Tremendous

An angel investor's take on life and business

  • Move Over, Cake Boss: There’s a New Sheriff in Town

    Buddy Valastro of Carlo’s Bakery may be the Cake Boss, but there’s a new sheriff in town. 

    Recoleta is an Argentinian bakery in Union City, NJ that makes some of the best cake I’ve ever tasted.  When I walked in for the first time in 2019, I noticed 3 things:

    1) The beautiful interior, filled with comfortable couches and chairs

    2) The engrossing pastry case, replete with the traditional pastries of Argentina

    3) The prices, which are from another era. Most pastries are little more than a dollar, and slices of cake are around $3.

    As you bite into a slice of their chocolate cake, you glide through a thick layer of velvety buttercream into moist spongecake pervaded by cocoa.

    With a satisfying cup of coffee at your side, and a mere $4 and change gone from your wallet, you can gaze out at lively Bergenline Avenue and watch the people go by.

    I can’t think of a better way to pass an afternoon.

    If you’re in the area, stop by Recoleta…before TLC does. 🙂

    Have a great weekend everyone!

    More on food:

    THE BEST MEXICAN FOOD IS IN…NEW JERSEY?

    NJ’S BEST APPLE CIDER DONUT

    THE BEST BAKERY IN NYC (IT’S NOT LEVAIN)

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

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    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.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    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.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    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.

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

  • For Retail Traders, AMC Has Become the Only Meme Stock

    As meme stocks rocketed upward this week, one stock captured virtually all retail buyers. Retail traders funneling money into meme stocks put 93% of it into shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc.:

    Stocks preferred by day traders soared 10% Tuesday, the most since early June as trading volumes accelerated. Long-short hedge funds that are quick to dump bearish bets were likely among drivers for Tuesday’s strength in stocks that have high levels of short interest, Vanda said in a report.

    “Despite the broad rally in meme stocks, retail purchases were mainly concentrated on AMC, with over $56 million in Tuesday’s session,” Vanda’s Ben Onatibia and Giacomo Pierantoni wrote in a note. “All other meme stocks combined, totaled a paltry $4 million in net retail buying.” 

    AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. surged 20% Tuesday to the highest since July 9. 

    For more than 90% of retail money in a category to go to a single stock, even for a brief period, is nothing short of extraordinary.

    Hedge funds have begun to join the Reddit crowd, piling into heavily shorted meme stocks. They’re also carefully monitoring social media sites for the next hot play:

    …a Goldman Sachs basket of the most-shorted U.S. shares has surged like never before to outperform the broader market by 31 percentage points this year. Retail buying of names most-shorted by hedge funds in 2021 like AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and GameStop is upending the once-popular quant trade.

    In a survey with 100 hedge-fund managers overseeing US$231 billion conducted by SIGTech, nearly three-quarters said they’ve increased use of data from social media and chat rooms over the past year.

    I’d be willing to bet some are doing a lot more than monitoring. They’re probably posting content of their own. And with the massive budgets of hedge funds, they can hire armies of coders to make their message omnipresent. 

    An interesting new era is dawning in the hottest stocks in the market. The financial establishment is co-opting the hordes of small traders trying to take them down. 

    Buckets of institutional money could move meme stocks like never before.

    More on AMC and hedge funds:

    SHORT SELLERS LOST $1 BILLION YESTERDAY IN AMC AND GAMESTOP

    CHARTING THE HUGE DROP IN AMC FAILS TO DELIVER

    HEDGE FUNDS HIT HARD BY MEME STOCK LOSSES, BADLY BEHIND S&P 500

    Photo: “We’re #1” by 6S is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

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

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    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.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    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.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    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.

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

  • Short Sellers Lost $1 Billion Yesterday in AMC and GameStop

    Short sellers have been fighting retail traders all year. Yesterday, they took a major hit:

    “Heavily shorted stocks have, for the last month, been less volatile than earlier this year. Today we saw an end to this,” said Ortex co-founder Peter Hillerberg.

    The share price gains in AMC and GameStop generated losses for close to $1 billion for short sellers, Hillerberg said.

    AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. was the most active stock in the entire options market. This is remarkable for a company whose market cap is only $23 billion. Apple, the biggest stock in the market, is over 100 times as large.

    The options activity in both AMC and GameStop Corp. was strongly bullish, with call options (the right to purchase shares in the future) going like hotcakes.

    No obvious news propelled these stocks upward. Yet hedge funds maintain their risky short positions.

    This means using investors’ money to bet against stocks that gyrate wildly at the whims of retail traders. I find that to be irresponsible.

    But, to quote one of my favorite movies:

    Well, it could’ve been worse, right? Could’ve been my money.

    Marv, Wall Street

    More on AMC and meme stocks:

    CHARTING THE HUGE DROP IN AMC FAILS TO DELIVER

    HEDGE FUNDS HIT HARD BY MEME STOCK LOSSES, BADLY BEHIND S&P 500

    HEDGE FUNDS GET SPECIAL TREATMENT DURING MARGIN CALLS

    Photo: “Fitness” by Walimai.photo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    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.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    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.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    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.

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

  • Charting The Huge Drop in AMC Fails to Deliver

    There appears to be some fishy activity going on in shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. The stock has long had huge “fails to deliver,” or trades that aren’t completed.

    This can be a sign of illegal naked short selling, which is selling shares short without borrowing them first. Naked short selling is a sophisticated and powerful tactic that can drive share prices down, fast.

    Last week, we talked about the huge drop in fails to deliver that occurred in the most recent SEC data, from the second half of July. Today, I decided to chart all AMC’s fails to deliver for July (above.)

    As you can see, the number was staggering at the beginning of the month. As of July 1st, little AMC had fails to deliver 35,000 times as large as Amazon, one of the biggest companies on earth.

    Exchanges whittled that number down substantially over the course of the month. (Note that the figure is cumulative, rather than just reflecting fails to deliver that occurred that day.)

    Perhaps moves by the SEC, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC), and others to clean up the failed trades had an effect.

    AMC still has massive fails to deliver for a stock its size. It ended the month with 160,233 fails to deliver, still 239 times the end-of-month figure for Amazon and 351 times Apple’s.

    Regulators have made progress, but there’s a lot further to go.

    More on AMC:

    NEW DATA SHOWS BIG DROP IN AMC FAILS TO DELIVER

    AMC HAS 35,000 TIMES THE FAILS-TO-DELIVER OF AMAZON

    HEDGE FUNDS HIT HARD BY MEME STOCK LOSSES, BADLY BEHIND S&P 500

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

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    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.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    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.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    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.

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

  • Paul Castellano’s Last Day

    Salvatore Gravano, a made member of the Gambino crime family, walked into a room with a heart shaped bed. The sheets were red velvet. Mirrors lined the ceiling.

    This was no romantic getaway. Gravano had just murdered the most powerful mob boss in the country. Now he was on the run.

    In an engrossing episode of the Our Thing podcast, Sammy the Bull describes the murder of Paul Castellano and its aftermath.

    The love nest Sammy found himself in belonged to Joe Watts, a fellow soldier. Sammy and his crew hid there after the hit, bracing for the war they were sure was coming.

    Gravano, exhausted, took the couch instead. His fatigue after the hit is a strange parallel to Irish mobster Whitey Bulger, who often slept after his many murders.

    This is the biggest hit of all time.

    Frankie DeCicco

    The war never came. The Castellano hit had been conducted brazenly amid the crowds in Midtown Manhattan. Anyone who had a problem with Gotti and Gravano kept their mouths shut, afraid to meet to same fate.

    John Gotti was made boss of the Gambino family in the basement of a school. A fellow mobster had a connection there.

    I picture the children who came the next day, never knowing what happened.

    More on the mafia:

    ‘THEY GOTTA GO’: GRAVANO ON THE CASTELLANO HIT

    THE MAFIA’S HOBOKEN FORTRESS

    HOFFA MURDER SUSPECT TONY PRO’S UNION HALL

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

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    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.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    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.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    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.

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

  • NJ’s Best Apple Cider Donut

    On Wednesday, my wife’s coworker gave us the most meaningful of gifts: two apple cider donuts. Considerate husband that I am, I ate them both.

    They were the best I’ve ever tasted.

    Francesca’s Bakery, with locations in Clifton and Pequannock, makes donuts, danishes, babka and much more! They even appear at numerous farmer’s markets in New York City, including one near the United Nations where my wife first encountered their delicious baked goods.

    The apple cider donut is generously sugared, airy, and rich. Biting into it evokes a candied cloud.

    Get several. One won’t be enough.

    Francesca’s was started in 2009 and gets its ingredients from nearby farms. Everything is fresh, and it shows.

    If you’re in the area, check it out! And if you’re not, you can even order their rugelach by mail!

    Have a great weekend everyone!

    More on food:

    THE BEST MEXICAN FOOD IS IN…NEW JERSEY?

    NYC’S KING OF SUGAR: POSH POP BAKESHOP

    DUNKIN DONUTS: THE DEFINITIVE TOP 3

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

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    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.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    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.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    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.

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

  • Jim Simons Buys AMC, Bets on Retail Trend

    James Simons of Renaissance Technologies LLC is one of the greatest hedge fund managers in history. His fund’s annualized returns are an eye-popping 66% a year since 1988. Lately, he’s been loading up on shares in meme stock AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc:

    Renaissance Technologies, which held approximately 516,000 AMC shares by March this year, has more than tripled its stake in the firm. Cumulatively, RenTech now owns more than 1.8 million shares.

    Despite the entrance of some hedge funds, about 80% of AMC’s stock is held by retail investors.

    Simons seems acutely aware that individual traders are flooding the stock market and AMC shares in particular. Indeed, the number of retail brokerage accounts has exploded this year. From The Economist:

    In 2019 around 59m Americans had accounts with one of seven of the largest brokers. This number has surged since to 95m, as 17m new accounts were opened in 2020 and 20m were set up this year.

    Short squeeze or no, that’s a powerful source of demand that Simons and Renaissance can benefit from.

    I don’t know whether the stock will go up, down, or in circles. But I do know that I wouldn’t want to bet against Jim Simons.

    More on AMC and hedge funds:

    HEDGE FUNDS HIT HARD BY MEME STOCK LOSSES, BADLY BEHIND S&P 500

    NEW DATA SHOWS BIG DROP IN AMC FAILS TO DELIVER

    HOW SHORT SELLERS COULD EVADE THE NEW NSCC RULES

    Photo: “Jim Simons” by Graham is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    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.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    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.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    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.

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

  • Hedge Funds Hit Hard by Meme Stock Losses, Badly Behind S&P 500

    Losses betting against meme stocks have hit hedge funds hard this year. The latest data from Barclay Hedge shows year-to-date gains for equity long/short funds of 8.51%. (This is the type of fund that would typically take short positions in stocks.)

    Meanwhile, the S&P 500 has returned 18%.

    One of the largest sources of losses for hedge funds this year is short positions in AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. Its shares are up more than 18 fold this year, inflicting billions in losses on short sellers. Other meme stocks like GameStop Corp. have also produced large losses.

    This continues a pattern of long term underperformance for this strategy:

    Investors are losing patience and rapidly withdrawing their money.

    If you’re an investor in a fund with a losing strategy, a weak track record, and a habit of betting against the hottest stocks in the market, I ask you: why not try an index fund?

    More on hedge funds and AMC:

    SHORT SELLERS LOSE $44 BILLION IN 30 DAYS

    HOW AMC IS BLOWING UP THE HEDGE FUND INDUSTRY

    NEW DATA SHOWS BIG DROP IN AMC FAILS TO DELIVER

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

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

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    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.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    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.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    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.

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

  • China’s Tech Crackdown Means Economic Decline

    Imagine you’re running a marathon. You’ve led the whole race. But a strong runner is coming up on your right. The finish line approaches.

    Suddenly, there is a loud “crack.” The other runner has been shot in the head. You win.

    This is essentially what has happened to the Chinese tech sector in recent months. The Chinese government has cracked down on major companies like Alibaba, Didi Chuxing, and Meituan. It has also regulated its substantial ed tech sector out of existence.

    China used to be the US’s leading competition in technology. Now it looks like an also-ran.

    Leaders of Alibaba and Didi angering Xi Jinping is one reason for the crackdown. Another appears to be China’s desire to refocus from software to hardware. The Party seems to think microchips, batteries and advanced materials are critical to economic leadership, while consumer software is a distraction.

    One problem: semiconductors and most other manufacturing industries are a lot less profitable than software companies like Alibaba or Didi. And all of China’s net job growth since 2012 has been in services, not manufacturing.

    Even with that growth, well educated Chinese youth often struggle to find decent jobs. Severely curtailing one of the most vibrant sectors of the economy will only make it worse.

    China has lost sight of what those microchips and batteries are supposed to do: run software! They are not ends in themselves.

    What’s more, the threat of sudden crackdowns will make it harder for all Chinese companies to raise money and grow. Maybe the hammer is landing on tech now, but investors will wonder, “Who’s next?”

    More on China:

    HOW CHINA’S TECH INDUSTRY DIES

    CHINA’S TECH ELITE IS RUNNING SCARED

    CHINA IS CRUSHING ONE OF ITS MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES

    Photo: “Vice President Xi Jinping” by nznationalparty is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    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.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    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.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    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.

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

  • New Data Shows Big Drop in AMC Fails to Deliver

    The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has just released new fails to deliver data for the second half of July. It shows that fails to deliver in shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc., dropped substantially in the last two weeks, but remain elevated.

    In the first half of July, AMC had over 3.5 million fails to deliver. Here is the raw data from the SEC from July 1st. The fails to deliver are the number right before the company name:

    20210701|00165C104|AMC|3519354|AMC ENTMT HLDGS INC CL A COM S|56.68

    The most recent data, from July 30, show a significant decrease:

    20210730|00165C104|AMC|160233|AMC ENTMT HLDGS INC CL A COM S|38.13

    Let’s back up for a second: what are fails to deliver and why do they matter? Fails to deliver occur when a trade in a stock doesn’t clear properly. Sometimes the cause is benign, but AMC’s fails to deliver have been large and persistent.

    Such a pattern is often associated with the illegal practice of naked short selling. Naked short selling involves selling shares without actually borrowing them first, pushing down the price artificially.

    Perhaps recent moves by the SEC, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC), and others to reduce fails to deliver and prevent illegal trades are having an effect.

    That said, AMC’s fails to deliver remain 238 times larger than those of Amazon (671 on July 29th, the most recent date available). Amazon has a market cap nearly 100 times AMC’s. AMC’s fails to deliver are 351 times the size of Apple’s (456 on July 30), the largest stock in the market.

    Trading in AMC stock still looks fishy. Regulators may be making progress but there’s still a long way to go.

    More on AMC:

    AMC HAS 35,000 TIMES THE FAILS-TO-DELIVER OF AMAZON

    AMC ON THE THRESHOLD LIST: STRONG EVIDENCE OF NAKED SHORT SELLING

    HOW AMC CRAZY IS YOUR STATE?

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