I'd be willing to wager that linux-based operating systems are running on far more ARM chips than x86. Heck, probably an order of magnitude more. Phones, tablets, vending machines, appliances, televisions, streaming devices, all kinds of IOT devices, printers, etc.

As someone who used to own shares in this company, the backing was not so much about the vehicles they would produce and sell themselves, but their development of a electric vehicle "skateboard." Basically, a complete frame, battery, motor solution that could be sold to the established ICE manufacturers to build their own cab and interior. The hope was that they would manage to strike a deal with an incumbent auto maker(s) and sell them their skateboards in quantity. It's not a foreign concept as quite a few manufacturers use engines/drivetrains produced by other companies today. I made a bit of money and got out when other, more established EV companies started pushing their own skateboard concepts.

I still think they have potential, but I don't think this offering (the truck referenced in the article) is it.

Large fines for what exactly?
Government: "If you are going to do X you must pay Y for the privilege."
Facebook: "Okay, we don't think X is worth paying for so we'll just stop doing X."
Government: Surprised Pikachu face.

If the real reason for this government action was to stop Facebook from profiting from content produced by others they should be perfectly happy with this outcome. The problem is solved. Call it a victory and move on.

Because this doesn't seem to have happened, I suspect that wasn't the real reason. I suspect the reasons were two-fold.
1. Large Australian media companies give lots of money to the government and the government is motivated to keep them happy. Basically "Give me lots of donations and I'll get you far greater money in return."

2. The government also realized that news media can be very important and that said media is dying. Rather than taxing citizens to support some sort of socialized media platform (people hate taxes and stuff so this probably wouldn't win votes), they thought "Who is both hated and has lots of money? Let's force them to pay to save our dying media industry." Of course, they couldn't frame it as "We're singling you out to pay for a thing we think should be provided to our citizens - largely because you are unpopular and it won't generate backlash against me." So they came out with this.

LOL - Apple is calling it a smart phone so it implies I can install apps of my choosing. What? Why would you draw that conclusion? Apple made the smart phone market. Both the iPhone and the App Store were out before the first Android phone was commercially available. Thus, I think it's reasonable to say that Apple set the expectations for a smart phone and the idea was never "I can install whatever I want however I want." Especially given the fact that the iPhone didn't support third party native apps from day one. Sure, there were other (incredibly awful) "smart phones" prior to the iPhone (I had a couple of Windows phones), but those were niche products and certainly didn't define the public perception of a smart phone.

It's cool that you made up your own definition and all. Just don't expect that the world and apple have to abide by it.
   

Seems like it could also be a case of a private company or individual being hired by the military to pursue research into certain new technologies. I wouldn't be surprised if these contracts include a clause in the remuneration section saying payment is X or X + Y where Y is a payment for each successful patent.

Based on this sentence "Or so the metals guys have been saying since before I was paying attention" I think you both agree. People have been pushing silver and gold hard at least since 1991 when I got my first paper route and the free newspaper subscription that came with it. Every time I opened up the finance page there was some add like: "Why X metal is set to shoot up this year." People have been pushing the artificially low line on these two metals for as long as I can remember. It has always been about suckering people into buying in order to reap the (usually pretty sizable) delta between the value of the actual gold you're buying and the price they charge to get that gold into your hands.

There are valid reasons to own these metals, but those reasons (to my knowledge) haven't ever been that they are "artificially low."

Yes and no. For the last few months of 2019 the US was a net exporter of petroleum products (though still a net importer, by a long margin, of crude). For context, in November 2019 we imported 5.8 billion barrels of crude and exported 3.0 billion. So, in a vacuum, it is possible for the US to survive on the oil it produces. That said, we aren't in a vacuum. If OPEC were to decide to cut production in half or just stop producing altogether, what do you think happens to the price of oil? It goes through the roof and, suddenly, it's $500 to fill up that shiny F-150. What do you think that does to the economy? Still think there isn't a dependence on ME oil production?

The thing about electricity is that it's generally not super easy to import/export. Price is determined by local/national grid demand and production cost. Those prices are also regulated. So, should another country or coalition of countries try to squeeze electricity production it's likely to only impact those countries. If we eliminated our use of oil and relied completely on non-exportable energy produced for our own grid, other countries could do whatever they wanted without impacting our price. That's true energy independence.

A shift from oil to electricity would likely lead to a scenario where electricity exports became more viable - especially for countries occupying the same land mass. Ideally, we would build our generation infrastructure in such a way as to prevent energy produced in the US from being diverted to areas willing to pay higher energy prices. I don't know if I have much faith in the US doing so. It seems more likely they'd try to build excess capacity and send it to less developed nations for cheaper than they could develop their own infrastructure - allowing for the bullying of those countries over the long haul.

Not commenting on the quality of advice from GLJ Research, but instead noting that losing money in a bull market isn't necessarily a negative indicator. General consensus of analysts is that the US market is tremendously over-valued. The actual economy is in shambles (at least partly due to the tremendous damage done by COVID), but equities are shooting up and up due to super low interest rates and voluminous input of capital from government entities. In short, the markets show every indication of a huge bubble.

GLJ isn't providing advice to retail-type folk. They are providing advice to institutional investors. These folk aren't playing in your artificially defined timeline of "in the last year." They are looking longer.

So, what do you do if you have a medium to long outlook and the market is in a bubble? You hedge the hell out of your investments. And you short the bubble. The problem is, shorts cost money in the short term. Hedging often is the same. So, over the course of a year, you may lose. Over the course of 3-5 years you may stand to make significant gains while things crumble around you. Michael Burry took some pretty big short-term losses during the housing bubble. I'm sure some Slashdot folk were calling him out as an idiot because he lost X amount over a one year time-line.

Is this particular guy right? I don't know. Does it make sense to call him out in a bull market for picking positions that lost around 10% in the last 12 months? Definitely not. If he's hedged/shorted well his position could see a meteoric rise while the rest of us watch our 401Ks lose 60%. Not saying this will happen, but it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility - at all.

This is not financial advice, but an obersvation. I have no position in Tesla. I would like to see electric vehicles (and Tesla) continue to succeed in the marketplace.

Funny that this is being reported by the media and certain sources of financial info on Feb 1 when short positions won't even be officially reported until Feb 2. And Feb 2 is just when those reports are due to the regulators. Those reports won't be made public until Feb 9. Given that the real data isn't even available, the reports of short positions as a percentage of float can only be estimates at best. Given the trade volume over the last several days, the estimate of how much of the short position has been covered appears (to me) to be wildly overstated. The only volume I'm seeing looks to be coming via a short ladder attack. I guess we'll see in a little over a week.

Link to the short interest reporting schedule if anyone wants to verify: https://www.finra.org/filing-r...

Yes, you are correct. I misspoke (typed) when I implied they could drive up the price of shares simply by banding together and purchasing in large numbers (especially over time). As you mentioned, it is specifically purchasing a heavily shorted, low-float stock that can (not necessarily will) drive the price - especially if the people doing the purchasing are willing to hold as opposed to selling at a given target price.

While not an Econ professor (thank you for sharing your knowledge - it's an admirable career that I hope to move into in my next stage in life), I did work in the capital markets (focused on mortgages, mortgage securities, and CDOs) shortly after the crash at a very large, well-known player. My role was brought in to help unwind some of the massive damage done during that era. I was privy to a number of documents and conversations that really opened my eyes to the kind of behaviors that are demonstrated behind the proverbial curtain and it was pretty clear that manipulation of markets to the detriment of the retail sector is very real and very regular. I think the CFPB was starting to make some progress in that area, but we all know that organization was neutered under Trump and most of the progress was slowed, stopped, or reversed altogether.

Anyhow, thanks for clearing things up.

This argument that a group of people on Reddit are "manipulating the stock" is utter bullshit. Sorry, but momentum purchasing is a legitimate strategy employed by many fund managers. They see momentum (often in other funds) and they jump on it. Perfectly legal. Of course, these funds are really the only ones typically able to capitalize on momentum because they're able to utilize HFT and direct connections to the market to back out of the momentum swings faster than a retail trader (I won't even get into how they actively drive momentum swings by trading back and forth to drive up prices). An even better example might be what happened with credit default swaps in 2008. Go look at the price trends on those from 2006-2009. These hedge funds realized that there was a market scenario where a number of lenders were going to be in a world of hurt and recognized the credit defaults were going to have to pay out. They jumped on and drove the trading price of credit default policies through the roof. Further, they put the squeeze on the original holders of the policies who realized, suddenly, they were going to really really need them or risk bankruptcy. Again, taking advantage of a market condition completely legally. I could go on about how the collapse of AIG made most of these credit defaults worthless and all of these CDS would have also been worthless, but you and I got to bail these traders out (via hundreds of billions poured into AIG), but that's another post.

Now, retail investors have identified a market condition where a hedge fund shorted a stock so egregiously that there are actually more shorts than there are shares in existence (shorts were around 140% of shares outstanding) on a stock with fairly low float. It became obvious that buying a significant amount of shares would create a shortage of shares in an environment where the short holders would be obligated to purchase them back or pay huge interest on their borrowed shares. This drives up the price. Buying the shares to drive up the price makes perfect sense. People started jumping in when they realized how to capitalize on the momentum. If hedge funds can recognize a market scenario that demands a surge in price then retail investors can do it.

Basically, what you say is manipulation is what the big players do all day every day. Suddenly, there's outcry when the little trader finally has a chance to do the same. How dare they use the market to their advantage!? That's the purview of the rich and only the rich. Right? If this is manipulation then the FBI should be locking up the 1% in droves. Instead, they'll probably be going after the person who made 10K on GME because we can't have the uber rich lose confidence in their ability to steer the market to their advantage 100% of the time.

How about coordinating shorts (in this case, shorting more shares than exist) to devalue a company below its cash value? Follow that up with doing so to allow your buddies to swoop in and take over the company at pennies on the cash value then selling the value and wrapping the debt into a bankruptcy filing (destroying thousands of jobs in the process while screwing the debt holders)?

There's a reason a number of big name folk are jumping on this - it's illustrating just how Wall Street has been screwing over retail investors and destroying value for the last 30 years. The best part is that the more they whine about this the more their transgressions are brought into the light.

Check out Chamath Palihapitiya's interview on CNBC today. He says explicitly this while calling out the institutional investors who are whining about how the master they created has been turned against them. It's a long watch, but definitely worth it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's one thing to short the stock of a company you think will go under. It's another thing to short a stock way below the value of the assets of that company then use your cronies at all the media outlets to encourage everyone else to do the same. Once you've brought the value of that company far below its cash value you or one of your buddies goes in to purchase a controlling share at pennies on the cash value, liquidate the assets and then plow all the debt into bankruptcy - all resulting the loss of thousands of jobs and pushing huge losses on the debt holders.

The original intent of shorting was to be used as a hedging technique - not as a way to destroy companies and reap the profits. Just because these funds have made this activity look normal doesn't mean that it isn't manipulating the market. The bottom line is that it's the large players that kicked off the manipulation. The folk on Reddit are just exposing it. This is like a cat burglar crying that it's unfair that someone turned on the lights.

I don't think people understand this. These hedge funds go all-in on shorting a stock. Then they release their own analysis on why they shorted the stock and others should too. They do the same thing via their cronies at all the media outlets. Pretty soon, they create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Essentially, they use their money, power, and position to damage a company and its investors - bringing the value as low as possible. To make it worse, some venture capital buddy eventually swoops in and picks up the company for pennies on the dollar, restructures it so that they can sell off all the assets and then wrap up all the debt for a nice bankruptcy action. Meanwhile, thousands lose jobs and the long investors lose all their money. It's so many things that are wrong about the current design of the market all wrapped up in a nice, neat package.

Now a group of people on Reddit have organized to slap a couple of these fund managers hard in the face (figuratively of course). Suddenly, the fund managers are crying collusion. Look at the mean Reddit people! They are conspiring against me! Like the fund managers haven't been doing the same thing the whole time and in more egregious fashion (and with far more egregious results). The fund managers pulled the pin and tossed the grenade and now they're all upset that someone had the sheer audacity to toss it back. "But only I get to use grenades!!"