BC FINANCE
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

Thread on how easy it is to get tricked into haemorrhaging money from your bank account after an online purchase – and why financial regulators seem to be behind the curve on this.🧵💸💻

Forgive the personal story, but I think it's relevant...1/

 I’m pretty careful with my money online - regularly checking my pension, combing my online bank statement for suspicious transactions, pruning unwanted subscriptions etc...2/
I’d describe this as financial hygiene – and would advise everyone to do it.

Yet it’s not always enough.

While looking through a list of transactions on my online account before Xmas I noticed a £15 payment to something called "WLY*https://t.co/tSHitonwoT" ...3/
By chance I knew for certain I’d not bought anything on that particular day, so I investigated further.

I downloaded my entire statement for the year and discovered I’d made a payment to this entity for the
same amount every month for 14 months, so £210 in total...4/
I did an online search & found a club called Complete Savings (@completesave), that offers cashback on online purchases in return for £15 a month membership fees.

This is not, to put it mildly, the kind of scheme I would ever knowingly sign up to....5/
I phoned the company and they told me that I’d “joined” when I’d booked some rail tickets on the Trainline website @thetrainline in November 2019.

I’d zero recollection of doing so....6/
It turns out that this is a long-running ruse by Complete Savings and its parent company Webloyalty @WebloyaltyUK

See here:
https://t.co/LisluqZuZt

And here https://t.co/7YNCySY0fS: 7/
The headline offer on a retailer’s website is for the opportunity to get cash back after an online transaction, but the monthly charge and the indefinite club membership is in the small print...8/
Here’s the form Complete Savings's complaints department sent to me, saying I must have filled it in, so judge for yourself whether what's going on is adequately signposted (bearing in mind that you’re funneled to it via the secure payment zone of another firm's website)...9?
It’s all legal.

But is it ethical?

And should well-known retailers like Trainline be partnering with an organisation like this?...10/
Bear in mind Webloyalty’s own US parent company, Affinion, paid $30m to numerous American states in 2013 to settle a probe into its sales and billing practices...11/
https://t.co/Xd0ZnsLNFi
Bear in mind too that in 2009 a number of UK retailers such as B&Q and Asda severed partnerships with Webloyalty after complaints from customers that were similar to mine (they never thought they were signing up to an expensive monthly club)...12/
https://t.co/JRq6JmpJ5H
After successfully securing a commitment from Webloyalty to refund all my money, I contacted Trainline to tell them what happened and ask whether they too would sever ties with this company and stop it using their website to pick up new unwitting “members”...13/
There are, I was told, no plans to do review the partnership.

Readers can draw their own conclusions about whether Trainline is a safe space online....14/
Complete Savings refused to tell me which other online retailers it has partnerships with, but the many furious reviews of the service on Trustpilot suggests major companies such as Morrisons and WHSmith...15/

https://t.co/8tmC5K5nHz

https://t.co/BHvg1uzgHy
Are there any larger lessons here?

I believe there are.

Why, despite my keeping a regular eye on my online account, didn’t I spot the payments on my bank statement sooner?...16/
The answer is that there’s been an explosion of relatively small contactless transactions on my account this year due to the retreat from cash by retailers during the pandemic.

Identifying a relatively small outgoing nowadays is much harder in the morass of payments data...17/
If contactless is the future, as seems probable, this threatens to make it harder for people to be alert to unexpected withdrawals....18/
Also - and very importantly - an increasing number of firms take regular payments from accounts not through direct debits or standing orders but through “continuous payment authorities”...19/
https://t.co/QmGEhrV1sg
These are NOT listed alongside a customer's ordinary direct debits and standing orders by their banks making them much harder for even an assiduous statement reader (like me) to monitor...20/
This is a vulnerability that, it seems to me, financial regulators need to be alive to.

But who regulates Complete Savings/Webloyalty/Affinion? 21/
Not the Financial Conduct Authority @TheFCA , which told me :

"Subscription/cashback services for retailers would fall outside our remit and this means that our rules don’t apply to these firms and their business falls outside our jurisdiction"...22/
So I imagine many of you will be breaking out the world’s smallest violin at this point.🎻

Perhaps you think if I did not immediately notice £15 leaving my account each month I’m well-off enough not to have anything useful to say to people who are financially struggling...23/
And I’ll happily take all that on the chin.

But I honestly don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that if it can happen to me it can happen to anyone....24/
And if you’re still murmuring “caveat emptor” to yourself, just imagine your granny venturing online to buy train tickets or do some online shopping in a world populated by companies like Webloyalty.

More here for @IndyVoices:
https://t.co/O3PepQhfM5

ENDS/

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All NL-customers at British banks may thus be kicked out on brexit.

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If we start with the capital requirements directive, it says attracting deposits is forbidden. In article 9.

https://t.co/RYl7SXligC


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That's not in EU law, but it is in our Dutch law.

https://t.co/PsbWfNY3PA


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https://t.co/LL0fAnYkRJ

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Kevin Dahlstrom
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🤔 Thread: More of the wrong thing is less
(or, how I stepped off the hamster wheel)

I’m going to share a personal story with hope that it inspires at least one person to re-examine their definition of success 👇

Through hard work and an unfair share of luck, I’ve done some cool “bucket list” things in my career:

✅Raised VC from the worlds’ top firms
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✅Rang the bell at the NYSE
✅Met & did deals with billionaires & business icons

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Then a few years ago during a board meeting I had a moment of clarity. I looked around the table at 10 people, all absurdly successful by financial measures. There wasn’t a single person I wanted to emulate. Most were unhealthy and several had told me that they were unhappy.

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Steve
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Ivor Cummins has been wrong (or lying) almost entirely throughout this pandemic and got paid handsomly for it.

He has been wrong (or lying) so often that it will be nearly impossible for me to track every grift, lie, deceit, manipulation he has pulled. I will use...


... other sources who have been trying to shine on light on this grifter (as I have tried to do, time and again:


Example #1: "Still not seeing Sweden signal versus Denmark really"... There it was (Images attached).
19 to 80 is an over 300% difference.

Tweet: https://t.co/36FnYnsRT9


Example #2 - "Yes, I'm comparing the Noridcs / No, you cannot compare the Nordics."

I wonder why...

Tweets: https://t.co/XLfoX4rpck / https://t.co/vjE1ctLU5x


Example #3 - "I'm only looking at what makes the data fit in my favour" a.k.a moving the goalposts.

Tweets: https://t.co/vcDpTu3qyj / https://t.co/CA3N6hC2Lq
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Ming Zhao
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Day in the Life of a Hedge Fund Analyst

Few live to tell the tale.

"Was it like Billions?"
"Describe ur investment process?"
"What did u learn?"

I get these questions all the time, but for a while I was afraid of answering publicly. No more!

Hedge fund story time.
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1/ ⏰ 6AM Pre-Market Review

Wake up thinking about ur overnight positions.
What happened during London/Asia trading?
Scan the major news on ur way to office.
🏢🚕🚶‍♀️

Think about how ur getting screwed by beta (general macro, FOMC, inflation, etc.) cuz ur net long (or net short).

2/ 7AM Portfolio Review

U'll typically have ~250 names in the portfolio "universe" (stocks w/ active positions & those on watchlist but already modeled).

Review each thesis vis-a-vis new market conditions. Anything changed?
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New trade opportunities?

Here's a checklist of top items to check per company:

- Any earnings calls this week?
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3/ 8AM Plan out your daily/weekly agenda

Major types of events that'll populate ur calendar:
- Investor day at XYZ
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Subhadip Nandy
Subhadip Nandy
@SubhadipNandy16
The most common problem faced by day-traders and it's easy solution which is extremely difficult to implement.
A thread.
( uses concepts I have discussed many times before in separate threads)

Problem : I have a good system, I understand charts and/or price action, but I simply can't make money. I hold my losses too long or ( this is most common) I get out of profitable positions too fast and cannot sit for the whole move

At many firms at NASDAQ, day-traders are seen as elite sportspersons playing in a difficult taxing game. That's why, they have regular sessions with sports psychologists. They are advised to follow the basic routine of sportspersons.
Train ---- Play tournaments --- Rest

The cycle repeats

We retail day-traders here neither rest nor train.

Rest = taking time off markets
Train = trading in markets in training mode

Understanding REST is easy, simply take time off markets and spend time with family or do something you love
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