Foreign curry, so um moon gang boy, oh boy, welcome back to the dumb money show where 50 of the time we are right, 100 of the time in this particular little teaching session, this little lecture we have going on here at moon academy. I want to talk about hedge funds. I want to talk about some of the recent developments related to hedge funds, because, if it didn't make me laugh, i would probably scream - and i just really want all of you to - i guess - live in the misery with me. Beyond that, we'll be going over some of the upcoming earnings we'll go over the short interest, we'll look at some of the charts, but more so i really want to dive into some of this wild stuff.

That always seems to be perfectly playing out in wall street. So without further ado, my fellow apes - let's hop right into it, so just so, you know as we're closing out the final half hour, the final power hour of the final day of the first month of the year. Things are actually pretty green, we're seeing quite a bit of green, and this is the s p. 500 heat map we're seeing some green in the crypto market um, so hey your portfolio should also be feeling pretty solid amc right here.

Up 5.6 percent genie is crushing. It up 10 neo is up 16 tesla's up 9, there's a whole heck of a lot of green right here. In fact, the only one i see not green right now is microsoft and that's break even but a lot a lot of green. The spy currently up.

1.15, the q's up 2.4 and we have the russell up 1.9 so once again, lots of green lots of green lots of green. If you were paying attention on locals macquarie.locals.com, i'm still in that tesla call just to give everyone a little update right there. Currently up 40 um. So if i weren't battling with pattern day trading good chance, i'd be locking this in i'm just want to share my own opinion.

This is not a buy, a sell, a hold signal. All i do is share my own opinions. I don't want to do trade alerts. I don't want to tell people when to buy when to sell anything like that.

I'm just currently battling with pattern day trading, so i had to swing this overnight, but i would have locked in some at 15, some at 30 and earlier at one point today was pushing 75. I probably would have locked my runners in around that moment or cut my runners in half and let half of my runners lock those in let the other half run and just see how it like gaps overnight. Hopefully, gaps upward, but overall lots of strength in the market to close the month out, uh very, very quickly. Just you know: amc short interest of 21 gme short interest of 18..

The s p 500 has a short interest of 22.. The nasdaq 100 has a short interest of 24 and the russell 2000 has a short interest of 37.. So that's just your quick stories of what's going on right now. Um wanted to share that very green and the short interest, not as high as i expected it today, but still general to how things have been we're, seeing quite a bit of like elevated short interest readings.

Now, let's hop into the the meat and the potatoes of this particular video. So if you don't know this beauty pageant winner here, his name is mr plotkin, and he is a hedge fund manager at melvin capital. Now, there's a good chance you've heard about gabe here. You've probably heard about melvin, they are one of the hedge funds that almost went belly up about a year ago.

They were one who, notoriously had a large large short position against gamestop and people in their sweatpants on the robin hood. App sitting on their couch, took this guy to the wood, chipper um and actually would have completely blown up. But then there was a massive multi-billion dollar capital injection from the likes of citadel and also uh, steve cohen's .72. So let's get into this because i want to share with you a little bit about what happened for the new viewers.

But then i also want to dive into some of the most recent developments here. At melvin capital hedge fund, melvin capital lost 6.8 billion in a month. Winning it back is taking a lot longer. I have to admit when i lose 6.8 000 in a day, and i've done it.

It leaves some sort of feeling in my gut. I don't even know how you conceptualize 6.8 billion gabe plotkin, wasn't sleeping his bets against meme sucks such as gamestop were backfiring at the worst point in january 2021. Almost a year ago, melvin capital management was losing more than 1 billion a day as individual investors on online forms such as reddit banded, together to push up prices of stock melvin was betting against. We were in a terrible position.

Stared death in the face, mr popkin told employees in a zoo meeting late that month, but we've made it through. Have you, though, this is like the point where, if it was a sitcom, there would be like the record scratch. Have they, though, or maybe like the narrator, would come on little did mr plotkin know they had not made it through how this would go if it were some more highly produced show, but it isn't now. We've gone from my mom's basement to my mom's attic.

So this is what you're gon na get hey. It's free content. The damage, though, was severe melvin's loss that month was 54.5 or roughly 6.8 billion, one of the swiftest and steepest declines for a hedge fund. Since the financial crisis of 2008., they lost over 50 percent honing in on seven billy.

But what's weird about this, the way wall street journal like wrote it they wrote him as somehow as like the protagonist like he wasn't sleeping they thought back. This is what melvin did hurrah america, capitalism. This is you got ta have pick yourself up by the bootstraps after you bet against retail, who allegedly knows nothing and you lose billions and billions of dollars and get bailed out by your daddy but hey. Who am i to judge now, when melvin bets against companies in real time they are using strategies such as sorting their stocks? It does so in ways that mostly don't trigger requirements to disclose its positions.

One more time for people in the back. Now, when melvin bets against companies through strategies such as shorting their stocks, it does so in ways that mostly don't trigger requirements to disclose its position. So remember when you're managing over 100 million dollars, aum assets under management, the current filing every single quarter with what's referred to as a 13fu report, your call position to report your put positions and you also report your long positions. But you do not report your short positions.

Look at a 13f you're not going to see anything ever about shorts, so obviously shorts are reported, but they're not assigned to an individual. I guess like firm hedge fund bank institution, anything like that. They get the magnitude. The number and then that's what the public gets, but it's not like.

We know the shorts, we know the puts. We know the calls. We know the longs, but shorts are not reported, which is telling me that melvin is not really in the game of going long. Really on puts anymore they're, probably having legitimate short positions by year end.

The fun was part way back for the full year. Melvin was down 39.3, so at first they took a hit of 54 by the end of the year. They recouped roughly 14 15 percent of that, unfortunately, for him, and i guess the rest of the melvin team and citadel and also 0.72. This year, 2022 has gone off to a rocky start.

Amid volatile markets, hedge funds, betting on fast-growing companies, have suffered losses, melvin lost about 17 in the first three weeks of the year, double-digit losses and we're just we're. Just kicking off the year, we're three weeks in and already down 17 that is no bueno as dora. The explorer would say so you might be thinking to yourself. That's a lot of money.

This got a lot of notoriety like what's the dealio here. Well, let's take a little walk. A little stroll down memory lane mr plotkin became a top money maker at steve, cohen's sac capital advisors. He was a top money maker and he was one of the only few sac portfolio managers to make money in 2008 when credit markets seized up in 2013, sac pleaded guilty to criminal insider trading charges and agreed to pay 1.2 billion in fines to stop managing outside Money, mr plotkin left sac several months later, with his whole team sac invested uh when the new fund launched by 2019.72 asset management, the new name of sac and more than one billion invested in melvin, so basically steve cohen.

This is a guy who, like loosely billions of like the show on showtime, is loosely kind of based on steve cohen. He's interesting, um, there's a whole book about like the crap that he's pulled off and he's one of these guys that he kind of like got off by just like certain legal loopholes. This. This is not a straight up dude.

This is a guy who has like straight up without, i guess, allegedly like he was accused of breaking the law, but he always seemed to skirt around it and that his underlings, the people right under steve cohen, always seemed to take the fall um, there's books on It i believe it's called black edge. It's a worthwhile read! But anyway, when all this went down, plotkin's like yo peace, i'm gon na head out and they're like wait before you head out and trade on the stuff that we've taught you. Why don't we give you a billion dollars and that's been rocking since uh 2013.? Well, what's interesting is melvin had been betting against gamestop since 2014, deciding some of the pivots in the gaming sphere, so he wasn't newly against gamestop. This guy has been against gamestop for almost the better part of a decade.

Let's get that definitely clear. Mr plotkin phone point 72's, mr cohen, for advice. According to people with the familiar with the matter, mr cotton plotkin gabe uh believed that additional money could help him weather the volatility. So this is all in reference to when things a year ago went belly up.

He didn't know what to do and then citadel reached out, and they said yo we'll give you money. Well, hey! Why not check this out? Look at the dates ken griffin's hedge fund citadel, and then he also has the high frequency training firm, the internalizer aka citadel securities. It's one of these things that, like legally it's two distinct businesses, but there's many people who question if there is that truly that, like wall in between them, but anyway, on january 25th, a senior investment executive, there called mr plotkin with an offer to invest. That's on the 25th, if you look at the timetable, it's kind of interesting because do you know when the trading got shut down there on the 28th uh, so that was an absolutely wild week and they got this investment into them like right when retail days before Retail was stopped from buying this kind of interesting timing.

Hey, i don't know, maybe it's just a coincidence or maybe there's something a little bit more to it. So anyway, ken griffin calls him up he's like yo i'll give you money. I know things are going south for you and then he's like okay. Let me call my first dad steve cohen and let's make sure if that's all right by the end of the call mr cohen had offered to invest more as well so cohen's like yeah.

That sounds good. You could have two dads like this is the 21st century. It's like not that big of a deal and we'll give you 2.75 billion dollars hours later. They partnered up as in citadel 0.72.72, as in ken griffin, steve cohen, they're, like yeah kid, we'll save you and we'll give you a boatload of money.

The investment allowed melvin to reduce its leverage rather than sell out of its positions very very interesting because we were told, especially if you listen to the um. I guess sec congress government interviews of ken griffin, also of gabe plotkin, also of roaring kitty, keith gill. Out of all of those guys they're like yeah, no, we don't have it like and we don't have predatory shorts or anything like that. But right here the investment allowed melvin to reduce its leverage rather than sell out its positions as in it didn't cover it there.

It just like covered its leverage, so interesting, interesting, interesting. Obviously, there's a lot more to this. You can check out this article wall street journal, but overall, it's kind of a wild wild story and even now um, when ken griffin invested he's like no like this guy right here, plucking he his his brain just works at a completely different level. This is just a smart strategic investment.

Well, i'm telling you if you give me billions of dollars and you need me to lose you 17 in a mere three weeks. I am your guy any of you out there. If you need someone to lose, you money seriously. Dm me call me email me: oh, this is just a service.

I will offer to people if you're, a retail or if you're, a professional investor and you're simply like i have too much money. I don't like my tax burden. I need losses. This is your guy right here.

If and i will do it for free, you don't even have to invest that much just give me the money. You want me to lose and i will lose it for you. I am very, very adept and skillful at that. Moving on to a completely different, but similarly as wild story, bill, ackman, scored on pandemic shutdown and bounce back in two complex debt investments, one, the economy's shift shut, swift shutdown and the other in a fevered reopening mr ackman made nearly 4 billion in profit on an Outlay of about 200 million 200 million with an m he transformed into four billion with two um.

Interestingly, timed trades, that's probably the best way i can put it so bill. Ackman he's very well respected on wall street, very, very rich guy. He runs a very, very large hedge fund in late 2020, mr ackman increasingly worried about the virus bought instruments that would pay off. If corporate bonds fell in value, he paid 27 million for the position and sold it a few weeks later, for 2.6 billion, 27 million to 2.6 billion um after investors woke up that the risk of the pandemic battered companies might not be able to pay their debts.

You know what's interesting about this. One is how the wall street journal decided to present this to all of you. This is a story that i actually was following before i even like really had a youtube channel like this was just something i was paying attention to, and this is one of the first times that it really really struck me on wall street. As i was trading myself, i watched this play out and i just thought to myself: matt matteo is that eagle? Here's what happened wall street journal is pitching this to all of you, as if oh no like this guy, some did some like really insane deep, diving research and he hired virologists and he did everything he needed to.

He looked at into the market and he's like this virus is bad, no one's, expecting it like they're, pitching it as if this guy has a four digit iq and he was just learning about the virus very rapidly he's like the world's underestimating this i'm gon na Make this bet - and i'm gon na make a lot of money. Now. That's one interesting take on how this actually played out, because you know what and he he just basically started crying and he had stories about his dad and he had stories about really everything and he was super tearful and he basically made it seem as if, like The world was coming to an end he's like i don't know about this, like it was crazy and what they don't really tell you about. It is that, right before the freaking interview, he took 27 million dollars and bet against it.

Like he put, this money up, went on an interview, tearful stories of his father calling for armageddon, and then he knew people were listening to him. Like i said, he's like a super super well respected person, and then he made billions off of it. 27 million into 2.6 billion - that's a hundred x, absolutely bonkers, but this interview and that one trade that does not that's not where this story ends. It actually gets a lot more fun.

You got ta find out how he made the other billions of dollars. Let's fast forward a little bit, so basically he was looking at the fed and he made an interesting bet that rates would have to rise. So this time, instead of 27 billion he's like hey, i have a good knack at talking to people and making bets before that really pay off. So let's leverage this one up - let's bet 177 million on options tied to treasury bonds.

That would pay off if interest rates rose significantly over the next 18 months by late march, the investment had more than tripled in value by the fall concerns about inflation, had gripped wall street and the position kept rising once again, you're pitching it as this guy. He just knows he just gets it. He just has a. He has a big brain type of vibe to him like he just he sees what's going on in the market.

He can really see into the matrix. Well, maybe uh, maybe not that obvious, all the while. Mr ackman was urging the fed to raise rates. In october, he made a presentation to the new york fed laying out the risks of runway inflation and criticizing the central bank's wait-and-see stance on interest rates.

It's time to turn them down the music and settle down. He tweeted right after so he placed a bet and then you know what he does with his position of power and influence. He goes to the new york fed and he says: hey uh, resp race. I love this.

This is wild. How do i sign up for these positions? I want to take a short position against the economy and then go on and interview and say the economy is going to collapse and then right after that, i want to benefit from it and then just go and be like hey, fed, uh, you're being stupid. You should raise your interest rates wild wild wild wild. This is, this is one of those things that um i i don't know if this is confirmed or not, but i was like doing some research on twitter on this, and i guess, like this is maybe potentially being looked at by some regulatory bodies because, like it's Not even that the timing is sus, the timing is sus, but it's just so egregious like dude, you shorted the market and then went fear-mongering on tv dude.

You benefited off of like a rise in interest rates and then, like literally, campaigned to the fed to rise interest rates. This is one of those things that it's so blatantly in our face. It's kind of ridiculous, like it's actually kind of like really really insane um, but the most recently are dudes at it again right here, bill ackman january 26 buys 3 million shares in netflix after recent self becomes a top 20 shareholder. Have you guys checked in on netflix in a hot minute? Have you seen what netflix is doing right here, the 26th i'll go from the open? I won't even go from the lows he's up another 12.5 on 3 million shares of something at that point.

That was priced at 380., 3 million times 380 up an additional 12 percent on that, probably looking for the gap fill plus some all the way up another what 75 to over 500, this guy he's raking it in talk about influence. I know over the past year or two, it seems like everyone's kind of pointing out in terms of like regulation and markets and that stuff elon musk's undue influence. I think maybe maybe not as much as musk but definitely deserves to be in the conversation. But mr ackman, here billions of dollars off of his own influence wild wild wild, and this is a very quick story, completely different subject, but it's fun nonetheless for me to cover companies executives donated nearly 300 000 to manchin's campaign after he rejected biden's buildback better bill.

You know i truly wish this stuff was harder to find. I wish they went through like a couple steps here or there to try to cover their tracks like, overall, all of these stuff, what melvin capital, ackman, netflix and then right here mansion the build back, better thing donating right after it. Folks, like these companies are the ones that benefited from not from it not being a thing. Mansions campaign received contribution from companies such as facebook, cvs, lowe's, anthem, cigna, boston, scientific, some, energy, some other biosolution, 300, 000.

I just it's it's so egregiously in our face, and all that makes sense is that they just must think that the general public is so incredibly just dumb and slow and not paying attention that they just do it. They don't even try to do this stuff. Covertly. It's just it's just out there they're like yeah, we did it who cares whatever who's who's, the moral checker here, who's the ethics checker here, who's, the legality, checker and all this stuff.

I feel like someone out there is getting taxpayer dollars to be checking this stuff, and i just want to know who that person is and like what they're doing, because it really has that vibe. That they're, just i guess, playing what like wordle all day or whatever. The name of that game is because, if i can find this stuff with a couple, google searches, what what are they doing? I i guess i just have some questions i like to conclude all these my little rant segments with like some definitive answers, but this time i'm just gon na leave you with a big interrogative, a big question mark a big. Ah, i don't know what's going on because i don't have the answers, but this stuff is absolutely nuts.

Well, let's focus on more of the positive things i'm seeing some pushing into close so on the spy. Remember calling out 451 on the qs we're breaking above 360.. So that's looking real solid gme got above that 105 mark beautiful it's up 11. I do wish tesla were a bit higher.

I mean for me with those calls and the money i'm trying to make back right now. Uh would love. If that were sky high. I mean it did gain what how much money today 83.

I see no reason why i couldn't have gained like 830 dollars today. I don't think i'm being greedy when i think it should have 10xed its 10 gain on the day. No reason why uh tesla couldn't have gone sky high um, i see some people speaking about amc. Amc has done nothing since the open it pushed up to 16 and we're battling at 16 right now.

It might close in a very, very bullish manner in the next five minutes, but overall it just like traded sideways. It just didn't really trend um and you get those days i mean apple. It was doing nothing until right. Now we get that breakout before when it got above.

What was it that 167 level? I was calling out 174 so if you did end up doing that, i probably would have locked those in but there's a lot of green in the market today. But some of that green was that early morning push and it's gone sideways since then, but now as we're getting close to market close for the final day of the month january um we're seeing some things really pushing to close, pushing into close all right. So we'll leave these up for a hot sec. Uh hang on.

I want to switch back over to this just because game stops having a beautiful push. Matt you should make if you don't laugh, you'll scream an official segment on the show. I like that, if you don't laugh you'll scream, i like that as a segment good to see you matt. What's your take on the 1 800 short interest that keeps popping up on different platforms on amc heard it twice.

I would say it's wrong. I trust ortex. The most and the short interest is coming in at 21. Um, you got ta, i don't know what data providers you're necessarily like referring to so i don't know how much of an in-depth conversation, but if you're, using something like iborodesk or fintel or stonko tracker.

All of those are like notoriously erroneous, and it's not that they're not accurate um. They just have a very small like sub sample of the overall data size, while ortex is getting 85 percent of transactional volume. Yes, it is not a hundred percent, but it is um on a relative basis. Far more accurate than fintel, then yahoo then sanko tracker.

Then i borrow desk. A lot of those are exclusively sourcing. It from interactive brokers like that one brokerage, all right, great questions, great questions. Out of curiosity, what am i using to monitor whale activity? Unusual whales is what this is right here and i also use tiblio so tiblio unusual whales are some of it.

I'll use benzingo. Once a while to see what's going on i'll use, twitter i'll use some of these heat maps, i'll use trading view for my stocks, i use public for my crypto, i use ftx and then for my options. I use td ameritrade. I really like their thinkorswim platform, who makes your thumbnails.

I must know who this genius is uh. I believe, he's actually in chat right now. Uh chaos in roswell he's obviously a very, very talented artist, and i would argue that ever since i met him and started using his thumbnails, maybe not in all of youtube. But i feel absurdly confident that we have the best thumbnails in all of the finance market.

Sub sector - and i would bet that we are in the fighting class of straight up - all of youtube - rumble twitch doesn't really have thumbnails um, but i i'm like that confident in our thumbnail game. True trading groups in here whoa whoa whoa. Just so you guys know. True trading group will be having a stream in about 30 minutes.

Let me give you the link. This is 100 completely free. If you want someone else's opinions about what's going on um right there, i just dropped the link in chat um. So, once again, when it comes to the market and you're on your own education journey, it is useful to get multiple people's opinions um, so the link i just dropped into both chats right there, the live stream, it's 100 free.

It is at 4 30. So, in about 30 minutes, not even close ttg looks like we're going to have to have a thumbnail off between ttg and chaos and roswell all right folks. The bell is about to go ding ding ding in less than one minute. The only reason i'm giving you this warning is, if you are battling with pdt and you're, trying to get a trade in like before the market closes.

I just want you to know that you got to get it in. You have less than 45 seconds, so amc going up over six percent is considered sideways trading. No sideways trading is considered sideways trading. Who said that? That's a silly question: what what do you think this would be called if i could put a perfect rectangle around it? That that's called sideways trading.

You can tell because it's trading sideways. I know the stock market community, maybe not the most creative with their naming, but when something trades sideways, that's when we call it sideways training, ding any ding, ding ding, the casino is closed. Folks, we just ended the first month of 2022 and i hope the month was a green month for you, the markets and a lot of individual equities came back fighting um. This is setting us up for a very interesting week.

Don't forget that we still have important earnings. We have alphabet aka, google. We have meta aka facebook. We also have amazon.

Those are three of the main ones we'll be paying attention to. In fact, here's a quick snapshot, um exxon mobil tomorrow before the market opens. We have paypal, we have amd, we have marathon um. So if you want to take a quick screenshot of this, but these are all ones that will be reporting this week.

We are still in the middle of earnings season. So just quick reminder for you: there don't forget, go to that free stream in about 30 minutes with ttg other than that i will catch you bright and early tomorrow morning, 9am. I do appreciate all the support apes. I love you.

Thank you. So much you guys are absolutely beautiful inside and out. Thank you for all the likes. Thank you for all the subs.

I will catch you soon, whatever it is for you morning evening afternoon night. I hope you have an absolutely beautiful day, peace out and as always from chair and myself best of luck in the markets, you.