Tweeting Trouble

Trump is trying to row back his threat to abandon talks on stimulus measures with the Dem-controlled Congress. Markets went up. As always.

Kamala Harris & Mike Pence had a dull debate. The polls seem to think that Trump is doomed. I wouldn’t write off the brute yet, but I hope he is beaten although if he wins it would be the best ever argument for quadratic voting.

A huge congressional report which concluded that FAANG stocks were abusing market power provoked a wide yawn from the stock market. It obviously thinks that the Dems need the donations too much to actually enact legislation with teeth.

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna finally got their Nobel Prize for their work on CRISPR-Cas9.

Market update

Equities up globally. Dollar down. Commodities mixed: agricultural ones, down, metals up (except steel). Yields up. 30-year (US) Treasuries are looking as though they might just have a sniff of inflation. Gilts are still up, as is the pound. I think at some point the day of reckoning will arrive.

The problem with shorting stocks is that you’re always vulnerable to a short squeeze. Some absolute crap has seen strong growth lately, e.g. $BYND, up 150% YTD. The problem with shorting this stuff is that there’s probably a tiny free float and it will always go parabolic as soon as you sell. $IRM — Iron Mountain, a firm which makes money by collecting boxes of documents from big offices and storing it in big warehouses is up 3.6% today. Makes complete sense when nobody is working from home and all documents are sent and stored electronically for the last decade or so.

China Evergrande Group, $EGRNY (a big China real estate group, which makes electric vehicles as a sideline, which is almost certainly going bankrupt, went up 17% today, on news that it had managed to get some deal with one of its creditors. It’s probably not shortable, which is a great relief.

The options will have volatilities well north of 60%. As Fleck says, you can’t short individual stocks in a rising market.

At some point in the future, it might be worth looking at this list of potential shorts. By “the future,” I could be talking ten years from now, so whatever you do, don’t download RobinHood and start destroying wealth.

Trigger Warning: Politics

This semi-rant by Wolf Richer tells you everything you want to know about how US (and no doubt UK) citizens are shamelessly abusing their stimulus money by paying down expensive debt.