Link to SEC report: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2021-212

How could they lose $7B?

Melvin Capital Recent 13F : https://sec.report/Document/0000905718-20-001111/

It shows they had about $757mm worth puts. Assuming all of that puts are worth zero, their max loss will be $757mm. GME loss would be $55mm.

Hedgefunds don't have to disclose everything? Just trying to understand how did they lose that much.

Payoffs for a short position is stock price right now minus stock price at maturity. You can make a synthetic short by longing a put and writing a call at the same strike price and the problem you see here with the short squeeze is really writing the call.

Thank you. But those short calls are not in 13F, so they can selectively disclose?

1 put = 100 shares of the stock. Without knowing the put details it's hard to know the extent of their loss. But your total could be close to what they lost just on GME.

I understand basic options. They listed only long puts in 13F, the max they could lose is the premium they paid. So there must be some other securities that they didn't disclose (mostly short calls as @tchanglington mentioned) which resulted in the loss. I was asking if hedgefunds can disclose selectively? If so that can be exploited in so many ways.

When you buy a put, you are only risking the cost of the put. Unlike a short call or short put.

Yes 1 put contract is technically the right to sell 100 shares at the strike price of the put.

Try Spacemacs, default vi bindings

List by a Math professor: http://people.math.gatech.edu/%7Ecain/textbooks/onlinebooks....

Don't know about 18th century, but some what similar strategy is already mentioned by Taleb in the interview: Kelly Criterion.

I thought what I was saying was quite a bit different. If one is using the Kelly Criterion, one needs to know what the probability of winning and odds paid for a win. Traders generally don't know these at all and only can find them out by making the trade and seeing what happens.

Of course when the Kelly Criterion is known and constant, one can make the optimal bets and get rich, but those situations don't exist in real life (unless there is some kind of monopoly or external force being used to make people take the other (loosing side) of the bet). The iterative thinking of the the Kelly Criterion must be part of a traders mindset, but markets never understood well enough to where this formula can be strictly applied.

A bit strange to see Taleb talk about a casino situation to explain his thinking. Elsewhere he mocks such "casino odds" view of the world as very unrealistic an bemoans that such a view will cause one grief if you use those ideas with "skin in the game".

ps. I've only read "Anti-Fragile" and some of his blog essays.

I agree, but why is U.S. subsidizing the whole world without getting as much benefit? Its not just this, U.S. is subsidizing the whole world's healthcare costs too.

The US benefits enormously from military hegemony. It's the de facto arbiter of global capitalism and it controls all of the world's shipping lanes.

Oh the US gets a lot of benefit. Europe buys American stuff and generally does what the US tells it to.

One more reason I do sometimes this because I remember the website but don't quite remember the domain (was it .com or .net or .org)

I do understand that, but the poster specifically said typing "xyzx.com", not "xyzx" - and I definitely see people doing that

Yup. I have a friend who goes to Google, types "facebook.com," then proceeds. I mean the whole facebook.com

PAXOS is very complicated, Raft is direct response to it by simplifying the consensus algorithm. From the article:

  "It's equivalent to Paxos in fault-tolerance and performance. The difference is that it's decomposed into relatively independent subproblems, and it cleanly addresses all major pieces needed for practical systems."

One of the authors of Raft is Prof. John Ousterhout(TCL creator, among other things)

I think it is not just about "need for influence".

To learn somthing, is to 1. Read, 2. Do and 3. Teach. So blogging can be "teach" part.

>>web-scale word-of-mouth(social networks, product review sites, recommendations from field- or topic-specific authoritative websites)

All of which are ad-supported and if they were fee-based they wouldn't be that massive, which agian brings back to ads.

>> Relying on ad revenue is a moral failing.

If relying on ad revenue is a moral failing, so is using such a product/service. Have never used a such product/service?