Roaring Kitty, Stock Manipulator?

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The WSJ reports (gift link for paywall) that E*Trade is thinking about kicking Keith Gill — better known as Roaring Kitty or DeepFuckingValue — off of its platform. Gill is largely credited with driving the GameStop stock price to unrealistic levels, as evidenced by a PE ratio of 1,320 on June 4, 2024.

E*Trade is asking whether or not Gill manipulated the stock price, presumably via his Reddit and Twitter posts, especially after he resurfaced after silence for three years.

It is possible that Gill will find himself under an SEC investigation for this very question, especially now that he has 120,000 GameStop options worth $289 million. Gill will probably respond along the lines of, (1) he can’t be held responsible for what hundreds or thousands of amateur investors do, and (2) out of 306 million shares outstanding his portion is tiny and unable to influence the market.

But at this point his following is loyal and many will follow his lead, which will affect the stock price, where volume now exceeds 25 million. For comparison, Apple has 15 billion shares outstanding, approximately 50 times more than GameStop, with a trading volume of 62.5 million, which is less than three times that of GameStop.’s. Or more simply, Gill tweets and GameStop trading volumes goes through the roof.

It’s clear that Gill can significantly influence GameStop trading.

I don’t know if Gill is acting in good faith or not, I do know that he is in a position where he can influence this stock, and probably dozens of others that have prices low enough and some other measure of volatility that can be exploited by amateur traders. He may not have always had the influence, but he now does whether he realizes it or not.

In other words, he has a responsibility to be prudent in communications that will impact the stock price.

It made me think of Elon Musk, another figure who is able to significantly influence stock prices with a tweet. He often seems clueless that his has such power. Again, I don’t know if this is in good fatih. Like Gill he didn’t always have that kind of power. In many of his actions, he seems unaware that the repercussions of his behavior, as the world’s richest man, are orders of magnitude greater than anyone else’s.

In other words, he has a responsibility to be prudent in communications that will impact the stock price.

Neither man seems to understand what their influence is, or if they do, understand the idea of prudence. (Or perhaps don’t care, I don’t know.)

How Small Is A Small Business?

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(If you are on the front page, click here to see just this post in a clearer view)

How big is a small business? There is no single definition, and any person you ask probably has their own idea.

The SBA publishes a list of their definitions of “small business” by industry and uses either revenue or employees. A business can be small with revenues up to $2.5 million, or up to $47 million depending on the industry. For industries that use headcount as the metric, a small company has 100 up to 1500 employees, again depending on the industry.

Why does this matter? I can think of two reasons:

  1. Most people have no idea how much the definition varies. I see articles in national news organizations that think of “small” as $100m or 500 employees, while other business owners may think $10m or $20m is small. Or 100k.

    I hope this helps people (1) understand how differently people think of and, (2) gives people some idea of what a common definition might look like.
  2. These definitions affect government contracts that businesses are eligible for.

On this page/post, you can search that list by industry or NAICS code to see what the definition of “small,” is, either by gross revenue or employees, whichever measure the SBA uses.

A random entry is below.

Search by Industry or NAICS Code:

Limit:

Average Limit for Sector:

Variance from Sector Average:

Average Limit for Subsector:

Variance from Subsector Average:


    The other thing this page demonstrates is how quickly AI will and is changing tech and data analysis: I found the data source and had the idea, but the code was generated entirely by ChatGPT. I am really blown away by gpt-4o, the context window is so much better. While you could put in tens of thousands of words (tokens) with gpt-4 the model still got lost quickly and you’d need to start a new chat.

    For this, I had multiple iterations and it never lost track of where we were, and always outputted the entire code at once. (YES! Can you believe it?)

    Data is loaded directly from the SBA API feed at https://api.sba.gov/naics/naics.json

    Find the code for this post at https://jonathanaddington.com/how-small-is-small-code/

    The Continuation of a Genocide

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    The WSJ with an article out on the continuation of a genocide began twenty years ago:

    Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and other allied militias in recent days have attacked and torched villages in war-torn Darfur, according to satellite images and interviews with survivors, stirring fears of more mass killings in the region.

    Satellite images analyzed by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab show significant new fire damage in 11 villages west of El Fasher since late March….

    Amani Jalia said she discovered the charred bodies of her elderly parents in their home in the village of Sarfaya, about 20 miles west of El Fasher following an attack by RSF fighters and Arab militia on March 29.

    “They were setting fires on all houses and firing in all directions,” Amani Jalia, who asked to be identified only by her first and middle names. “They were shouting and calling us slaves.”

    Another article described a mother forced to watch murderous fighters set fire to her house while her children were trappd inside, to be burned always.

    It is tempting to say that there are no easy answers — and there are not. The West, and America in particular, re-learns the dangers of foreign engagements in situations that don’t directly involve us every decade.

    But we can skip to the end to decide on the next action.

    History’s Guide tells us the violence will continue until it is out of control. Killings and absolute atrocities will reach a level that we can’t unwatch, that we can’t ignore, even with Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Gaza. The UN will decide to send in armed forces, or threaten an air campaign, something, to force the RSF to cease open atrocities and genocide.

    But only after tens of thousands are killed.

    It’s a double real-politik. Foreign engagements are tough, unpopular and have unintended consequences.

    But if we are likely to engage when the violence is high, the existing sides stronger and more dug in, then the rational thing is to jump in now, when we can prevent more harm, both for the region and for us.

    Not Every Breach Is A Critical Breach

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    This week it was revealed that Cisco’s Duo had a vendor breached that handled VOIP & SMS for Duo. Duo does MFA, so this is potentially a big deal. I had a vendor send me this language for our own PR:

    The severity of this incident cannot be overstated. The compromised information could be exploited by cybercriminals to launch highly targeted attacks against you and your organization.  

    It can be overstated.

    It’s estimated that the attack affected 1,000 people.

    The exposed data is relatively minor1

    The data contained in these logs includes an employee’s:

    • Phone number
    • Carrier
    • Location data
    • Date
    • Time
    • Message type

    Bleeping Computer

      MSPs and cybersecurity professionals will undoubtedly fatigue the public if we cry wolf every time something happens in the cybersecurity realm.

      1. I’m sure someone will flame me for saying this. Of course any data can be used for phishing or other nefarious purposes. I’m not saying that it can’t be. But it also isn’t a full set of PII and credentials. Notably, names, addresses, employers and related applications are all missing from this list. ↩︎

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