Wall Street Bets & The GameStop Short Squeeze - What Is Going On?
Send us a textFinancial markets have been thrown into turmoil over the last week by retail investors using social media chat groups such as the Reddit forum Wall Street Bets and low-cost investment platforms to drive up shares in GameStop, a US video game retailer. In what is called a “short squeeze”, the share buyers are putting intense pressure on hedge funds such as Melvin Capital and other institutional investors, who bet that these equities would fall. GameStop is a struggling bric...
30 Jan 202127min
The Story of James Simons - Renaissance Technologies & Medallion Fund
Send us a textJames Simons is a mathematician and cryptographer who realized that the complex math he used to break military codes could also explain patterns in the world of finance. Jim Simons has been described as "the world's smartest billionaire", amassing a fortune through the clever use of mathematics and computers. He has stepped down as the chairman of Renaissance Technologies, the most successful quant hedge fund in history this January. Simons has not overseen the day-to-day runnin...
25 Jan 202123min
The Dot-Com Bubble - Wall Street History
Send us a textThe Dot-Com bubble was one of the largest speculative bubbles in U.S. stock market history. Here's a quick history lesson on what it was like twenty years ago. The Dot-Com Bubble was a major economic event that ultimately led to a three year bear market. The Dot-Com Bubble started in the 1990s with a rapid wave of new internet companies going public by IPO. Many of these dot-com stocks while unprofitable, skyrocketed in value. In this video, we explain what caused the Dot-Com Bu...
16 Jan 202124min
What Is a SPAC or Special Purpose Acquisition Company and Should You Invest?
Send us a textWhat is a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC)? or blank check company? Should you invest in SPACs, and how do they work? A SPAC is publicly-traded shell companies that raise collective investment funds through an initial public offering (IPO) in the form of a blind pool. The funds are placed into a trust until an acquisition is made or a predetermined period of time elapses and the fund is liquidated. SPACs are increasingly being viewed as an alternative to the IPO proces...
8 Jan 202137min
John Law - The First Financial Engineer - A History of Paper Money and The Mississippi Bubble
Send us a textJohn Law was a Scottish monetary reformer and originator of the “Mississippi scheme” for the development of French territories in America.After killing an adversary in a duel, he fled to Amsterdam, where he was a professional gambler and learned about banking operations. A decade later he returned to Scotland and wrote his best-known work, Money and Trade Considered, with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money (available on Amazon at this link https://amzn.to/2Wkts7p). H...
8 Jan 202146min
How Demographic Changes Will Affect Your Portfolio - With Manoj Pradhan - Talking Heads Macro
Send us a textAn Interview with the leading expert on demographics and macroeconomics Manoj Pradhan. Manoj has just published a new book along with Charles Goodhart, former member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee and an Emeritus professor at the London School of Economics. The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival is one of the most interesting economics books of 2020 and is available on Amazon at this link: http...
7 Jan 202144min
Day Traders To Billionaires - Online Trading in the 1990's
Send us a textTodays podcast is about the history of day trading and day traders. In order to better understand how markets work it is worth taking a look at the history of retail day trading, which goes back to the late 1980’s, when new technologies allowed a small group of smart and aggressive traders to take on Wall Street and win. Nasdaq market makers at the time called these traders the SOES bandits. We discuss the market inefficiencies that the early day traders were exploiting, w...
7 Jan 202118min
George Soros - Reflexivity Explained
Send us a textTodays Episode is about George Soros and Macro Investing. George Soros is the most famous Macro Hedge Fund Investor. His Theory of General Reflexivity in economics is the theory that a feedback loop exists in which investors' perceptions affect economic fundamentals, which in turn changes investor perception. The theory of reflexivity has its roots in sociology. Soros believes that reflexivity disproves much of mainstream economic theory and should become a major foc...
7 Jan 202115min
