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SPAC Wipeout Is Punishing Followers of Chamath Palihapitiya

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41–50 of 63 posts

Re: SPAC Wipeout Is Punishing Followers of Chamath Palihapitiya

#41
post #25
post #4

Chamath is one of the most self-serving-pretending-to-be-altruistic salesmen to ever set foot in SV. If you were still a “follower” after doing even the slightest bit of due diligence into the man, you deserve to lose money.

I'm really hoping for the Kumail Nanjiani spin-off of Pied Piper where he plays Chamath. The new era of RobinHood traders has brought an incredible degree of financial populism, youtube is crowded with people giving their opnion. Some of it is really great, often more insightful and detailed than what a lot of banks dare publish - but a lot of it is rubbish.

Funnily enough, it's been said that Aziz Ansari bears closer physical resemblance to the man, and they are both of Sri Lankan descent.

Re: SPAC Wipeout Is Punishing Followers of Chamath Palihapitiya

#42
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really hoping for the Kumail Nanjiani spin-off of Pied Piper where he plays Chamath. The new era of RobinHood traders has brought an incredible degree of financial populism, youtube is crowded with people giving their opnion. Some of it is really great, often more insightful and detailed than what a lot of banks dare publish - but a lot of it is rubbish.

Funnily enough, it's been said that Aziz Ansari bears closer physical resemblance to the man, and they are both of Sri Lankan descent.

Aziz Ansari is of Tamil descent not Sri Lankan descent.

Re: SPAC Wipeout Is Punishing Followers of Chamath Palihapitiya

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, it's been said that Aziz Ansari bears closer physical resemblance to the man, and they are both of Sri Lankan descent.

Aziz Ansari is of Tamil descent not Sri Lankan descent.

Good catch

Re: SPAC Wipeout Is Punishing Followers of Chamath Palihapitiya

#44
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly agree. I listened to Chamath's talks for a couple hours. The impression one gets is a smart, charismatic and driven guy... Who uses every dishonest fake-populist rhetorical trick in the book. I still think he's an interesting listen, but you've got to be thoughtful about it. Slippery dude.

I was put off by the way he attacked Vlad Tenev. Tenev became a scapegoat for the GME fiasco, and, as the facts came out, it seemed he really didn't deserve to. I get that Tenev's "we don't have liquidity problems" answer was a little disingenuous, but it also wasn't totally wrong if you include a bunch of fine print, and I get how it was necessary. In the end, it turned out that the whole T+2 system was stupid, and…

> In the end, it turned out that the whole T+2 system was stupid, and leaked through the abstractions built on top.

While T+2 is antiquated, that doesn't excuse Robinhood giving margin accounts to unsophisticated participants (who don't understand the consequences of trading on margin), fronting them funds with "instant funding" while their ACH transfers are in flight, all while having limited capital on hand. Vlad could've come out honestly and pointed out their sleight of hand was also a contributor alongside clearinghouse requirements, but instead, smokescreen.

Re: SPAC Wipeout Is Punishing Followers of Chamath Palihapitiya

#45
post #37

I know very little about him but was initially intrigued because he’s often referred to as a “good guy” with altruistic motives who also isn’t afraid to call others out. Then I saw him on CNBC in the midst of the GameStop fiasco, railing against Robinhood on the premise that people should be outraged because Robinhood almost ran out of money and had to restrict trades. Whether or not that’s something to be outraged a…

What you're describing here is, unfortunately, very similar to the Trump playbook. And is something to be very wary of in the future.

Re: SPAC Wipeout Is Punishing Followers of Chamath Palihapitiya

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was put off by the way he attacked Vlad Tenev. Tenev became a scapegoat for the GME fiasco, and, as the facts came out, it seemed he really didn't deserve to. I get that Tenev's "we don't have liquidity problems" answer was a little disingenuous, but it also wasn't totally wrong if you include a bunch of fine print, and I get how it was necessary. In the end, it turned out that the whole T+2 system was stupid, and…

> In the end, it turned out that the whole T+2 system was stupid, and leaked through the abstractions built on top. While T+2 is antiquated, that doesn't excuse Robinhood giving margin accounts to unsophisticated participants (who don't understand the consequences of trading on margin), fronting them funds with "instant funding" while their ACH transfers are in flight, all while having limited capital on hand. Vlad c…

Then you still don't understand the problem. This had nothing to do with consumer margin; they could have not offered margin as a product and still ended up in this situation. The TLDR is that DTCC requires cash from the brokerage firm for buying a stock until settlement clears, which means the money you pay to buy $100 worth of apple, a percentage of that amount must be paid directly by the brokerage i.e. not from the $100 you gave but from the businesses account. During the gamestop fiasco, the percentage of money required from the brokers increased in orders of magnitude for GME and other meme stocks which caused a pseudo liquidation issue, but not actually since no one's balances were at risk yet.

It's ironic because this prevents small brokerages from building their own clearing houses and reducing competition in that space. Robinhood innovated to push the feature development cycle faster and got punished for it due to an archaic rule about settlement time. T+2 is really 99% of the reason this happened -- sure RH could have raised additional funds, but a black swan event isn't usually what a smaller bank plans for.

Re: SPAC Wipeout Is Punishing Followers of Chamath Palihapitiya

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end, it turned out that the whole T+2 system was stupid, and leaked through the abstractions built on top. While T+2 is antiquated, that doesn't excuse Robinhood giving margin accounts to unsophisticated participants (who don't understand the consequences of trading on margin), fronting them funds with "instant funding" while their ACH transfers are in flight, all while having limited capital on hand. Vlad c…

Then you still don't understand the problem. This had nothing to do with consumer margin; they could have not offered margin as a product and still ended up in this situation. The TLDR is that DTCC requires cash from the brokerage firm for buying a stock until settlement clears, which means the money you pay to buy $100 worth of apple, a percentage of that amount must be paid directly by the brokerage i.e. not from t…

[deleted]

Re: SPAC Wipeout Is Punishing Followers of Chamath Palihapitiya

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end, it turned out that the whole T+2 system was stupid, and leaked through the abstractions built on top. While T+2 is antiquated, that doesn't excuse Robinhood giving margin accounts to unsophisticated participants (who don't understand the consequences of trading on margin), fronting them funds with "instant funding" while their ACH transfers are in flight, all while having limited capital on hand. Vlad c…

Then you still don't understand the problem. This had nothing to do with consumer margin; they could have not offered margin as a product and still ended up in this situation. The TLDR is that DTCC requires cash from the brokerage firm for buying a stock until settlement clears, which means the money you pay to buy $100 worth of apple, a percentage of that amount must be paid directly by the brokerage i.e. not from t…

T+2 is an artifact of fund transfer settlement times isn’t it? Or to rephrase, why do we still have T+2 for equities?

Re: SPAC Wipeout Is Punishing Followers of Chamath Palihapitiya

#50

Scammers have also made millions of dollars in Bitcoin with the twitter giveaway scam impersonating Chamath. The people who follow Chamath and other gurus tend to be 'professional morons'---people in professional lines of work who have a lot of disposable income and wealth but are also somewhat dim and easily swindled and persuaded by jargon. Think the pointy-hired boss from Dilbert. See also Putt's Law.

Everyone is “dim” about many, many things. It’s not a great thing to validate someone’s victimhood for simply being used by a scammer.
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