US banking crisis, Wildberries strike, and threats from Interactive Brokers

hereor see on video.

The secret to getting a 950% return: you need to invest in a simple Soviet …

Russian “Instagram killer” (banned in the Russian Federation) called “Rossgram” trying attract 250 million rubles from investors under the promise of a yield of 950% over 3 years.

As they say – not an investment recommendation!

Wildberries mass strike: revolutionary spirit trampled tyranny

Wildberries is an extremely popular marketplace in Russia for selling clothes and a bunch of other goods. If you want to trade all sorts of different things for yourself, then it’s much easier to come to ready-made demand in Wildberries than to build your own distribution network (this is long and expensive). Well, according to the same logic, it is easier for a novice author of articles to go publish on VC/Habr/Pikabu than to try to find readers from scratch on their own.

This creates a rather large concentration of power in the hands of the marketplace. And from time to time he, well, abuses it a little – for example, he begins to fine the businesses involved in the process for nothing and drives them into huge debts. Each individual business is small – it obviously cannot overcome a large marketplace.

So they decided to unite and arrange big strike. Yes, it’s so famous that they managed to get their way pretty quickly: the Wildberries brand did not leave the news feeds all week (not in a good way), and as a result, they had to fine canceland in the State Duma they started talking about what should be done urgently marketplace law.

Read more about it all in article by Lesha Podklentov; but I’ll tell you a short moral: no matter how much market power has accumulated in the hands of one business, if it is abused a lot, then you can rake in problems!

Tinkoff offer you can’t refuse

Lots of sources last week reported about the fact that Tinkoff began to offer “selected” premium users to get a bank card from Kazakhstan’s Freedom Bank (then the same rumors appeared about Alfa-Bank).

As a result, all participants in the process disowned this news – Tinkoff, Alfa, and Freedom itself. At the same time, they continue to write in Telegram channels and chats that such offers are still being received by some bank customers. Such is the Kazakh map of Schrödinger!

New restrictions from Interactive Brokers for Russians and Belarusians

Interactive Brokers pleased Last week, Russian clients received a letter stating that no euro-denominated securities could be traded after March 24 due to sanctions. Apparently, this applies to both residents of the Russian Federation/Belarus and citizens of the Russian Federation/Belarus living in other countries. But for those who have a residence permit in the European Union, there seems to be an exception.

In general, formally, we are talking not only about the euro, but in general about all the currencies of the EU member states; but if you, all of a sudden, invested in some securities in Hungarian forints, then you are already a dope entertainer, you, go, no letters from IB will scare you!

JPMorgan learned a lesson why it’s not always worth bailing out other people’s banks

In 2008, one of the greatest financial crises in history erupted. In the US, a large bank called Bear Sterns staggered. Here is the American government and suggested to an even bigger bank, JPMorgan, like, “Buy a good bank at a huge discount! We’ll even lend you money to buy! And we will save the banking system!!”

Here JPMorgan foolishly agreed – paid more than a billion dollars for the bank, and began to live and live. True, after the hellish financial crisis of 2008, the purchased Bear Sterns was sued by everything: not only investors, but even the very same American regulators. As a result, the Morgans had to pay as many as a couple of tens of billions (!) Of all sorts of fines and legal costs. Divorced them, it turns out, like a simpleton.

Now back to the present: staggered last week Silicon Valley Bank, and American regulators began to rush around the market in search of someone who could “buy a good bank and save the banking system.” Just for some reason no one really wanted (and especially JPMorgan did not want to harness itself). I wonder why would that be…

Catch-22 for Silicon Valley Bank management

Actually, a continuation of the previous news: the shareholders of the bankrupt Silicon Valley Bank instantly sued to the same bank. They accuse the bank’s management of securities fraud, that is, “securities fraud”. According to American laws, if a company hid important information from investors, and then the shares collapsed due to reasons related to this information, then it kind of “offended” investors by this, and you can sue a lot of money from it.

Here are the investors in SVB and accuse management of hiding the fact that … “the bank is particularly at risk of bankruptcy.” Well, do you understand what the joke is? Any bank whose senior management comes out with an official statement like “guys, we have an increased risk of bankruptcy here!” Will instantly go under water (even if it really is not doing so badly). This is exactly what is called a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

In general, there is a classic Heller catch-22: if you want the best for your shareholders, then you will not trumpet the risks of bankruptcy everywhere; but if it does happen, then if you please, fork out in court!

How the States are dealing with the banking crisis

One of the main candidates for the next bankruptcy after Silicon Valley Bank was another regional bank called First Republic. But in the end, the 11 largest American banks Deal among themselves (there is a suspicion that the Fed helped them in this) pour a lot of their dough into this sick bank – $ 30 billion, to be exact – to help it survive. Such is brotherly mutual assistance!

Meanwhile, the entire American banking system has last week hired the Fed has as much as $165 billion – this is downright a record, this was not even in hellish 2008 at the height of the crisis. All this, as it were, hints at the fact that banks still have a significant level of problems.

Credit Suisse is the Swiss bank that failed

Credit Suisse is the second largest Swiss bank. For the last x number of years, he regularly many times a year, he gets into all sorts of scandals: either the money of clients is squandered in the Greensill fund, which lent money in return for fictitious sales, or the Archegos hedge fund will be given a bunch of dough in debt, and take it and burst. In general, the impression has long been created that the maximum hand-assers rule the bank!

Well, now, the story has reached its natural end: Credit Suisse is completely sick – the shares fell down again, there is no longer any confidence on the part of the general public, in general, it’s exciting. The bank first went to the Swiss Central Bank and took there under $50 billion. And now, They say, negotiations are underway – to whom would the bank be sold? Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, has been named as the main candidate, but the German Deutsche Bank may also be considering a purchase.

Hard, in short, now European banks. Especially if the handlers are at the helm …

UPD: Writethat UBS seems to have finally agreed to buy Credit Suisse for a little over $3 billion. This is more than half what the bank was worth on Friday. (And 10 times less compared to the beginning of 2022…)

GPT-4: New Skynet Larva Delayed

The latest GPT-4 language model was released last week. In short:

• I learned to understand images and memes (but this feature is not allowed to be used by the public).

• Now he programs even better, speaks all languages, tears people apart in almost all tests.

• Little is known about the filling, the developers in the rat decided not to share information.

• They tried to make the model safe for more than six months – in the end they decided that it would not yet be able to escape to the Internet and start spreading itself. But if it goes on like this, then there is a feeling that for future upgraded models it will be purely a matter of time.

Igor Kotenkov and I published a mega-detailed review of GPT-4 here (this is a mastrid of last week):