Malt Liquidity 39
In which I finally get around to the disclaimer "This is not financial advice"
WEEEEEEEEE
Aggressive sales for the purpose of self enrichment masquerading as trading advice is nothing new, and has been dramatized in Boiler Room and The Wolf of Wall Street, and is present in droves on the internet under the moniker “forex lifestyle”.
There are simply too many fraudulent actors on the internet to catch them all, but a thing to note is that legal disclaimers do not absolve you of responsibility if you violate the law (not legal advice). Generally, illegal promotion of a stock comes down to not disclosing a position in a stock, not disclosing that you were paid to promote the stock, or knowingly propagating false information. A good way to avoid getting in trouble for this is to not do it on Twitter! Alas, we have a new SEC filing to look at.
the complaint alleges that, on Dec. 9, 2020, Fassari began purchasing over 41 million shares of ARCS stock shortly before tweeting false information about ARCS to his thousands of Twitter followers, including falsely claiming that ARCS was reviving its operations, expanding its business, and being backed by "huge" investors…
…between Dec. 9 and 21, 2020, Fassari made approximately 120 tweets that referenced "$ARCS," dozens of which were false and misleading. For example, he tweeted, "$ARCS 380,000 indoor cultivation 1 Million+ sq ft processing. WEEEEEEEEE This CEO has big plans for us" and "a ton of news coming and backed by huge investors for its #cannabis operation[.]" In seeking an injunction, the SEC alleges that Fassari continued to tweet about other stocks as recently as January and February 2021.
The complaint further alleges that, over the next several days, ARCS's share price skyrocketed, ultimately increasing over 4,000%. The complaint also alleges that Fassari made false statements about his own trading in ARCS. Between Dec. 10 and 16, 2020, Fassari allegedly sold all his shares in ARCS for profits of over $929,000, all while continuing to publish false and misleading information about ARCS and his trading in ARCS.
Look, everyone likes chatting about stocks. Being right about things is intoxicating, and as the saying in finance goes, “you only have to be right once and people will listen to everything you say for the next 10 years”.
If you really want to pump something, though, maybe do something that isn’t under the SEC’s jurisdiction? I mean, if Elon’s figured out that he can essentially say whatever he wants about DOGE, surely if you have millions of twitter followers, you can think of a more clever way to use your clout rather than a basic, obvious pump-and-dump which will obviously land you in hot water. Or maybe skew your messages more towards “I like the stock!” more than “WEEEEEEEE going private at 420/share, funding secured”.
DJ No-Chill
Much like the “nerdy girl” in the classic teenage high school heart-throb rom-coms’ makeover consists of “taking off her glasses and putting on make-up”, Goldman’s transition from “rigid corporate culture” (where Lloyd Blankfein would get shade for not shaving) to “hey, we’re cool now” consisted of a lot of marketing of the fact that David Solomon happens to be a DJ too (and tbh, DJ D-Sol is not bad at all). Every titan of the finance world needs their own quirk for their eventual memoir of how their starkly unique experiences that took them from private high schools to private Northeast colleges prepared them for the vibrant, eclectic culture that is climbing the corporate banking ladder. So when I read anecdotes like this, I can’t help but be highly amused at the facade cracking (yes, Laney Boggs was actually attractive the whole time):
Few things annoyed Solomon more last year than an encounter with a junior employee in the Hamptons. The Goldman Sachs boss has told lieutenants how the underling walked up at a restaurant, introduced himself and pointed to associates with him -- in the middle of a workday.
The tale has become the CEO’s go-to anecdote when he vents about his mostly-empty offices: proof that remote work has run amok.
Some who’ve heard the story note the apparent disconnect. The boss is perturbed by bumping into staff while he himself was spending extended summer weekends in the Hamptons at a luxe seaside rental. Solomon’s time there even made national news after he deejayed a concert where attendees flouted social-distancing guidelines, leaving New York state officials fuming..
Goldman just isn’t the same anymore. They went from selling structured products in the guise of “managing risk” to Greece, Libya, and Malaysia with the intention of profiting by taking the other side and being labeled a “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” to making retail credit cards and “high yield” savings accounts. The bank which has possibly the most rigorous style guide on the planet and created a font for people to use called “Goldman Sans” that was intended to come with the caveat that “the terms of the license prohibited the disparagement of Goldman Sachs” is now focused on the shareholder for the first time in its multiple decades of being a public company:
“This is the first management team in a long time that actually pays attention to the shareholder,” said John Thornton, a former Goldman president.
While the twitterati and journalist intelligentsia will snidely point out the various hypocrisies of D-Sol while he continues to sleep on a bed made of money, I am sort of heartened by the fact that the classic Goldman caricature of “rules for thee, but not for me” is still present in some manner. To occupy Wall Street, you need to know where to go.
DJ E-Ohm
Ah yes, the Technoking of Twitter has blessed us yet again.
D-Sol has actual song structure while Elon disrupts what we would normally call a “Frooty Loop”. I was going to write actual music critique comparing the two, but really, I’m just sad that I sort of miss when Paris Hilton being a DJ was the meme.
At the very least, Goldman’s elevator music probably got a huge upgrade. No wonder he wants them back in the office so badly.
On that note…