RC Ventures and Freddie Mac?! A quick DD on why Ryan Cohen's recent tweet (from 5/12) might have pointed toward an incoming Market Crash
Hey guys! I made this post to highlight an SEC filing from 5/11 and to connect it to a few recent DD posts and an RC tweet. It started in one direction and sort of took off into another, but I need your help.
This is a bit of a follow-up to the awesome collaboration post by u/Broad_Grapefruit u/Bloodhound1144 u/gmorgan99 :
I'm hoping we can dig a little deeper into this since we are seeing the same names pop up that were involved in the 2008 market crash.
With all the new 13Fs turning up, I wanted to see what RC Ventures was up to during Q1. I went to the Fintel website and typed in RC ventures. Here's a link to RC Ventures.
Current positions - 1
Divide his portfolio value ($1,519,638,830) by his number of shares (9,001,000) and get $168.83, which was yesterday's closing price.
So he is all-in on GME like the truest of apes!
Now for the good stuff:
If you click on SEC Filings, you'll see some interesting filings on 5/11/21.
18 Reports ABS-15G/A. Here is a link to Report 1
This report is a 235 page beast and it seems like the SEC website is getting quite a bit of traffic, so I uploaded a PDF version of Report 1 to Google Drive. You should be able to use the Find feature to search the report.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SoysFj0p-wYQEIwpip2e7wJuOAS_qM86/view?usp=sharing
Why is this listed under RC Ventures SEC Filings?
What's even stranger is that if you search for Melvin Capital's SEC Filings, it also links to this Freddie Mac report.
All of the hedge funds I searched (Susquehanna, Blackrock, etc.) linked to this report under SEC Filings. Why is that?
- Is the SEC Filings tab not company-specific?
- Is there any significance to these reports for Freddie Mac?
I truly don't get it so I'm hoping wrinkly apes might be able to chime in.
And here is a link showing the recent SEC Whistleblower awards:
Do these reports have anything to do with the SEC whistleblower awards on May 10th and 12th? Likely not, but still worth considering.
Naked Short Selling and the 2008 Market Crash
The Final Nail for Citadel, points toward this timeline:
- Citadel adds a new branch to hide certain holdings (Ashler Capital)
- Obtains a large portion of Freddie Mac (percent not known)
- Some insane shit goes down in January with their books
- Major drama and defaults happen, all connected to Citadel
- New rules are passed by the govt in record time because Citadel is way too connected to the housing market/ commercial properties
- May 10 - We get the "wind-down plan"
- Members from Freddie Mac bail the same day
- May 11 = Freddie Mac (listed under Ashler) filings released
These May 11th Freddie Mac SEC Filings are linked to all of the hedge funds that I search for and I don't understand why.
I searched Superstonk for 'Freddie Mac' and saw this post by u/EverythingZen19 from last month with a link to this article about counterfeiting of shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac leading to the 2008 market crash.
The Counterfeiting Shares of Fannie May and Freddie Mac
and the PDF from the post:
Where are Our Regulators and Who are They Protecting?
Again, this is from 2008. Look at all the similarities to what we are seeing with GME and the market today.
GME hodlers know something about counterfeit shares
Here are some quotes from the article that I found interesting, with my input bolded in parentheses:
"Since institutions (apes) purchased all of the increased 228 million shorted shares during this time and they owned virtually all of the shares outstanding, there should be few shares to trade.
Again, this does not take into consideration ownership by anyone other than the reporting institutions. It appears that primarily what is trading in the market of the GSEs (GME) is nothing but thin air, counterfeit shares flooding the marketplace."
"The (shares outstanding) added to the (short interest) equals the total legal amount of (shares available). (shares outstanding + short interest = all legally tradable shares)
In Fannie Mae, the available shares on June 30, 2008 were 1,215,282,472 shares. The institutional holdings on June 30, 2008 totaled 1,220,879,260 shares, leaving 5,596,788 counterfeit shares owned by institutions that were illegally sold as if the GSEs (GME) had issued the shares. This reported institutional ownership does not account for non-reporting banks, investment funds and private investor (retail) ownership, both foreign and domestic, which is believed to be a significant number of shares."
GME also had some high institutional ownership...
Here's a Bloomberg Terminal image from 5/10/21 showing GME's institutional ownership as of 5/2.
Over 115% and still trading millions of shares/day
This looks a lot like what they tried to do to GME by flooding the market with counterfeit shares.
GME stock price from 1/20/2018 - 10/1/2020
"During the period of July 7, 2008 to September 5, 2008, a 44 day trading period, the GSE stock trading dramatically intensified to over 9 billion shares (a lot like January 2021 for GME).
On July 15, 2008, the SEC announced an emergency order to stop naked short selling in the GSEs that took effect on July 21, 2008.
In a naked short sale, the seller does not borrow real shares to deliver for settlement of the trade entered into, i.e. the transaction is not completed with real shares, which as the SEC has implied can have a very disruptive and negative impact for the market price of a security. Instead of the SEC‘s order against naked short selling curbing the illegal behavior in the GSEs, the practice continued. In theory, the government‘s actions to protect the GSEs should have calmed the trading, but it had just the opposite effect. It appeared that the counterfeiters of stock were relentless in their determination to manipulate the GSEs‘ (GME) stock prices and they continued to manufacture shares (again, a lot like January 2021 - today)."
"An interesting aspect of the emergency order is that all naked short selling was prohibited and only if shares were pre-borrowed for short sales could they be executed. The government allowed market makers to temporarily sell shares, if needed, to run an orderly market in the GSEs without first borrowing shares, but they still had to settle the transactions within the normal three-day delivery period. This should have greatly constrained trading, but that did not occur and the supply of shares remained unlimited. When asked how the SEC was monitoring for abusive trading during the emergency order, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox replied that the SEC was monitoring for fails to deliver at the NSCC.
There were no fails to deliver on June 30, 2008 for the GSEs, when obviously there should have been (a lot like the FTD situation for GME after January).
"Since short sales had to be pre-borrowed and delivered for legal settlement by everyone except the market makers, some of the market makers appear to have violated the emergency order.
Without shares failing to deliver at the NSCC, it appears that regulators cannot find fraud in the market. Counterfeiters of securities can bypass the NSCC system and carry out their operation by failing to deliver shares outside the NSCC system, commonly referred to as ex-clearing (an agreement between market participants to clear trades with each other rather than at the NSCC). The SEC does not regulate fails to deliver outside of the NSCC system."
"All reports from the securities lending industry indicated that demand for legitimate borrowing of shares declined dramatically during this period (GME low borrow fee?). An industry data processor of 15 billion transactions per day, S3 Technologies, reported that short selling in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dropped 90% when the emergency order was implemented.
Short interest was reported on July 15, 2008 and July 31, 2008. The combined reported short interest for the GSEs (GME) during this emergency order period increased by only 5.5 million shares, supporting the fact that legitimate short selling was curtailed under the order. However, in this 12 day trading period the GSEs traded over 3.5 billion shares or over two times the total number of shares issued for trading by the GSEs (again January 2021 - present). Many of these shares sold do not appear to be shares owned by the sellers and were not sold short in accordance with the securities laws, i.e. they were counterfeit shares sold as if the GSEs (GME) issued the shares.
The market makers are the most likely sellers of the counterfeit shares during this time because other market participants were not allowed to short sell without pre-borrowing shares for settlement and in this 12 day period examined, this amount only accumulated to 5.5 million increased shorted shares. The majority of the 3.5 billion shares sold, that were not sold by legitimate investors who owned the shares, must logically be a supply of shares counterfeited by the market makers."
So who were the Market Participants in 2008? You'll see some familiar names.
We've seen some of these names before
These same Market Makers are trading hundreds of millions of GME shares on the OTC Market every month:
Citadel, Susquehanna, UBS Securities (and to a lesser extent Cowen and Company and National Financial Services) were all active participants leading up to the 2008 crash and are some of the most active participants on the GME OTC Marketplace.
And just think how much Robinhood would have abused the GSEs if they were around in 2007 and 2008...
"It is obvious that some of these market makers trading the GSEs (GME) are dealing in counterfeit stock. The NYSE, FINRA, SEC and Treasury know this, but instead of enforcing the laws against this activity, they took a conservatorship of the GSEs, which they knew or should have known would benefit the counterfeiters at the cost of the U.S. taxpayers."
Here's the Summary of Key Points from the article:
And the Conclusions:
"Certain market participants, trading illegally, appear to be making a concerted effort to take down some of the most important financial institutions in the United States. Who would counterfeit shares of these vital U.S. institutions to cause their financial collapse without regard for the U.S. citizens?
It is not possible to carry out this massive fraud without the cooperation of large Wall Street firms and regulatory complicity, indifference or lack of competence. Some firms are blatantly selling shares that do not exist.
It is impossible to ward off the downward price pressure from counterfeit shares diluting a company‘s value. The entire nation‘s value is diminished when the counterfeiting of securities is rampant.
Simply put, this is a defining moment in the history of the financial strength of the United States. Other than home ownership assets, the largest U.S. household assets are tied to the stock market through retirement accounts. If counterfeiting continues, investment and retirement accounts will be backed by nothing but counterfeit shares, which they may already be holding in substantial amounts.
To conceal the fraud perpetrated on the retirement accounts is simple, manipulate the markets to crash. The money previously plundered from these accounts remain in the hands of the counterfeiters and the statements sent by the Wall Street firms to retirement investors will reflect a crashed market value of their assets, i.e., you lost your retirement savings.
The counterfeiting of U.S. traded securities is nothing less than a fraud of epic proportions. As with other illegal stock market activity, offshore shell companies are a likely depository of the ill-gotten gains.
While U.S. citizens would like to trust that government regulators are putting the citizens first and protecting investors, this may not be the case. The ownership and trading irregularities in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac discussed above, seem so obvious, that surely our government would have taken the steps necessary to protect investors in these very important financial institutions from fraud in the market. Unfortunately, the facts do not support that the government did enforce the securities laws against fraud and market manipulation.
It is necessary for the United States to do everything within its power to recover the enormous amount of monies that have been plundered from this country and its citizens. Bring the few illegal dealers responsible for counterfeiting stock to justice in order to assure that this United States economic disaster will never repeat itself. There is simply too much at stake to do otherwise."
This seems eerily similar to what is happening right now... Are we heading for a Crash?
Back to Daddy Cohen
What was Ryan Cohen doing in Arlington, VA on May 12th?
Is \"Crash\" slightly tilted toward the camera?
I don't know about you, but to me, it sure does look like 'Crash' is isolated and tilted slightly toward the camera...
He was less than 5 miles away from SEC Headquarters
And as many apes have already covered, that Arlington, VA GameStop is less than 5 miles away from SEC Headquarters.
So...
May 10 - We see a flurry of rule changes including: Self-Regulatory Organizations; ICE Clear Credit LLC; Order Approving Proposed Rule Change Relating to the ICC Recovery Plan and the ICC Wind-Down Plan (File No. SR-ICC-2021-005) Link
and SR-NSCC-2021-005 - Increasing the NSCC Minimum Required Fund Deposit Link
May 11 - Freddie Mac (listed under Ashler Capital) filings released. Why is this filing linked to a bunch of different hedge funds (Citadel, Melvin, Susquehanna) and RC Ventures on the Fintel website?
May 12 - RC tweets a photo near SEC headquarters, possibly hinting at a "Crash"
May 13 - Closed-door meeting at the SEC finally happens, after previously being cancelled several times without explanation
What happened during the SEC Meeting on 5/13?
Lastly, we know the SEC finally had their closed-door meeting on 5/13.
Where are the meeting minutes for that meeting??? Was RC present?
https://www.sec.gov/news/closedmeetings/2021/ssamtg051321.htm
TLDR: Is there any significance to the Freddie Mac SEC Filing on 5/11?
Was RC trying to point out this SEC filing with his tweet on 5/12? Or at least hint to an upcoming "Crash"?
Are these whistleblower awards from 5/10 and 5/12 in any way related?
And is there any correlation between the 2008 article about Counterfeiting Shares of Freddie Mac leading to the 2008 market crash and what we are seeing right now?
For this last question, I think the answer is a resounding Yes.
Buy, HODL, Vote and Buckle Up!
Edit 1: Added more info from the 2008 article (still definitely worth reading if you get a chance) and how it relates to our current GME situation.
Posted May 20, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC · edited