Wobble-shop Benjo: ****-wool raked up out the half-rats Skilamalink fly-rink O' Baldric Eggling.

This thread will function as a kind of omnium gatherum for the melange of dissenting observations and opinions I have about MMA, MMA bouts and fighters, things I find humorous, and essentially any other thing. Why? Because sewage warrants proper curation as much as anything else. Arguably more.

Toshers and specklebellies welcome. No mutton-shunters, namby-pambys or needy-mizzlers. Pull up a stool and smother the parrot.

* Edited at 11.01.2021, 6:47 PM ET *

A Palantir doesn't come along every day. It's pretty cheap at the moment, its normative resistance seems to be around 26$ and it's 20 bucks currently. Probably still worth picking up if it heads south of that ( somewhere around 18$) because you can just about bet your bottom dollar it's being laddered and there'll be bull run on it at some point driven by options/CFD shenanigans.  It's still overvalued but try and find something on the NYSE that isn't.

I might do a write up on a cheap stock that is atrociously undervalued and has real potential to explode soon if I get to it.

* Edited at 11.22.2021, 6:59 PM ET *

Yeah. When you see something share. Daddy needs a new fireplace patio with Pergola

In the meantime, I'll drop a gimme: Chemist Warehouse. It's going to IPO. It will be listed on the ASX. It will be a rocket when it drops and anyone who doesn't pick it up at open will be ********.

* Edited at 11.22.2021, 7:13 PM ET *

You guys should give Rugby League a go. At least state of origin, anyway. Never a dull moment. Good chance of a punch on too.

* Edited at 11.22.2021, 7:22 PM ET *

Had to agree with him on something eventually, I suppose.

and they essentially ensure that, over time, biological women will never take Gold in anything again. This is because it will no longer be a requirement for trans athletes to Taper off testosterone/Estrogen for 12 months prior to competing in any given event. In fact, it appears there will be no hormone-related requirements or restrictions imposed on trans athletes whatsoever. 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently released its long anticipated new guidelines concerning transgender and intersex athletes. Rather than set out rules for international and national sports federations to follow, the IOC framework instead proposed that eligibility rules for these athletes follow 10 principles: inclusion, prevention of harm, non-discrimination, fairness, no presumption of advantage, evidence-based approach, primacy of health and bodily autonomy, stakeholder-centered approach, right to privacy and periodic reviews.


This framework replaces the 2015 IOC guidelines that required trans women to lower their testosterone for 12 months before competing in the women’s division. The new framework makes inclusion the first of the guiding principles and drops the testosterone suppression requirements — both substantial shifts for the organization.


https://thehill.com/opinion/international/582651-understanding-new-olympic-guidelines-for-trans-athletes

* Edited at 11.22.2021, 7:51 PM ET *

Ok, so it very probably was a terror attack. Perpetrator was a member of some culty  religious black nationalist group, something like Black Hebrew Israelites (but not that,  

His name is Darrel Brooks, and has an extensive criminal record going back 22 years including battery, assault, child support evasion. On Nov 2. he was arrested after punching his girlfriend in the face and running her over with his SUV. He was also a registered tier 2 sex offender and trafficked a 16 YO girl (There is footage of him admitting this on camera).

A brief perusal of his social media posts gives a very clear image of a person who is exactly the kind of person you'd expect to be involved in a terror-related incident. He is also a BLM affiliate. 

https://bellinghammetronews.com/news/world-news/waukesha-parade-terrorist-identified-as-anti-police-black-nationalist-sex-offender/







The Police Chief is now on record saying he was not being chased by Police when the incident happened. So I guess a terrorist attack that resulted in 5 dead and over a dozen kids hospitalised has just been memory-holed. From Associated Press

The chief said that while police were not pursuing Brooks before he entered the parade route, an officer did fire a shot to try to stop him but ceased shooting because of the danger to others. Brooks was not injured.

Brooks has two open criminal cases in Milwaukee County. In one case, filed Nov. 5, he is charged with resisting or obstructing an officer, reckless endangering, disorderly conduct, bail jumping and battery. Records show his $1,000 cash bond was posted on Friday.

https://apnews.com/article/waukesha-wisconsin-christmas-parade-crash-388eec09cc3543874d30352e197168ca

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/tennis-wta-says-chinese-tennis-stars-call-with-olympic-chief-is-not-enough-2021-11-22/?utm_source=reddit.com


Gotta respect the WTA women's tennis association. They are keeping China accountable and want her safe. Willing to loose 100s of millions is no joke. Much respect

There's been a lot of buzz around Trump's SPAC  (DWAC) lately, so I thought I'd write this to help people understand exactly what a SPAC is, how they are structured, and why they're best avoided. Let's start from the beginning: What is a SPAC, and how does it differ from an IPO?

Unlike an IPO (Initial Public Offering) a SPAC is basically a venture capital exercise. A SPAC need not...have, any business operations  or assets of any kind. SPACS are designed to generate equity to create businesses, whereas an IPO is  generally designed to generate equity to expand  the scope of existing businesses and business ventures. They might have a target acquisition in mind--that is, an existing company, but this is not mandated, and most of the time, SPACS take money in before they have decided on any particular acquisition at all. 

SPACS (special purchase acquisition companies) are basically the kickstarter campaigns of the stock universe--though the grift is more artful. Essentially what happens in a SPAC is that investors give  people money based on a business proposal on a leap of faith that they will take that money and either buy or create a business that runs at a profit. 

Which sounds reasonable enough, although shaky, until you start digging in to their structure.

Every SPAC is a shell company. They have no assets other than liquidity, which is money given to them by investors who have absolutely no idea what kind of assets and businesses the sponsor will end up buying with it. Who is the Sponsor? Well, it can be absolutely anybody. Typically, it is a person (individual) who is assumed to have industry experience and has kicked in a small amount of their own money to get the ball rolling. However, the fact that Shaq and Colin Kaepernick are both sponsors should give an idea about how that really shakes out. Most of the time people who buy into SPACS are in a cult of personality.

SPACS enable their sponsors to bypass the normative SEC procedures incurred by an IPO. Going Public is like giving birth to a stone. It is an horrifically expensive, drawn-out bureaucratic nightmare, involving enough paperwork to deforest a small country. It involves lengthy courting of institutional investors, marketing to retail investors, and typically the involvement of banks and private equity companies. It is an absolute cluster**** of the highest order, which is why the vast majority of companies never go public. SPACS enable sponsors to leapfrog the vast majority of this entire process.

When a SPAC takes in money from investors, these funds are held in a trust for a maximum of two years, and cannot be mobilised for any reasons other than being returned to investors, or being used to purchase an acquisition--usually a company. Usually, the money comes in the form of investors buying warrants, not just stocks. So let's get into that:

What the **** is a warrant?


It is what it sounds like, simply. A warrant in the world of investments is the legally binding right to exercise (either sell, or convert into more stock) a stock at a future price for a fixed amount before that price occurs. 

Example: Let's say I think the price of Turkeys is going to rise in November due to increased demand during thanksgiving. I go to a turkey farmer in february, and tell him I'd like to buy 100 turkeys at 20$ each. But I don't want them yet. I want to collect them in November. The farmer knows that turkeys will probably have a market value greater than 20$ in November, but he agrees, because a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and he can use that cash injection at the slowest point of his year to fund another pen to house more turkeys, and increase his profits or whatever. So we shake hands. November rolls around, I sell 100 turkeys for 35$ each and make a tidy profit.

That's how a warrant works. However, unlike in the above scenario, a warrant in a SPAC is not underwritten by anything at all. There is no product or service to go to market when the investor buys in, and certainly the sale of whatever eventually does go to market will not be a dead certainty like Turkeys at thanksgiving. It will either be an unproven startup, or a business that has retracted hard due to market forces or bad management of some kind. This is a big problem for warrant-holders, because:

The majority of all IPO's and SPACS that go to market follow the typical bell curve pattern. There is always a bull-run, completely due to hype, from retail investors (this is exploited by Wall Street hugely, but that's a different discussion and requires its own post) which drives up the value of the stock price temporarily before it crashes back down to earth. This is as close to a Law as you'll find in finance, and believe it or not, there is an entire sector of traders who profit from the value decay (theta) of stock values over time, and do absolutely no other kind of trading.

So let's say a SPAC float goes live at 10$ per warrant. A retail investor buys warrants at the open of the SPAC. So do many others. This causes the price of the SPAC to rise. The retail investor is happy, because the price of the SPAC is now 20$ per share, and they paid ten dollars for the right to buy it at 20$. Sounds pretty good, right? Yes and no. Because warrants have an expiration date; that is, they must be exercised before a certain period of time, or they become worthless. This is compounded by the fact that the Federal Reserve and Uncle Sam really don't want retail investors (you) short selling and trading at high frequency. If this were to happen on large scale, it would cause inflation to rocket off the charts due to an influx of fast, cheap money. That's why if you sell an investment of any kind having not held on to it for a year, you lose 50% of profits to the tax man immediately.

So it behooves the retail investor in the above example to not exercise their warrants having bought them for 10$  for 20$ a day or a week later. Which means they hold on to those warrants. They hold them right over the top of the bell curve, and into the SPAC sponsor buying whatever they want with their money Territory. And that might prove to be a sound and profitable acquisition. Or perhaps they never buy anything at all. But the vast majority of the time it's a huge pile of ****. But the sponsor doesn't care whether it is or isn't. Here's why:

The sponsor's cut of shares is usually about 20%, and they pay only a very nominal rate for that level of ownership. So if the total value of the SPAC is 100 million dollars, they keep 20 million dollars. So the sponsor is always incentivised to make an acquisition whether it's a pile of **** or not, because if they do, they are ensured compensation a massive return on their relatively nominal investment. While shareholders do get to vote on what acquisition the SPAC ultimately makes, they are more than likely just going to go with whatever is suggested by the sponsor, because again, they are likely in a cult of personality. Moreoever, they are given a limited range of options to choose from, and a sponsor is likely to present a list composed of very ****** options to make their pick stand out from the rest.

The long and short of it is, SPACS force investors to assume all downside risk, and absolve the sponsor of virtually all of it. They are, in effect, artful Ponzi schemes, and typically run at a loss of about -10%. Does this mean all SPACS are garbage? No. Draftkings started as a SPAC and is doing well. But that's an exception to the overall Historical trend.

Is Trumps SPAC DWAC garbage? I mean, over the long term, very likely. Even though I'm a fan of Trump, I strongly doubt his ability to create a media network that can compete with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Tiktok. And even if he could, whatever he created would be facing unified attempts at destruction by Alphabet as well as those other companies I just mentioned. That's the bear case. The Bull case is that he has a lot of supporters, and beyond this, the market is begging for a social media platform that isn't regulated along lines of political biases and censorship.  He might get it done. But I won't be laying my own money on it.

However: if you had bought it at open and flipped it quickly, you'd have netted over 1000% return, admittedly losing half of that to CGT. But that's still not a bad day's work--assuming you had the stomach to make that bet.

* Edited at 11.23.2021, 10:54 PM ET *

She was born in 1897, and was 124 years old.

* Edited at 11.24.2021, 3:51 AM ET *

Accurate:

It's like mother always said: Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Give a Trilobite some sand, he'll draw a penis.

You narrowly averted an absolute disaster today--one that had the potential to fundamentally destroy your entire economic system from the roots up. And I am not ******* around when I say that.

Because the current administration very nearly got its way with picking Saule Omarova as comptroller of the currency. Now, that will probably fly over a lot of heads on this forum because while I love this community it's composed mostly of Americans, who I also love, but who are very low-information people. I'll do my best to explain the gravity of what nearly transpired today. I don't think this is a political post, but rather a financial one, and I'm pretty sure Greg is going to agree with me on everything anyway.


What is the Comptroller of the currency? Well, it's kind of the 'ombudsman's office' of the finance and banking sector. It is responsible  for oversight of currency charters, and regulation of banks operating in the US. This includes Foreign-owned Banks operating in the US. It might surprise you to learn that the OCC is older, even, than the Federal Reserve, and functions as a kind of partner to it in a regulatory since, somewhat like a chaperone/ older sibling.

How necessary is the OCC?


In a word, very. To understand why, we need to talk briefly about the philosophy of money and how money functions between lenders are borrowers in the system in which you live.

So let's say you want to make an acquisition. You want to buy a business. Or maybe you want to start one. To do this, you need money. You will need to convince the Bank to give it to you, and they will decide whether they are going to or not based on your probable ability to repay them, with an added bonus, which we refer to as 'Interest'.

There is an immediate power imbalance in this situation because Banks create and issue money, which is legal tender, you do not. All you have is a promise  in the form of an IOU. In financial parlance, this is referred to as a promissory note; a binding obligation between yourself and a lender that you will repay money loaned to you .and additional money on top of that for the privilege of having it loaned to you at all.

You can't buy that business or start one with your own promissory note. What you need to do is exchange it for another kind of promissory note, which we refer to as legal Tender--that is, money, through a licensed exchange service provider. That's what a bank is, and contrary to popular belief, its primary function.

So what does any of this have to do with the OCC? Well...rather a lot. Think about it this way: How many people do you know who run businesses, or have bought them, who are better at generating money than say a Wall Street investment firm, or private equity company? The answer to that question is none, and it's unlikely you ever will. Unless you become Jeff Bezos's power bottom twink that is. So that begs the question: Why do banks ever loan money to shoeless dirty-faced three-toothed peasants who smell of **** and can't do basic math such as yourself at all? Why don't they just tell you to go **** yourself and hand over the skrilla to the autists at blackrock who dream in equations? 

The answer to this question is, sadly, not known by many people. The truth is, Banks are forced to loan to you. And the entities who are forcing them to do that are the OCC, and the Federal reserve. You see, liquidity (freed up money) only has meaning if stuff is getting made and done as a result of it in circulation. If Banks just handed money over to Wall Street the entire economic system would implode overnight, because making money from money is not the same thing as making money from selling goods and services. 

Or to get more specific, the Federal Reserve and OCC works to ensure that money is appropriated to productive enterprises, not speculative enterprises. They ensure that money  goes to main street--which is a financial term for banks loaning out individuals to buy stuff so that they can make and do things--as opposed to Wall Street, which refers to the security trading industry.

That's a very simplified overview, but it's also the gist of it. Suffice to say, both the Federal Reserve and the OCC are incredibly important institutions, and are well-balanced both in terms of their scope and powers. And anybody who would advocate for abolishing them, or changing them, would have to be helmet-tier ********. And today, someone who wanted to do just that was very nearly made head of the OCC: Saule Omarova.

Now, the Biden regime has engaged in many financially and economically idiotic practices during its brief and to date disastrous term, but most have been the sorts of things that can be reversed. However, if Omarova had been 'elected', the damage would have been permanent.  Here's why:

So let's talk about Saule. Now, you'd expect Biden's nominee for comptroller to be a really, really high-end financier  with an impeccable intellect, and **** ton of industry experience and proven real-world success, right? You'd be wrong. She in fact has absolutely no training in mathematics, business, or finance at all. She has never managed a hedge fund, has never worked on the street, and has no understanding of liquidity markets or investment banking in any deep way whatsoever.

She's a Kazakhstani who graduated from the university of Moscow in 1989 (Still has a Russian Accent) and since then has been working as a professor of Law at Cornell. And she wanted to completely overhaul the Federal Reserve and OCC.  Firstly, she advocated that the Federal reserve be given carte blanche to determine wages (price fix labour rates) and nationalize the banks--stating on record that the Federal Reserve should have complete control over the actual bank accounts of individuals. Under her stewardship, you would not have control over your finances. In fact, you wouldn't even be allowed to have a private bank account--the Fed would hold ALL of your money.

But it gets better. She also had planned on creating an entirely new bureaucracy  to govern the entire banking sector, which would be called the 'Public Interest Council'. This would be composed of a select group of " Highly Paid 'intellectuals"  who need not have any financial training or experience at all. This self-appointing cabal would be allowed to reelect itself in perpetuity, not being "Subject to the  restraints and requirements of the administrative process".

The Cherry on Top? This lunatic (who is a glaringly obvious communist) also has publicly stated she wants to bankrupt the Oil, Coal, and Gas industries.

Oh--and I almost forgot: She wanted to annihilate cryptocurency from the face of the earth. Completely. I don't mean regulate. I mean, make it kaput. Unuseable, untradeable.  

And she very nearly got the nod to do all that. If she had been approved, there would have been no avenue of appeal. Now, I have to give the Democrats props for defeating her, because without dissent on their side, she'd have attained power. Credit given where due.

But holy ****, Folks. You gotta start paying attention. You dodged this bullet--nay, nuclear warhead, by a Pygmy's foreskin.

* Edited at 11.25.2021, 1:49 AM ET *