What we’re reading (6/3)
“NYSE Says Technical Issue That Caused Berkshire Hathaway To Be Displayed Down 99% Is Fixed” (CNBC). “A technical issue on Monday caused the A-class shares of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to appear to be down nearly 100% on the New York Stock Exchange for most of the morning trading period. Trading was halted in those shares, as well as in Barrick Gold and Nuscale Power, which had also seen dramatic falls. All three stocks have since resumed trading.”
“‘Roaring Kitty’ Post Seems To Show Trader Held Onto Giant GameStop Stake After Monday’s Rally” (CNBC). “Gill, whose handle is ‘DeepF------Value’ on Reddit and ‘Roaring Kitty’ on YouTube and X, posted another screenshot of his portfolio showing the same common stock and call option holdings Monday after the stock market closed as those he shared Sunday evening. He still owned 5 million shares of GameStop and 120,000 call options with a strike price of $20 that expire on June 21, the screenshot showed. The post on Reddit’s r/SuperStonk forum could not be independently verified by CNBC. “
“E*Trade Considers Kicking Meme-Stock Leader Keith Gill Off Platform” (Wall Street Journal). “Shortly before Gill reignited a meme-stock craze in May, he bought a large volume of GameStop options on E*Trade, the people said. This week, Gill posted screenshots of an E*Trade account showing he owns GameStop shares now valued at $140 million and a new set of options that expire later this month. His total gains on the positions were at $85.5 million, he posted late Monday, showing his account remained in operation. The stock of GameStop surged again on his posts, showing the power Gill, also known as Roaring Kitty and DeepF—Value, has as an influencer. GameStop shares, up 21% on Monday, have risen more than 60% since he reappeared.”
“Oil And Gas Companies Are Trying to Rig The Marketplace” (New York Times). “[Y]ou might reasonably conclude that the market is pivoting, and the end for fossil fuels is near. But it’s not. Instead, fossil fuel interests — including think tanks, trade associations and dark money groups — are often preventing the market from shifting to the lowest cost energy.”
“Wealth Inequality In A Low Rate Environment” (Matthieu Gomez, Econometrica). “We study the effect of interest rates on wealth inequality. While lower rates decrease the growth rate of rentiers, they also increase the growth rate of entrepreneurs by making it cheaper to raise capital. To understand which effect dominates, we derive a sufficient statistic for the effect of interest rates on the Pareto exponent of the wealth distribution: it depends on the lifetime equity and debt issuance rate of individuals in the right tail of the wealth distribution. We estimate this sufficient statistic using new data on the trajectory of top fortunes in the U.S. Overall, we find that the secular decline in interest rates (or more generally of required rates of returns) can account for about 40% of the rise in Pareto inequality; that is, the degree to which the super rich pulled ahead relative to the rich.”
