The Opening Belle - Screw The Suits

Only one thing to say this morning.

WSB > Wall Street.

Power. To. The. Players... ✊

Melvin Capital has been on the WSB hitlist for months.

Melvin took out a huge short position on GameStop.

This video was posted on WSB three months ago, long before WSB really hit the headlines and the squeeze began...

'Melvin Capital got greedy...'

And they've already paid a price with an estimated 30% loss YTD...

But the story isn't over yet.

The Citadel Connection

Pulling together to take down the little guys?

This isn't charity.

Point72 had more than $1 billion invested in Melvin, and Citadel had some spare cash after pulling in $6.7 billion in trading revenues last year - buying those sweet Robinhood order flows is very lucrative...

Point72 & Citadel will get a non-controlling revenue share and there could be another $1 billion in the pipeline...

Bailed out & protecting their own interests.

With the squeeze set to continue, will it be flows before pros?

Or will the deepest pockets take the prize in the end?

The short squeeze has diverted all attention away from the crypto boom, even as the crypto market continues to evolve and mature...

As part of the strategic partnership, GSR will become a shareholder in Diginex and one of the main liquidity providers for EQUOS, Diginex’s crypto exchange.

Richard Byworth, CEO of Diginex, commented:

“As an exchange that avoids the conflict of interest of making markets against its own participants, the partnership with GSR is key to growing the depth and liquidity in all our trading pairs.

GSR are one of the largest market makers in crypto and crypto derivatives, so longer term the partnership will evolve more broadly into liquidity provision around key offerings like options, structured products and borrowing and lending.”

“Since the launch of our BTC Perpetual product, we have seen a meaningful increase in activity on EQUOS, with overall volumes increasing over 2.5 times on an average daily basis, compared to December levels.

We anticipate that with GSR onboard and the additional depth they will bring to our books, we will continue to see volumes increase meaningfully as liquidity and spreads improve.”

The EU Recovery Fund is 'too slow and complicated'

So says French foreign minister Bruno Le Maire.

Bruno's been chatting with the FT,

“I see there are blockages and that all this is too slow, that we need to accelerate and that if we want to emerge from the economic crisis in the best conditions, the European money must arrive as quickly as possible,”

“We didn’t expend all that political capital only for the plan to be delayed for technocratic reasons . . . It’s too slow and it’s too complicated. We must accelerate.”

He also wants the EU to review the bloc's stability and growth pact to allow for greater debt ratios.

The horse has well and truly bolted already on that one...

Those rules state that members should limit public sector deficits to 3% of gross GDP & overall debt to 60% of GDP.

The rules were suspended due to the Coronavirus crisis (not that they were ever enforced anyway), and France's debt now equates to 120% of GDP...

France can raise 10-year sovereign debt at a negative interest rate of 0.33% and 50-year debt at just 0.59 per cent.

That's a pretty sweet deal to refinance a nation...

The EU were already struggling with the vaccine rollout - Hungary got so fed up waiting they began sourcing vaccines directly from Russia & the UK, bypassing the EU completely.  

The Vaccination Rollout

Israel are miles ahead of everyone else, with 30% of the population receiving their first dose of the vaccine, and 14% their second.

How long until things can go back to normal?

The Wall Street Journal report that early studies offer hope...

Maccabi Healthcare Services’ research arm said it saw a 60% reduction in coronavirus infections two days after the second dose was administered to its patients aged over 60, as well as a 60% drop in hospitalizations among people over 60 two days after the second shot. It also found that of 128,600 people who received both doses, just 20 people contracted Covid-19 more than one week after the second dose. Half of those people suffer from chronic illnesses, they said.

Early data from Clalit, Israel’s largest health-care provider, suggests Covid-19 infection rates began to decrease among a group of vaccine recipients two weeks after they received the first shot.

For those who have received both injections, Israel’s health ministry is issuing certificates as the basis for a so-called green passport. Holders would be allowed to go to restaurants, stadiums and other public places that were closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Only now are people in Israel beginning to explore what they might do with the stronger immunity brought about by the vaccines.

Israel will be a solid leading indicator for the post-Covid world.

That world is sure to include online payments & Utrust are making crypto payments easy.

Whether you want to receive crypto payments for your business or simply spend crypto on everyday items, Utrust is the solution for you...

 Besides significantly lower fees, the core @Utrust advantages are:

- Zero chargebacks losses ✔️

- Zero locked funds for flagged card payments ✔️

- True borderless coverage ✔️

- Fast settlements ✔️

Keep it simple đź‘Ť pic.twitter.com/2IIfYtkyMq— Nuno (@nunocor_) January 12, 2021 

Market Snapshot

Markets looking pretty subdued today ahead of a big day of earnings and the Federal Reserve meeting.

Microsoft earnings rose yesterday boosted by increases in cloud computing and Xbox sales.

Tesla, Facebook & Apple will be reporting today....

Federal Reserve Meeting

There is little doubt that policy settings will be left untouched.

The focus will be on any hints towards future tapering, and there's plenty of potential for the market to 'hear what it wants to hear' at the meeting.

Anything beyond cautious optimism could be taken as hawkish, so Powell will need to choose his words very carefully.