gatnom

Reinland

In the Robinhood case, it's actually pretty simple. Suppose the two of us are trading on their platform, and you buy 100 shares of GME and I sell 100 shares of GME. Then, from a clearing perspective, I have the shares and you have the money, so the net position within Robinhood's account is zero. Now, if you're the "democratized finance" platform and 9 out of every 10 clients is taking the same position on the same stock, you're not netting out near zero; you've got a large position one direction or the other. I will admit the rest of the risk calculation is opaque and somewhat arbitrary, but that is the crux of it. You're preaching to the choir as far as your complaints about the market are concerned. I hate the way the fed and government continue to pump the markets and then act flabbergasted when income inequality skyrockets. I'd argue that it has felt out of sync for basically a decade now, but at this point we're just speculating.

It's really a problem with no solution. I typically have pretty libertarian views, so I am generally in favor of letting people sink or swim on their abilities. Ideally, clearly predatory behavior would actually get punished in our society, but these things get murky quickly. I guess I would settle for not giving the people who destroy our economy the next time a stack of get out of jail free cards and a blank check.

You're right, I didn't word that very well. But, it is my understanding that somewhere down the line Robinhood itself is runs on margined trading (Citadel, order flow, etc.) with the clearinghouse. Since they were probably crazy long due to the fact that all of their traders were buying and not selling, they are basically unable to take on a longer position without being able to come up with that money, and thus they are not allowed to have anybody buy more shares. I want to point out that at this point, the system is actually working as intended: clearing is essentially an insurance fund to manage counterparty risk. Due to the volatility and extreme position, capital requirements went up to collateralize. This all makes sense and is generically a good thing. It is also worth noting that Robinhood may have been required to collateralize >100% of their position, though I have no idea if that is true in this case. I don't necessarily disagree with your main point that the system is designed to keep the "little guy" out as much as possible. That's basically what the SEC is constantly enforcing: the flipside of gatekeeping is protecting people from doing stupid things with their money. This is a separate issue than how the clearing process manages risk, though. Should it take three days to clear these trades? Probably not (I don't know enough about how it works to be definitive), but that seems more of a technology issue than a regulations/SEC problem. I would agree with you that the system should be more open, which would technically also loosen the protections on common citizens. In the end, I will admit that I'm mostly in the commodities space, so my understanding can be completely wrong here. If ss2k5 or whoever knows more than I do here, I am totally open to being corrected.

This is a margin call. Robinhood (the broker) got margin called by the clearinghouse. Since they are not allowed to use customer funds as collateral, they disallowed new positions from being taken. It would be insane if they didn't allow traders to sell out of their positions.

It does seem unlikely that the true flagship manufacturing of Samsung and TSMC would ever come stateside, short of geopolitical instability forcing it to. It is worth noting that the types of chips that come off of these processes don't necessarily need the latest and greatest. FPGAs are kind of a canonical example; they use a 28nm process I believe. AMD completely fell behind a decade ago (and split off their manufacturing to the still-behind GlobalFoundries). Intel was actually so far ahead 5 years ago that it still manages to be competitive despite its manufacturing having stalled out. A key piece here is that both were (and in Intel's case, still are) vertically integrated such that their primary focus isn't on just manufacturing but both the manufacturing and design. It doesn't seem inconceivable that an American company can enter this race and catch up, but as you note, it is incredibly capital intensive and difficult. Because of chip embargoes, China is already moving towards creating their own manufacturing supply lines.

Does TSMC manufacture most of these chips for cars? I'm not horribly familiar with chip manufacturing supply lines, but it would make sense to me based on the kind of cars that are being halted (i.e. not self driving Teslas) that the chips which are missing are more on the lower end, meaning that they are probably capable of being manufactured by any number of outdated fabs. As far as your supply lines comment goes, Samsung (the other cutting edge manufacturer) just announced today that they are opening a plant in the US in a couple of years. It seems somebody in the government is thinking the way you are. Intel is also still competitive and could regain its form, but one wonders if their architecture and manufacturing abilities have fallen too far behind.

With the year coming to a close, I thought it might be interesting to check back in on that U of I testing data to see how it played out over the course of the semester. Aside from the initial wave associated with all the kids coming back onto campus to start the semester, it seems to have held up fairly well. The case positivity mainly stayed between ~0.3% to ~0.6% with some outliers on each side, and the total cases per day stayed generally well below 50 until the October surge that hit state/nationwide. Even then, it still stayed below 50 more often than not; there was just a notable uptick in positive cases. I get that it's impossible to know for sure, but it doesn't seem glaringly obvious to me that the students would be any safer remote learning. Score one for the physicists and the epidemiologist they worked with?

I'm a generalist software engineer. My current job uses Haskell primarily, but I have used lots of other languages like C/C++, Rust, C#, JavaScript, Python, SQL, etc. Once you learn a language or two you can kind of figure anything out. I learned the basics of programming in school, but otherwise every language except C/C++ and Java I learned on the job. Nowadays, there are plenty of free resources online to learn basically anything, so those would be just as good of a starting point as any traditional degree. The main thing is just building your resume until you can get that first opportunity. It can be a tough process, but it's not too much different from looking for a job in any other field. Feel free to reach out on here if you have any questions. I am not exactly in the field you're looking for, but I may be of some help depending on the question.

What percentage of the student population would have become infected had they stayed off campus?

It's all about finding the type of job you want and just getting lucky enough to get hired. One way or another, you will end up learning on the job when you're getting paid. For example, my current job I had basically used none of their languages or technologies and still got hired because they liked me as a candidate and felt they could teach me whatever I didn't learn myself. (I did have five years in the field in general, so it's not a totally fair example. But, by and large this is how it works for everybody) Assuming the thing you really want is to move into a data science / programming position, the sooner you move into it the better. Taking a meandering kinda-sorta approach is only going to leave you feeling disappointed and probably like you still haven't learned "enough". If the pay, job security, added stress of switching careers, etc. is all good with you and your family (and the job responsibilities are what you're looking for), I would take opportunity A if I were you. But, there's a lot of details here that only you can answer. Opportunity B kind of sounds like they'd be jerking you around a bit, IMO. If you decide to stick it out at your current spot and look for a better fit, the best thing you can do is pick a project that you're interested in that requires the skills that you need and just do it. It doesn't need to be useful, special, or even good in the end; you will learn some skills along the way that will help you get hired. Keep repeating this process and dedicating yourself to getting better, and you will get there eventually. If you don't know what to do or how to do it, just Google it; that's mostly what "professional experience" is anyways. Googling "personal data science projects in Python" (or whatever is more relevant to you) is honestly probably a decent way to get started.

Economists, probably. OT: love the Jorbs tweet. One of my favorite streamers.

Credit card fees are probably a better comparison. Credit card processing fees are generally passed down to the consumer by selling goods at a higher price.

For what it's worth, my girlfriend works at a private (Catholic) school on the south side, and their plan has also been a clusterf***. They are back in person except for those students which opt into remote learning (few in the working class), and the teachers are responsible for both.

Bitcoin would act more like a currency if people used it more like a currency. At the moment, it is primarily seen as an investment vehicle, and it behaves accordingly.