Google workers have announced their intention to form a union, under the auspices of @CWAUnion Local 1440. The union is called @AlphabetWorkers (Google maintains the legal and accounting fiction that it is a division of a holding company called "Alphabet").

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The Democrats are at least two parties. The progressive wing of the party (which is by no means unified) and the finance wing of the party, which is also the party leadership.

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During the leadership race, the progressive wing was represented by @SenSanders and @SenWarren; the former wants to minimize the role of markets in our lives, the latter wants to redeem markets by regulating them. It's a distinction with a difference, but I donated to both.

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Both wings of the party have prominent representatives in Congress; Sandersism are most visibly associated with @AOC (whom I donated to) and Warrenism is embodied by @RepKatiePorter (likewise), who was also one of Warren's law school proteges.

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Porter is a force of nature. She is infamous - and celebrated - for her brutal, no-holds-barred questioning of both corporate and administration witnesses, using a white-board to pin them down and eviscerating any attempts at bullshittery.

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This isn't just about getting facts into the record (though, she is SO GOOD at getting facts into the record!), it's also about effecting change, like when she single-handedly cornered the CDC's chief into guaranteeing universal, free covid

1. If you turn on CNBC, you'll hear a narrative that reckless retail investors from Reddit are destabilizing the stock market by driving up prices for GameStop and other stocks.

This is BS.

Follow along if interested.

2. Market instability was created by hedge funds and other "sophisticated" investors that SHORTED MORE GAMESTOP STOCK THAN WAS EVEN AVAILABLE FOR SALE

Retail investors are exploiting instability created by the hedge funds

They didn't start the

3. The primary "victim" of the retail investors, hedge fund mogul Gabe Plotkin, worked SAC until 2013.

What happened in 2013? SAC pleaded guilty to insider trading and paid a $1.3 billion fine.

Plotkin then left to start his own firm.

4. Plotkin made massive returns by doing a lot more shorting than most hedge funds & no one complained

But this week he was bailed out by his old boss, SAC founder Steve Cohen, and another hedge fund mogul, Citadel's Ken Griffin to the tune of

5. Cohen & Griffin now own a significant piece of Plotkin's firm. So they have an interest in Plotkin navigating out of his current predicament. They also may have exposure themselves.

This is where things get

The interview with CNBC of @chamath is a much watch because there is so much insight hidden underneath.

There are many things that caught my attention. The one thing was the abstraction that hedge fund strategies are all 'momentum' plays. What it seems to imply is that the marshaling of resources at an opportune time drives the future behavior of a stock.

From basic physics, we know that momentum is mass times velocity. So any 'momentum' tactic employs the variation of mass, velocity or both. Wrt stocks, mass is money and velocity is speed of trade.

We cannot argue that there are benefits of scale associated with having more money. Also, high-frequency trading has shown the value of high-speed trading. So in an abstract sense, market manipulation can involve a kind of momentum play.

The objective of stock trading is to buy a financial instrument at a low price and sell it at a higher price. The purpose of a momentum play is to front-run the decision process of other traders such that one acquires the assets before a decision is made.

#PolicybazaarIPO Long thread: There is monetary printing by RBI, there is lending by banks & finally there is the Indian IPO. “Foreign owned” company with ~1 Bn investment is selling “Indian” unicorn to “savvy” Indians for $ 6.2 Bn. Want to know how this printing works? Let’s go-

The basics: Rs 6017 Cr being raised by new shares (Rs 3750) & re-selling (Rs 2267). Face value Rs 2 offered at Rs ~1000 per share is one of a kind. Who decides the price? Examine the valuation ladder below.
With ~$ 150 Mn invested till 2017, we see $ 525 Mn rushes in after 2018

So, a company valued $1 Bn in 2018 & $ 1.5 Bn in 2019 by key investors like Tencent, suddenly “needs money” in March 2021. Falcon Edge “invests” all of $ 75 Mn in March at valuation of $ 2.65 Bn.
Enter IPO bankers a couple of months later & they value the company at $ 6.2 Bn

Why does PolicyBazaar need $ 75 Mn just 6 months before IPO & give away 2.5 times in returns? And it doesn’t even use that money as the B/S reflects appx Rs 1000 Cr in cash lying around.
What kind of a favor is that? Why do they need US investment bank for this just before IPO?

Notice 50% rise in shareholding of promotors here & a 1: 500 bonus share issue. After all, how do you print money & still keep share price at “reasonable” Rs 1000?
Without bonus issue in June 2021, each share would have costed Rs 50,000. Heard of circular valuation?

Piper Alpha was an originally designed as an oil producing rig in the North Sea approximately 120 miles North East of Aberdeen, Scotland. It was a fixed leg platform in water depth of 475 Feet of water. The installation sat close to 275 Feet above water to the top of the derrick.

2) It started production in December 1976 for OPCAL joint venture. OPCAL being Occidental Petroleum Caledonia, Texaco Britain, Thomson PLC, and Texas Petroleum LTD. Occidental was the majority stakeholder at 36.5%

3) Occidental being majority stakeholder took control of technical and operational duties with running and operating the rig. When oil production started in 1976 it started with a flow of 250,000 BBL/day and eventually increasing this amount to 300,000 BBL/day.

4) 300,000 BBL/day would account for approximately 10% of the UK’s oil production at the time, so needless to say it was one of the most important rigs in the area. Any gas that was flowing would be flared or consumed by gas turbine generators

5) Around 1980 there was a decision to convert the rig to also process gas along with the oil. This was a major conversion, and if it would have been scoped in from the beginning, most likely construction of the rig would have been more accommodating for gas.

Okay, let's learn this morning😊😊. Quote your replies.

1. What is the pronunciation of "SUITE?"

2. What's the difference between Homonyms, Homophones and Homographs?

3. Words Denoting Places, Profession/Trade.

A. What's a house of an Eskimo called?

B. A place for the collection of dried plants is called?

C. A place where spirituous liquors are produced is?

D. One who is skilled in the care of hands and feet is what?

E. One who cuts special stones is?

F. One who lends money at exorbitant interest is?

G. One who collects postage stamps is what?

H. The head of a town council or corporation is?

I. One who compiles the dictionary is ?

4. FLOUR is pronounced as _________?