I am shocked...SHOCKED...that nobody in the media or political sphere can understand what is going on behind the scenes that is causing clearing firms to block trading in certain ridiculously volatile securities.

Pretend Robin Hood is a casino (a stretch I know).

Casinos hold a certain amount of cash reserve on hand to cover all daily activities. Now imagine everyone playing starts winning big all at the same time. Slots, tables, etc and the House is losing huge. /2
The Casino's cash reserve is getting dangerously low, a few more big wins to pay out and they'll have no cash left. So they go out and close a few rows of tables, rope off some slot machines, forcing some players to be unable to play. /3
Then they call the bank and have them deliver a new boatload of cash, and reopen the Casino fully once they have enough to operate again.

That's kind of what is going on behind the scenes here, in the plumbing of the markets. /4
Most people have never heard of a "clearing firm", but without them the stock markets wouldn't function. Most of the largest brokerages are "self-clearing", meaning they also run their own clearing firm, but many use a third party.

See below: /5
https://t.co/a5Cyr4WOGZ
Clearing firms are the intermediary that guarantees the stock transactions in the marketplace, ensuring that any trades settle in a timely manner.

They can also provide financing to accounts through Margin or Risk-based leverage, on both long and short side of the market. /6
To do all this they need to maintain a regulated level of capital requirements, kinda just like the Casino does. Except more complicated, because they need to account for all of the risk and loans on their books as well. If they can't meet these requirements it is a big deal. /7
Now there are a lot of enormous and unprecedented things going on in the stock market, especially with options on these very volatile stocks. The risk is off the charts, literally. And if trading on margin, the clearing firms bear an enormous part of the risk. /8
Especially with some of the insane options trading going on, but also with shorts, there is technically INFINITE RISK. We've all seen some huge Hedge Funds get rolled over by this, but it is likely that some of the smaller clearing firms are taking some hits as well. /9
Clearing firms always have the ability to force liquidation when margin or risk requirements are not met, and they also have the ability to tighten those requirements at will.

So while some of these WSB traders are ok risking insane amounts of money, these firms are not. /10
The reason why they have gone to 100% requirement, or simply blocked all new purchases in these WSB stocks is because their own financial situation is under enormous pressure. Likewise, the riskiest positions are being closed out in a completely legal manner. /11
That of course doesn't change the optics, and will not stop all sorts of people from coming up with their own theories, but it is likely the reality under the hood.

/end

More from Trading

Many of you have seen the famous Westrum Organizational Typology model, so prominently featured in State of DevOps Research, Accelerate, DevOps Handbook, etc.

This model was created Dr. Ron Westrum, a widely-cited sociologist who studied the impact of culture on safety


Thanks to Dr. @nicolefv, I was able to interview him for an upcoming episode of the Idealcast! 🤯

It was a very heady experience, and while preparing to interview him, I was startled to discover how much work he's done in healthcare, aviation, spaceflight, but also innovation.

I've read 4+ of his papers, so I thought I was familiar with his work. (Here's one paper:
https://t.co/7X00O67VgS)

I was startled to learn he has also studied in depth what enables innovation. He wrote a wonderful book "Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake"


Dr. Westrum writes about China Lake Research Labs: "its design and structure had one purpose: to foster technical creativity. It did; China Lake operated far outside the normal envelope... Sidewinder & others were "impossible" accomplishments,

I love this book because it describes traits of organizations that routinely create and maintain greatness: US space program (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo), US Naval Reactors, Toyota, Team of Teams, Tesla, the tech giants (Amazon, Google, Netflix, Google)

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First update to https://t.co/lDdqjtKTZL since the challenge ended – Medium links!! Go add your Medium profile now 👀📝 (thanks @diannamallen for the suggestion 😁)


Just added Telegram links to
https://t.co/lDdqjtKTZL too! Now you can provide a nice easy way for people to message you :)


Less than 1 hour since I started adding stuff to https://t.co/lDdqjtKTZL again, and profile pages are now responsive!!! 🥳 Check it out -> https://t.co/fVkEL4fu0L


Accounts page is now also responsive!! 📱✨


💪 I managed to make the whole site responsive in about an hour. On my roadmap I had it down as 4-5 hours!!! 🤘🤠🤘
The first ever world map was sketched thousands of years ago by Indian saint
“Ramanujacharya” who simply translated the following verse from Mahabharat and gave the world its real face

In Mahabharat,it is described how 'Maharishi Ved Vyasa' gave away his divine vision to Sanjay


Dhritarashtra's charioteer so that he could describe him the events of the upcoming war.

But, even before questions of war could begin, Dhritarashtra asked him to describe how the world looks like from space.

This is how he described the face of the world:

सुदर्शनं प्रवक्ष्यामि द्वीपं तु कुरुनन्दन। परिमण्डलो महाराज द्वीपोऽसौ चक्रसंस्थितः॥
यथा हि पुरुषः पश्येदादर्शे मुखमात्मनः। एवं सुदर्शनद्वीपो दृश्यते चन्द्रमण्डले॥ द्विरंशे पिप्पलस्तत्र द्विरंशे च शशो महान्।

—वेद व्यास, भीष्म पर्व, महाभारत


Meaning:-

हे कुरुनन्दन ! सुदर्शन नामक यह द्वीप चक्र की भाँति गोलाकार स्थित है, जैसे पुरुष दर्पण में अपना मुख देखता है, उसी प्रकार यह द्वीप चन्द्रमण्डल में दिखायी देता है। इसके दो अंशो मे पीपल और दो अंशो मे विशाल शश (खरगोश) दिखायी देता है।


Meaning: "Just like a man sees his face in the mirror, so does the Earth appears in the Universe. In the first part you see leaves of the Peepal Tree, and in the next part you see a Rabbit."

Based on this shloka, Saint Ramanujacharya sketched out the map, but the world laughed