Most recently, cliff asness, who is running aqr a world like a literal leading quant fund, had an interesting talk and now it's making as its rounds on social media and, as you would expect, for anyone who besmirches the name of amc. They get the brunt of twitter and reddit, but i want to actually play what went down for all of you like to look at, and let me give you one scary example of of something we don't like. I've only told you things we like i, i didn't know this until i was coming on tv uh, but we have a very tiny short of amc. You heard it a very tiny short of amc and as soon as he said, those words the internet blew up.

So we got a meme stock short. Now again, you might laugh that i don't know this. I don't know it because it's never mattered. We had it throughout the whole meme stock craze.

We don't notice that the size we take positions surprising. No, when you want to short high valued stocks, no because it's terrible on everything we care about it is more than any of the other examples. I've given it is super expensive, super unprofitable and super high beta and volatility um to anyone running a quantitative process. That's anything like ours, which you know i wish we were totally original, but we have some original stuff, but we're not totally original um.

I think they'd all hate it um, but i think it's like a 12 basis. Point position in the portfolio for those of you who don't know a 12 basis. Point means point one: two percent, not twelve percent, not one point two percent. It is point one two percent, which basically mean it's very small and that's only one of i assume there are many many portfolios so so this is scary.

I i dare all the the meme stock maniacs to try to hurt us and right there. That's really what pushed the internet over the edges? I dare all the meme stock activists apes, all that stuff to come after us and that's what ended up playing out on twitter yeah. They don't like hedge funds. Let them come! It's 12 basis points they're, they're, they're, they're, crazy people, and i will not notice them, but they can have their fund.

That's the part i wanted to share with you now. I want to say a couple of things: the fact that it's so small 0.12 in the event of a squeeze it would do nothing to aqr, because it's so small, it's not gon na blow him out of his position. It's not gon na end the portfolio. It's not gon na end the fun, that's not how it's gon na work, it's simply too small, even in the event of a squeeze and as it goes up, he could also just cover his position when it gets to his risk parameters.

A point one, two percent: it's not something like melvin capital, where it's such a large percentage that if it goes awry, it could actually end it. It's simply too small. So that's more of just like okay, the factual numbers of. What's going on now, let's talk about a couple of these other things.

First of all, do i care that he's short not at all, because i think people should be able to short i'm against manipulative short selling, i'm against these brokerages, who are loaning out shares, but they don't actually have the shares to loan out. I'm against the conflict of interest with market makers, but for someone who just thinks hey, i think something's overvalued. I think the market should allow shorting. I do maybe you think some random stock.

Maybe you think whatever stock xyz is value too much and you think it's time for it to come down. I have no issue with betting against anything. I just think it should be done in a reasonable legal non-manipulative manner and the fact that he's publicly stating what he's doing tells me that he took a legitimate short position. Does it suck that it's against something that i'm invested in that i'm longing yeah we're playing the opposite sides, but it's a market, that's a free market.

I believe you should be able to do it. So we got the numbers out of the way 0.12. Then we got like - i guess, my feelings of like just shorting in general, and it just sucks that he's against a play that i'm currently long on. Let's get into some of these other things.

He's basically is saying that we're crazy, i believe, is the verbiage and then also, if you go over to his twitter, you're gon na see some stuff that maybe you agree with, but i'm assuming most of you won't. I have tremendous respect for retail investors. Who've done their homework and invest well. I do not have respect for idiots with laser eyes talking about stonks and calling themselves apes who are proud.

They don't know anything. It's a subtle distinction. Sorry too confused! I don't like this because it's treating the entire ape community as a monolith of people with laser eyes, stonks and proud that they don't know anything. I think that is very much belittling the entire community do.

Those subset of people exist within this community 100. There are still people out there who think every single share of amc and gme is traded in dark pools. They still think that short ladder attacks are a thing they still think. Brazilian bdrs are our biggest issue.

There are things that have been presented as a hypothesis and then actively disproven, and yet they still choose to believe in the conspiracy theory of that said thing whatever that said thing is that's not good and then, when it happens, the way we're depicted in media. That's what they're going to hop on to so then all of a sudden we're treated as a monolith of stupid people who don't know what they're talking about when in reality yeah some of that exists. But then there's also people who are becoming borderline market structure. Experts within this community and it's easy to attack the weakest links in in the community and that's what we're seeing right here and with it.

Obviously, this is like responding to like just like i mean right here. You could read some pretty bad things, and even this, this exact account was saying 50 of amc's traded on dark pool. Simply not you can check this out on the website. Otctransparency.Org i'll post, the link below you could check it out for yourself, but about five percent of amc and gme daily volume and monthly volume weekly volume.

Whatever have you is traded on, a dark pool over 50 percent is traded off, exchange and dark pool trading is off exchange trading. But what's that leftover part, that's off exchange! That's market makers, that's citadel! That's vertu! There's so much off exchange trading being done by retail wholesalers internalizers. That is not dark pool trading, but it's still off exchange trading and it's the market makers and to me, that's the major thing to focus on, but once again when people are feeding the drum of conspiratorial things that have actively been disproven. That's when people such as clifford such as media, just look at us and they're like oh they're, stupid people who don't know what they're talking about.

So i don't really like that and i thought really, if you wanted to hey, i don't care that he took a 12 basis. Point short position against amc, but if he kind of cared about right here, tremendous respect for retail investors who've done their homework. Why not get on tv and say: hey like i see the craziness of it, i'm happy that more young people are engaged in the market. I'm happy that more people in general doesn't really matter.

Their age are engaged in the market and maybe they went to over leverage, but if they want to continue their trading and or investing career check out resource a b and c, but instead it was kind of really switched over into a straight attack. And then, obviously, you have a subset of the ape community that attacked and it quickly devolved in a negative manner when in reality, maybe not clifford himself, who runs aqr, which once again, is a very, very impressive outfit. Those are the types of people we need on. Our side, the more people like clifford, like dave, lauer, the people who know this industry, who are gon na, be like no hang on they're on to something like: let's listen to them, and they help us properly.

Formulate our argument. So we can bring it to the sec, so we can bring it to politicians, so we can bring it to the doj and win this case, but instead, unfortunately it quickly devolves into like internet attacking back and forth, but anyway, this made its rounds very very recently Because, as soon as you hear short amc short gme people lose their absolute minds, and in this case i would say, on both sides on all three sides: media side, on the ape side and on aqr side. I think we're all equivalently wrong because i just think it was handled without an understanding of the other person's view, and that's more so with aqr and the apes with media. I don't know if i'll ever really like trust them, because they're gon na do whatever like clickbait they possibly can.

But i just wanted to share all this and i implore you to see. What's going down on twitter watch the full interview, there is cool stuff in there, but i just wanted to share my thoughts and obviously i would love to get your opinion on it as well.