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January 2021
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For Basically No Reason, Gamestop's Stock Price Is Rollercoastering In A Tug Of War Being Fought On Reddit

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Let's get this straight out of the gate: I am an expert on nothing to do with the stock market beyond my own personal investments. So, absolutely none of this should be taken as any advice or indication that a certain position in any market is being advocated personally by me. This is not a post about where you should invest your money. It is, instead, a post about how silly certain portions of the stock market appear to have become.And that statement is informed by a decade of watching GameStop, the retailer for new and used video games, new and used video game consoles, and mostly new Funko Pop toys, has been driven further and further from relevance. While predictions about the demise of GameStop have been around forever, recently there is more reason to think they're going to become true. First, the trend of expanded purchases for digital downloads does away with a hefty chunk of GameStop's potential revenue. Yes, GameStop offers its own digital download platform... but nobody uses it. In recognition of that trend, the next generation of consoles are being offered with an option to forgo any optical drive entirely, which would be another nail in GameStop's coffin if widely adopted. And, like most retail operations, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely crippled GameStop's business.Which is why those challenges and trends are accurately reflected in GameStop's stock price, because... oh, wait... shit.

So, yeah, in the month of January, GameStop's stock has risen roughly 4x. And if you want to try to explain that away, please note that pulling the timeline back further actually makes all of this look way more bonkers.
Okay, so what's going on here? Did GameStop come up with an entirely new strategy to propel its relevance in the long-term video game industry? Did it totally restructure, coming up with cost-saving measures or store and staffing closures that make it suddenly more profitable? Was there some consequential change of leadership or outside investment in the company?Nope, none of that. Instead, there appears to be a sort of insane tug of war going on right now on Reddit between short sellers and day traders that is artificially sending this stock on an insane rollercoaster.
Shares of GameStop jumped more than 20% to a high of $101.62 shortly after the open on Tuesday. After drifting lower from the session high, the stock turned sharply higher as Social Capital’s Chamath Palihapitiya said in a tweet that he bought GameStop call options betting the stock will go higher. Trading was halted for a second time following his tweet due to volatility. The stock was last up 21% at around $91 a share.The explosive rally in GameStop was largely driven by the buying frenzy among individual investors active in online forums, especially the infamous “wallstreetbets” Reddit chat room with more than 2 million subscribers. One trending post on Tuesday features a screenshot of the user’s portfolio showing an over 1,000% return on GameStop’s stock.
In other words, this is like some strange offshoot of a meme stock, where nobody really cares about valuation and mostly only cares about potential. Except, for all the reasons we discussed in the opening, nobody really seems to think that there is any potential here. Instead -- and I recognize that this is crazy -- a group of traders on the WallStreetBets Reddit appear to be trying to use the power of that chat room to create its own market reality.
With enough small traders rallied to its cause, WallStreetBets can create its own stock market reality, at least for a little while, specifically in cases like GameStop’s where other investors have thrown massive amounts of money behind the opposite bets. “It was a meme stock that really blew up,” WallStreetBets moderator Bawse1 told Wired. “The massive short contributed more toward the meme stock.”While analysts say the stock hype can’t last, it’s already exposed, once again, just how much of a messed-up casino the stock market can be.
And that's the problem. This is by no means exactly like 2007 by any stretch, but it does have some of that same stench. Untethering the stock market from the reality of what's going on with a company is not a good plan. GameStop has headwinds to its survival in the long-term, simply as a matter of its business and where the gaming marketplace is going. What's going on in the market appears to be chicanery.

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posted at: 12:00am on 27-Jan-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

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NYPD Still Blowing The Public's Money To Keep The Public From Seeing The NYPD's Misconduct Records

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The NYPD is still spending taxpayers' money to prevent taxpayers from accessing police misconduct records. The latest fight over these records was prompted by the New York legislature, which repealed the law that allowed the NYPD to deny the public access to this information last summer.Since then, the NYPD and other first responder agencies have been attempting to litigate their way back to opacity. New York law enforcement agencies -- represented by their unions -- secured a temporary injunction blocking the release of these records last fall, setting the stage for even more expenditure of public funds to argue for the further screwing of the public these agencies are supposed to be serving.Additional litigation was prompted by Mayor Bill de Blasio's unsealing of disciplinary records in response to the law's repeal. NYPD officers and city firefighters filed their own suit following ProPublica's publication of the unsealed records. The NYPD's union was able to secure an injunction prior to this publication, but it was completely nullified by ProPublica's reporting, which put everything it had obtained from the CCRB (Civilian Complaint Review Board) -- which has its own copies of NYPD misconduct files -- online in a searchable database.This transparency genie can't be put back into the bottle, but that isn't stopping the litigants from trying to obtain a judicial order demanding this impossibility. US District Court Judge Katherine Polk acknowledged last year any order she might issue would be unable to "reach backwards in time" and reverse the publication of this info.The unions are back in court, claiming the release of this info by the CCRB (and its subsequent publication) has created a danger that can only be addressed with a history-erasing court order.

Anthony Coles, an attorney at DLA Piper representing the unions, told the panel of judges Tuesday that police officers received “chilling threats” made to officers at the time the records release was first announced.
Even if true, there's nothing the court can do about it now. And, as the court points out, it was up to the plaintiffs to argue this point effectively prior to asking the court for yet another restraining order.
U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier faulted the unions, however, for failing to get specific in support of their claim that the repeal of the records-sealing law in the New York Constitution created irrevocable harm.“As I understand it, there’s nothing in the record that indicates that the unions were able to come up with anything,” Lohier said.
Vague post-facto complaints aren't going to move the dial. But the unions -- and the public employees they represent -- are apparently hoping hysterical rhetoric delivered inside and outside the court might. But there's some encouraging pushback, led by police reformers, who point out the hypocrisy of cops claiming negative information hurts them while simultaneously dragging every victim of police violence through the mud in hopes of exonerating cops for killing or maiming citizens.Here's Tiffany R. Wright of Communities United for Police Reform speaking up about the NYPD's pattern and practice of besmirching its victims:
Negative information about people killed by police has been allowed to circulate “in the public square,” she continued, while disciplinary records have not been public, making for a “one-sided, unfair” conversation.
That's the way things have been for far too long. Only recently -- and only with the repeal of a law that allowed cops to shield themselves from public scrutiny -- has the balance of power started to shift. But never mind the courtroom hysterics: the NYPD (and other NY public agencies) still wield most of the power. This shift towards accountability isn't seismic. But hopefully it's more than incremental. It appears these agencies will do everything in their power to prevent it from shifting any further. And they'll be spending the public's money to do it.

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posted at: 12:00am on 27-Jan-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

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