemic that would change everything, and everything would go haywire, laying the groundwork for what would be a truly unprecedented IPO. Gamestop is a corporation whose heart is located in shopping malls. It is their space par excellence. With the spread of Covid-19 closing each one of them, the future of the business was projected to be threatened. The biggest and most traditional players in the market became aware of the problems created by the new context and acted accordingly, starting a bet against the company: short operations whose element of relevance is only one: the big funds decided to invest millions of dollars waiting for the share price to fall. They would make a profit if the price of the purchased share fell over time. And the global outlook created an ideal scenario for such a financial move. From their perspective, the analysis was correct and the numbers proved to be right.
The action taken by hedge funds is known in the market as short selling. The funds borrow a share from someone and are obliged to return it to its owner on a certain date. The borrowed share is sold at the market price to a third party with whom, in turn, they are obliged to buy it back within a certain period of time. The fund that lent the share to sell it to a third party expects the price of the security to fall, so that when it purchases it again it can do so at a cheaper price, generating a profit. If he sells it at 100 and buys it back at 50, well....
The person who buys the stock to sell it later, expects the price of the stock to go up, of course, selling it at a higher price than he bought it. The problem with short trading, for the fund borrowing the stock, is that you can make a limited amount, but you can lose an infinite amount of money. If the fund sells the stock for 100 and it loses all of its value, when it buys it back from the original owner, it will pay zero for it, producing a gain of 100. But, if the stock he lent and sold at 100, at the time he has to buy it back is not worth zero or a hundred, but is valued at 50,000, then he is obliged to pay 50,000 for it, turning his transaction into a loss of 49,900.
And, when some of the big names on Wall Street began to bet short, to look for Gamestop's failure, to go against a company loved by many, the gates of hell opened. "It was like a war," one of the investors in Gamespot told El Diario.es. Bad news would come out, like the coronavirus was going to wipe out Gamestop, and people would put more money in. It was a class war. And so it was: bankers were fighting to drive the stock price down, Reedit users were willing to do anything to drive it up. "We will be able to be mentally retarded longer than the vulture funds will be able to be profitable," commented one of the warriors at Wallstreetbets, the Reedit space where the men and women who fought this battle crowded in. And in the end, they triumphed, raising the price to unpredictable numbers. That is, it could not be otherwise, until the Manhattan bankers, the center of neoliberal ideology, the main space from where an ideological battle to the death against government intervention in the economy has been waged the strongest, the king of the free market, decided to turn to Daddy State to save him from the guillotine. Here the story becomes fascinating.
Given that the people Wall Street was fighting against were not rational, did not act on market logic, did not care about losing money, they were forced into draconian measures to stop the bleeding. The fund that had lost the most money in this gamble was called Melvin Capital. Its major commercial competitor is called Citadel. The latter decided to take advantage of the situation and acquire the former. Once this purchase was made, Citadel, whose CEO is Kenneth Griffin, the highest paid executive in the world (1.7 billion USD per year), took possession of all these bets. Why would a financial company carry out an operation that would put it in a business with the proven capacity to bleed its finances to death? The only logical reason, the only possible answer, the only plausible explanation is that Citadel knew how to suture the wound causing the bleeding.
Speaking fess are the fees paid by companies to certain professionals of notorious trajectory in the United States to dictate speeches for their employees, seeking to enrich and enlighten their workers, irradiating them with the wisdom contained in notable names. Janet Yellen, current Secretary of the Treasury in the United States, is an academic with an unbeatable track record. She has received almost every award in her career, and each of them has been awarded with justice. The Nobel Prize that has eluded her will surely come her way soon. But unless she has discovered how to solve all the ills of humanity through economics and has organized a talk to explain her findings, there is no justification whatsoever for the $800,000 received last December from Citadel for a few words. On the other hand, such a staggering amount is understandable when, as Dylan Ratigan explains, it echoes the theory that speaking fess are awarded not for speaking, for the speech, but for granting direct access to the person hired. By December of last year, it was certain that Yellen would be the next Treasury Secretary under the Biden administration.
Although it is nothing more than speculation, rather the worst kept secret, it serves to clarify why Robinhood, the platform that had convinced millions of citizens to invest their money in the market, that had made life easier for those who wanted to buy stocks and the tool used by small investors against Wall Street, in an unprecedented decision allowed its users to close positions in Gamestop, but prohibited the purchase of the stock. It did not freeze the transaction of the stock traded as GME, it only prohibited its acquisition. If a stock can only be liquidated, it will see its price decrease, something that only benefited Citadel, a company that had acquired Melvin Capital, which had paid $800,000 to Yellen for speeches and who, this is the most relevant of all, the clue that deciphers the crime: it is the best client of the Robinhood platform.
Robinhood is unable to buy or sell shares directly. Legally this is the case. Hence its need to work with "market makers", companies that the legal framework does give them that power. Their best-established partnership for this operation is with Citadel. A "market maker" is a type of organization that, because of its particularities, requires a lot of information about how trends move. A "market maker" needs to anticipate events in order to perform its function. A short sale requires anticipating whether a stock is going to go down or up in price, for example. When Robinhood asks Citadel to buy or sell millions of shares for its investors, it is giving them the information they need. And in order for Robinhood to use Citadel's services and not another "market maker," Citadel pays a small commission for each transaction. That's why this platform, which does not charge its users a commission for buying and selling stocks, is a billionaire. That commission is its business. "When they don't charge you for a service, it's because you are the product," says the wise popular adage.
Any technical explanation given by Vladimir Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, justifying his reasons for having stopped the purchase of a share is simply ridiculous in light of the analysis made by Ratigan: "From a legal point of view," explained the businessman, "the only organization that has the authority to stop the purchase and sale of a share, let alone the ridiculousness of stopping one part of the transaction and not the other, is the New York Stock Exchange". He complements, "the only valid reason to stop the purchase and sale of a stock is for the leakage of relevant information that impacts the market or knowledge of imminent fraud". The examples cited in his peroration - Enron and Worldcom - are telling enough to show this was not the case. "A company has no authority to stop a stock from trading," Ratigan says, "much less prevent it from being bought while prohibiting it from being sold. That act is clear market manipulation." And therein lies written, in that sentence, the epitaph of Wall Street.
From now on, in any debate where one of the parties dares to cite the benefits of the free market and the superiority of such a system, they risk being ridiculed by their opponent with just one word: "Gamestop". Time will tell whether or not Yellen acted in favor of her clients; but intervention in the sacrosanct market did occur. They have even gone further. Witnessing NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman on live television, without blushing, calling for the installation of regulations in the market is to witness the true essence of an ideology that was nothing more than a scam coming to light. The US financial sector as a whole, never spared resources and financed for decades all kinds of propaganda about the damage caused by regulations, how inefficient they are, how contrary to the wisdom of the market their very existence was. Today they are begging for their declared enemy to not only exist, but to act, to be present and intervene to protect them on their own playing field.
And the fear is justified. Reedit investors did not topple Wall Street. But the Wall Street representative against whom they fought to the death, that one they did defeat. He went bankrupt. For the first time in its history, the mecca of the financial world found a real opponent. Competition in the U.S. stock market sector was always between equals and the losses of one were the gains of another of his own. Never again. "Occupy Wall Street", the battle slogan of the 2008 victims camping out in Zuccoti Park, in front of the majestic offices of the big players in the stock market sector, reached a whole new level when they knocked down the walls protecting their empire, unleashing the entry of outsiders to occupy their business. When the war for GME began, Wallstreetbets had 3 million forum followers. Today there are 8 million. More citizens, more money, more power. The stakes are on the table and now anything can happen.

• Kill mobs
• Be Online on server and you will get some extra money
• Sell crops or Item on Server Shop

• You can rank up with money
• each rank has better functions, such as more sethomes, more online bonus.

• Air drops : every one hour there will be air drop which provides you gamble coins, ingots, ores or things to survive.
• Decorations based on Resourcepacks
• Claiming home and put resource to protect your claimed area

• No griefing
• No xray / cheating / trolling
• No insulting others
• PISTONS not allowed
• Don't make server full of lagg
• No automated scripts

Bellagraph Nova Group is a leading player on the world stage. The economic and ethical model of the BN Group guarantees a significant impact on global economic and social development.

BN is the only group in the world to boast an international presence in all major commercial sectors: healthcare and medical specialty, financial services and investment, luxury and real estate, discretionary consumers, products & services, lifestyle, entertainment, technology and media.

A leader in six different main sectors, our Group counts more than 23,000 employees and 31 prestigious Entities operating in all countries around the world.

Novena Global Lifecare Group was founded in 2010 by cousins Terence Loh and Nelson Loh, both former investment bankers at J.P. Morgan. Nelson found the idea of forming a medical aesthetic group when he found that his mother’s medical aesthetic bills running into thousands of dollars. One of their early investments was a KOSDAQ-listed medical equipment manufacturer in South Korea to develop their own research and manufacturing arm of the group. They also took interests in healthcare companies in Taiwan as well as the PPP chain of clinics in Singapore, renaming it to NOVU and NOVU Genesis. Prior to founding Novena Global, Terence and Nelson co-founded DORR Group, an Asia-based private equity group which invested in the consumer, internet, media and healthcare spaces.

is most notably famed for holding the world record for highest ever online single sale transaction of US$102 million (across all product categories globally)