Story time.
I’ve been a degen for a while here. Back in 2020 I started data mining y’all and making visualizations of comment activity. Lots of clouds. It was fun. Even made a paper trading options bot I got banned for. And an inverse wsb index. I remember TSLA was going wild then and was fun to see in the vizes.
There was another guy doing this that felt like a rival (quiver quantitative). Good times. I miss the DD and energy of the olden days. Remember MU 90 guy??
Anyway I moved onto other data mining and ended up digging into the PDFs for Congress’s financial disclosures. I remember finding some strange files that weren’t the usual digital format. This congressman Trey Hollingsworth was buying up large amounts of $MMP and scanning handwritten files in. Harder analyze the data if manually entered back then. Remember this was before the AI wave. He was even on like the finance committee! So possibly just an expert investor. Anyway, this company went on to go up and then get bought out. Interesting. Many in congress were buying oil stocks after the Covid drop.
Other notable trades were Pelosi was buying lots of NVDA back then like 5M in options in 2020. Funny to see this in hindsight. And they were buying solar stocks with some of the legislation going into place. I saw some sell early for a huge gains (hehe)
A friend of mine and I tried selling this alternative data to Bloomberg and even went to a conference of theirs but it never got off the ground and life happened. Cool to see there are products now for this.
Oh and by the way! We met with some scary Eastern European from Citadel and he confirmed they had been datamining Reddit. I bet they astroturfed the fuck out of this place.
I guess my point is that I’ve provided some good alternative data to the community before so I wonder if this hunch has some value now. My cost basis is like 140 so I’m 30% down on CHTR right now on some leaps
I’ve scaled into.
—-
Wish I was better at reading between the lines the last few months but I bet Goldman and friends (Arete Capital?) have been playing games with this security. Why individual stocks are dangerous when you’re not in a position of power. Too easy for them.
They cut in early July like 185 -> 125 and we saw the first drop from 150 -> 125 during normal hours. 110 during the earnings call. They probably rode this down and then back up to the 150s, going against all the accumulated shorts.
Then back down again. CHTR even tried to court them at an 9/9 investor conference but they received a further cut to 110. PT hit within the month just like last time. Now I bet they will do the same and long against all the shorts again and make bank again.
There is fundamental value in this stock but it’s so easy to push around right now in its weakness. Can’t be mad at the traders making mad money.
Anyway this could continue for a while during this turnaround. Sometimes takes years (though I think we’re near the end of the worst of it).
—-
I just don’t buy that they have been 100% short these two price target cuts (and that rivals went long against them and they continued their short). They are just too duplicitous. By the way this is the same institution that did this.
GPT:
“The Abacus/subprime episode is worth understanding because it demonstrates why people sometimes scrutinize Goldman when it has a strong negative view on a security.
Goldman was simultaneously:
1. Structuring and selling mortgage-related products to clients.
2. Taking positions that benefited from the mortgage market falling.
3. Working with hedge-fund clients that had opposing economic interests.
4. Not fully disclosing some of those conflicts to investors.”
—-
TLDR: 150 2028 CHTR calls