Tremendous

You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

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This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.

My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Food, Travel

The Tremendous Tapas of Barcelona!

November 29, 2021 tremendousblog Leave a comment

My wife and I just returned from a wonderful vacation in Barcelona! It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.

The warm weather, palm trees, beaches and museums make for an outstanding visit. But what stands out most is the food!

Spain has a tradition of small dishes called tapas that let you sample many tasty morsels at a single meal. I indulged big time.

The spot I’d recommend is Txapela. There are several around Barcelona and Madrid, all with delicious food at an excellent price.

Above are a couple of my favorites. Camembert cheese and truffle oil atop thinly sliced apple and toothsome bread (foreground) and a piquant shrimp dish (background).

Txapela also excels at patatas bravas, a classic Spanish potato dish with an unctuous mayonnaise sauce. The potatoes are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, perfect.

Since Txapela is Basque, their small dishes are technically pintxos, not tapas. But the concept of sampling many small plates is the same.

These small plates aren’t actually all that small…I was full after just two pintxos and an order of patatas bravas. Total bill: about $12.

Spain, I love you. 🙂

But Spain has far more to offer than tapas. Behold the paella at El Corte Ingles, the greatest department store on the planet.

Its depth of flavor, likely coming from shrimp stock, blew away any paella I’ve had in the US.

Some times, you just have to go to the source.

Spain also turns out an incredible breakfast. And at the H10 Art Gallery hotel where we stayed (highly recommended), this smorgasbord was on the house!

My favorite was the pork pate (right). I found myself getting up over and over for “just one more piece.”

If you haven’t been to Barcelona, I can’t recommend it highly enough! Great weather, great food, and far cheaper than the US!

Do you have any recommended spots in Barcelona? Let me know in the comments at the bottom of the page.

Great to be back!

Citadel Sues to Crush Competitors

November 17, 2021 tremendousblog Leave a comment

“You’re the one who’s trying to regulate your way into a market victory”
Judge Justin Walker

Citadel Securities LLC is suing the SEC to stop curbs on high frequency trading:

A federal judge challenged a lawyer for Citadel Securities LLC about its efforts to thwart a new kind of market order from IEX Group Inc., the stock exchange operator made famous by “Flash Boys.”
“It’s you who’s going to a federal agency and saying stop a private entity from doing what they want to do,” U.S. Circuit Judge Justin Walker said at a hearing in Washington on Monday, after attorney Jeffrey Wall argued that the order type interferes with the natural course of the market.
The order type, known as D-Limit, has a roughly 350-microsecond delay to blunt the advantage of high-frequency traders.

Citadel makes massive sums from high frequency trading.

Brad Katsuyama created the IEX to stop high frequency traders from front running mutual funds and other investors. Now, IEX is offering a new technology, the D-Limit order, to help.

So Citadel sues the SEC to make them stop!

Imagine if Blackberry could’ve sued the government to make it stop the iPhone. Well, Blackberry might be doing a whole lot better today.

But the average person wouldn’t.

In Citadel’s defense, they’re having a tough time lately. Average investors in meme stocks like AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. are suing them in Florida.

And the SEC is considering a ban on payment for order flow, one of Citadel’s main sources of revenue.

It’s interesting to see who’s for the D-limit order. One proponent is Vanguard Group, which holds the savings of many individual investors, including me.

Vanguard is evidently convinced that circumventing high frequency traders will help the average investor. But for Citadel, Vanguard is competition in the market.

And Citadel will stop at nothing to win.

The only real question is: will we let Citadel lobby and sue its way to total control of markets?

This is the last blog for this week. There will be no blog next week; I’ll be visiting Barcelona!

See you on Monday, November 29th.

Until then, enjoy a few of my favorite posts. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Male Contraception With an Ultrasound Device?

NJ’s Best Apple Cider Donut

The Painting I Love the Most

Photo: “Ken Griffin” by DanGPhotos1 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Save Money on Stuff I Use:

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Best of all: No fee!

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.

Business

AMC and GameStop Short Sellers Down $10 Billion for 2021

November 16, 2021 tremendousblog 1 Comment

Shares in AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. and GameStop Corp. have skyrocketed this year. As retail traders pile in, short sellers are nursing deep wounds.

According to the latest data from S3 Partners, shorts have lost over $10 billion in both companies for the year. And their losses are accelerating:

The GameStop and AMC short-sellers had lost $6.18 billion and $3.37 billion by the end of trading on October 26th and by the end of trading on November 4th, these losses had extended to $6.51 billion and $3.69 billion, respectively.
This indicates that during the seven trading days in between, investors who had bet against both companies had lost $320 million each for $640 million in cumulative losses.

Most short sellers are hedge funds.

If those funds were making bets with their own money, I’d say that’s their business. But hedge funds’ assets generally come from pension plans and university and charitable endowments.

To gamble the future of education, charity, or people’s retirement betting against highly volatile stocks is reckless. Were I an investor in such a fund, I’d be withdrawing my capital immediately.

Meanwhile, the best performing funds are taking the opposite side of the bet.

Renaissance Technologies LLC, one of the best performing hedge funds in history, increased its ownership of AMC by 40% in the third quarter. And that’s after tripling holdings in the second quarter.

So who’s right? I have no idea.

But I do know that betting people’s retirement money against turbulent stocks is completely irresponsible.

More on markets:

AMC May Issue Its Own Cryptocurrency, Per CEO

Photo: Photo: “the Great Hedge Fund Hei$t” by eyewashdesign: A. Golden is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Save Money on Stuff I Use:

You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

Best of all: No fee!

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.

Business

Robinhood vs. Interactive Brokers: Smackdown!

November 12, 2021 tremendousblog Leave a comment

I’m working on making my own index fund. And it’s proving surprisingly difficult.

The Goal

My goal is to create a portfolio of the highest yielding Dividend Aristocrats. Dividend Aristocrats are blue chip companies that have increased their dividend every year for at least 25 years.

But even being an Aristocrat isn’t enough for your demanding author. I want only stocks with a yield above 3%, so I have some chance of keeping up with inflation.

I call this special group the Dividend Royals.

So which broker should I use to construct this portfolio?

The Contestants

In this corner: Robinhood!

Robinhood is one of the best known brokers today. It took the financial world by storm by offering zero commission trades.

And in this corner: Interactive Brokers!

This stalwart of finance has existed for decades and offers sophisticated tools to active investors.

Who will be the next champion?

Fight!

Robinhood is dead simple. Its intuitive mobile app makes it easy to buy and sell shares of stock, including fractional shares.

And then there’s the feature that made it famous: no transaction fees.

But Interactive Brokers no longer charges fees either in its Lite product. And its Pro offering can get you such great prices on shares that it should be worth the nominal fees if your trades are large.

Robinhood’s simplicity is also its Achilles’ heel. It lacks many of the powerful research and trading tools of Interactive Brokers.

Implementing a Dividend Royals strategy would be manual and painful.

What’s more, if you ever decide you’re sick of Robinhood, it’s expensive to get your money out. Robinhood charges you a usurious $75 fee.

Interactive Brokers charges nothing.

By Unanimous Decision…

Interactive Brokers is a much better choice. Its trading tools are powerful and its fees are even lower than famously cheap Robinhood.

I’m working with Interactive Brokers’ support to find out how to implement the Dividend Royals strategy using their BasketTrader tool. I’ll keep you posted!

There will be no blog on Monday. I’m background acting in an awesome forthcoming show from Netflix!

See you Tuesday. Have an awesome weekend, everyone!

More on markets:

Let’s Make Our Own Index Fund!

Plaintiffs Fight Back in Citadel Lawsuit

Photo: “Packerland Pro Wrestling – Roadhouse Rumble” by Ross LaRocco is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Save Money on Stuff I Use:

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Best of all: No fee!

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.

Business

Plaintiffs Fight Back in Citadel Lawsuit

November 11, 2021 tremendousblog 1 Comment

The small investors suing Citadel Securities LLC are fighting back against its motion to dismiss their case:

Plaintiffs suing Citadel Securities and others over trading restrictions on “meme stocks” have filed a motion to strike the market maker’s recent court filing that leaned on the SEC’s report to dismiss the conspiracy charges.

Describing the notice as “incomplete and misleading,” they challenged Citadel Securities about its efforts to call the court attention to conclusions set out in the SEC’s report on the retail trading mania earlier this year.

Citadel’s reliance on the SEC report to defend itself is problematic. As I wrote here last week, the report barely even covered allegations of collusion between Citadel and Robinhood Markets, Inc. in limiting trading.

The lengthy report devotes just a single paragraph to the allegations. It also takes Citadel LLC CEO Ken Griffin and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev at their word.

What’s more, the report has no force of law:

The legal notice further explains that while the 45-page report was simply meant to describe events, the market maker had misinterpreted the regulatory body’s bulletins which, like all staff statements, have no legal force or effect.

Despite the serious allegations against his firm, Griffin still characterizes them as “a bad comedy joke.”

But Citadel could face billions in damages if it loses. Even for someone with Griffin’s wealth, that’s no laughing matter.

More on markets:

Citadel Demands Dismissal of Lawsuit, Citing SEC Report

AMC Fails to Deliver Jump 2700%

Photo: “Ken Griffin” by DanGPhotos1 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Save Money on Stuff I Use:

You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

Best of all: No fee!

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.

Business, Technology

NFT Market is Growing 38,000% a Year, and AMC May Jump In

November 10, 2021 tremendousblog Leave a comment

At its recent earnings call, AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. CEO Adam Aron revealed that the company may create its own non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

These unique pieces of digital art are exploding in popularity, per DappRadar:

In Q3, the NFT space generated over $10.67 billion in trading volume. This represents an outstanding 704% increase from the previous quarter and a colossal 38,060% increase year-over-year.

AMC is in a great position to dominate this market. Its partnerships with movie theaters could give it access to invaluable intellectual property, such as Marvel superheroes.

The movie studios would also gain by partnering with AMC. The theater chain already has a huge following among the young investors active in NFT’s.

Consider that a Degenerate Ape NFT recently sold for $1.1 million. Whatever its artistic merits, I suspect IP with broad recognition like the Avengers will be quite a bit more valuable.

Moonrock Capital just acquired the 13th rarest @DegenApeAcademy NFT for 5980 $SOL ($1,109,170.40) pic.twitter.com/STkwJetRl1
— Moonrock Capital (@MoonrockCapital) September 11, 2021

Will minting NFT’s, creating its own crypto token, or accepting bitcoin make AMC a world-beating business all by itself? Of course not.

But AMC is doing what tech startups have done for years: experimenting with different products to find out what the market wants. If it hits pay dirt, it can expand that offering, driving lots of revenue.

I commend Aron and the AMC team for being so innovative. Best of luck!

More on markets:

AMC Fails to Deliver Jump 2700%

Let’s Make Our Own Index Fund!

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Save Money on Stuff I Use:

You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

Best of all: No fee!

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.

Business

Let’s Make Our Own Index Fund!

November 5, 2021 tremendousblog Leave a comment

The Problem

Bonds are a big part of many investors’ portfolios. But yields today are close to nonexistent.

Since 2009, rates have been at or below the rate of inflation. Two bond funds I own pay 1.88% and 1.45% respectively.

Inflation is currently running at about 4.8%. This means I’m paying about 2.9-3.4% per year after inflation for the privilege of owning these funds.

Not fun, right?

An Unlikely Solution

So I’ve been exploring building a portfolio of high dividend stocks to replace the bonds and provide income. The stocks I’m interested in have paid high dividends for decades straight.

They represent the highest payors amongst the Dividend Aristocrats. Call them the Dividend Royals.

What if I had my own index fund of these companies? Each stock could be automatically weighted in the portfolio based on its market cap.

So, since Exxon Mobil has a much larger market cap than Federal Realty Investment Trust, for example, it would be a proportionately larger piece of the index fund.

A sophisticated solution could even automatically rebalance the fund on a regular schedule. This would keep the stocks in correct proportion to each other.

But who can provide such a service?

The Hunt

Not many companies, it turns out. Here are the biggest providers of “direct indexing”, or DIY index funds, per Bloomberg:

Vanguard also has such an offering via its recent acquisition of Just Invest.

I’ve requested demos from Vanguard, Parametric (part of Morgan Stanley), and Aperio (part of BlackRock). If I see anything good, I’ll report back!

There’s also an interesting offering from Interactive Brokers called BasketTrader. While I didn’t have the time to dig deep into it today, it looks like it may provide a solid tool for direct indexing.

Do you know a good direct indexing provider? Please leave a comment at the bottom.

There will be no blog on Monday or Tuesday. An old friend is coming to visit!

See you on Wednesday. Have a great weekend everyone!

More on markets:

How Did High Dividend Stocks Perform In the Last Crash?

Should Anyone Own Bonds?

Photo: “Thunderbird Supercomputer” by SandiaLabs is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Save Money on Stuff I Use:

You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

Best of all: No fee!

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.

Business

AMC Fails to Deliver Jump 2700%

November 4, 2021 tremendousblog 9 Comments

Fails to deliver in shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. jumped over 2700% in the latest data from the SEC.

After falling to a low level at the end of September, fails to deliver exploded in October. As of October 14th, the last day in the latest data set, they stood at nearly 80,000.

This amount of fails to deliver is 789 times Amazon’s, 849 times Microsoft’s, and significantly larger even than Apple’s. Why would the largest stocks in the market have far fewer shares failing to deliver than AMC, with a market cap of just $20 billion?

First, let’s recap what a fail to deliver is. A share in a company fails to deliver when a trade is made but never completed. The shares are never actually delivered to the buyer.

This can happen for benign reasons. But AMC has persistent, huge fails to deliver.

When that happens, it’s often a sign of illegal naked short selling. This involves selling short shares you never borrowed.

The shares can’t be delivered because they never existed in the first place. Meanwhile, the seller has a powerful tool to the push the price down.

If you don’t even have to bother borrowing shares, you can keep selling forever.

What you tend to see in AMC stock is the market makers whittling down the fails to deliver for a little while, only to see them quickly pop back up to enormous levels. Following the stock for some time now, I’ve seen this pattern over and over.

We’ve noticed, but when will the SEC?

More on markets:

Citadel Demands Dismissal of Lawsuit, Citing SEC Report

Raw SEC data (the fails to deliver are the number right before the company name):

20210930|00165C104|AMC|2815|AMC ENTMT HLDGS INC CL A COM S|35.54

20211014|00165C104|AMC|78931|AMC ENTMT HLDGS INC CL A COM S|37.91

20211013|023135106|AMZN|100|AMAZON COM INC;COM USD0.01|3247.33

20211014|037833100|AAPL|58498|APPLE INC;COM NPV|140.91

20211014|594918104|MSFT|93|MICROSOFT CORP;COM USD0.000012|296.31

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Save Money on Stuff I Use:

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Best of all: No fee!

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.

Business

Citadel Demands Dismissal of Lawsuit, Citing SEC Report

November 3, 2021 tremendousblog Leave a comment

Citadel Securities LLC has demanded the dismissal of a pending lawsuit in federal court in South Florida.

The grounds: the recent SEC report on January’s meme stock rally did not find collusion between its hedge fund arm, Citadel LLC, and Robinhood Markets, Inc.

The lawsuit alleges that Citadel pressured Robinhood to stop buy orders in meme stocks like GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. Citadel had a substantial investment in Melvin Capital Management LP, which was losing billions shorting meme stocks.

Citadel’s demand for dismissal is absurd because the SEC report barely mentions the allegations in the Florida lawsuit. They are glossed over in a single paragraph, relying solely on testimony from the people involved (see footnote 92 above).

The SEC has decided to take Vlad Tenev (CEO of Robinhood), Gabriel Plotkin (CIO of Melvin), and Ken Griffin (CEO of Citadel) at their word. But any or all of those statements may be false.

What’s more, this lawsuit alleges that top executives of Robinhood and Citadel were in contact right before trades were limited.

That contact should be explored in detail. The court needs to review emails, internal chat messages, and phone records.

To take a whitewash of an SEC report and then use it to dismiss a lawsuit is ridiculous.

Let’s hope the court sees through it.

More on markets:

AMC May Issue Its Own Cryptocurrency, Per CEO

Photo: “Ken Griffin” by DanGPhotos1 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/Facebook/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog!

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

Best of all: No fee!

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.