Free Republic

Despite recent hedge fund disasters and almost every economic indicator pointing to a potential stock crash, Biden’s administration has completely ignored a potential equities bubble.Since March 2020, $5.9 trillion in so-called relief spending authorized by Congress, as well as $3.3 trillion in quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve, has been pumped into the U.S. economy. America’s pandemic response resulted in 22 million jobs lost in a matter of months, and we still have 10 million fewer jobs than before March of last year. The fiscal and economic repercussions of going from stronger than expected job and wage growth in January...

Hedge fund Melvin Capital closed out its short position in videogame retailer GameStop Corp., CNBC reported Wednesday. Fund manager Gabe Plotkin told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin that the position was closed out Tuesday afternoon following a huge loss. Shares of GameStop have soared more than 600% in January after retail investors, organized via Reddit's WallStreetBets forum and other platforms, sought to push up a handful of heavily shorted stocks. Hedge funds Citadel and Point72 infused nearly $3 billion into Melvin Capital to shore up the fund, news reports said earlier this week. Plotkin told CNBC that speculation the fund would...

The story of some Reddit investors on a board called Wall Street Bets crushing a hedge fund has tapered off as the weekend has carried on, though they are promising to resume their mission when trading opens on Monday. RedState has covered the story extensively, including how they targeted GameStop (among other stocks) after Wall Street got way out over their skis shorting the stock in hopes of profiting off its demise (see Reddit Trolls Beat the Stock Market, and the Elites Are Really, Really Mad).Whatever your moral opinions on short sellers and hedge funds may be, watching a bunch...

Hedge fund Melvin Capital Management lost 53% in January amid a record rally in GameStop and other stocks the fund was betting against, according to The Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter. The heavy losses come as retail investors piled into popular hedge fund short targets, including the struggling video game retailer. Shares of GameStop finished last week with a gain of 400%, bringing its total return this year to 1,625%. The stock closed Friday’s session at $325. As recently as October it traded under $10. CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported last week that Melvin Capital closed...

The rules here are simple: Heads Wall Street wins, tails you lose.For those who haven’t heard, there’s a bit of a brouhaha brewing with the video game retailer GameStop, which is publicly traded. Much of Wall Street soured on the company, believing it to be the next Blockbuster or Radio Shack: a dinosaur from a bygone era that has no hope of succeeding in the increasingly internet-run future. As a result, a major Wall Street hedge fund worth billions decided to make a bet that the company’s already low stock price would just keep going lower. The traditional way to...