Final Pre-MOASS Post: A Theory of Everything (My Convo With Papa Broviet) 🙌💎🚀❤❤❤

Opinion 👽

Well well well well wellllllllllll well.

Where do I even begin? I’m high, tipsy, and just trying to come to terms with this past weekend. I saw my father for the first time in over a year today. Some of you know me, some of you don’t, so I’ll give you the quick rundown. Pops is a former MD at a major Wall St firm, reserved and skeptical boomer, who at the same time loathes market manipulators and regulatory bodies. BIG YUGE long-on-GME ape-loving genius boomer. He has his biases, but he’s objective to a fault, and this weekend marked an enormous change in our relationship. I’ve legitimately been on the verge of tears for the last six hours just thinking about what you guys, and he, mean to me, and how on Earth I was going to try to structure this post.

So I’ve decided… not to, really. I’m just going to tell it stream-of-consciousness as I felt it, not as I “wrote” it. You can choose to take from it what you will. Take inspiration, take resilience, take whatever, or nothing at all. I truly don’t care. I’ve been found and contacted, received buyout offers, received threats, received threats about revealing threats, it is what it is. What happens to me, you the reader, or any of us, is out of our hands. We stand and fight and what happens happens. But this weekend changed me, so I’m gonna be telling it like it is. Warning: this is gonna be LONG. If you don’t want to stick around, I don’t blame you. This is just a story of a kid finally meeting his dad on common ground, and there are plenty other BRILLIANT posts. For those still interested…

My father and I’s paths to Finance were vastly different. Out of college, he was pursuing an entirely different vocation before switching to Finance, whereas I went towards it directly after school. He had his MBA before setting foot on a much kinder Street. Whereas mine marked the end of my appetite for endless moral qualms and empty bottles. So he settled in as a much more journeyed and composed adult, whereas I floundered. I tried to salvage it with a graduate degree and a focus change, but it did nothing for me. To this second, my parents still don’t know that most of the time they thought I was on the other coast of this continent doing consulting work, I was on another continent(s) working for a couple public sector entities. International Relations was always my greatest educational love, so I wanted to try my hand at humanitarian/peacekeeping work, and enjoyed it a great deal. If I lost a tooth, I’d tell my mother I took up boxing and had a rough day sparring. Or that my constant cough was a result of change in climate and not pollution. If they ever read this, it’ll be the first time they’ve heard. Still haven’t decided if I do or don’t want them to ever find out.

Eventually, that experience broke me down, and I returned home to pursue an entirely new industry and career path, which I also love. Diving into behavioral economics and data science has been incredible, and GME couldn’t have hit at a more perfect time. Y’all are everything to me, truly. I had barely even dabbled in investing since I’d left the Street, and you not only brought me back full tilt, but have also shown me what I want to do for the rest of my life. As a thank you, if I can, I want to give you the most insight I can into a genuine battle between the skepticism and disbelief that comes from age, wisdom, and shattered expectations, and the hope, optimism, and doggedness that can only be born of youth.

We discussed everything. /u/atobitt’s prescient HoCs, leavemeanon’s speculations regarding ETFs and arbitrage, sovereign wealth funds divesting from USD, Fed divesting corporate bonds, MSM brainfarts, etc. You name it, we went over it. And after it all, he was still cautiously optimistic. You have to understand… this man was not born with a silver spoon. I was, thanks to him. He busted his ass, one of many kids, and ascended to the top of the industry. He earned every dollar he ever made, and I would put his moral compass up against anyone else’s on Earth, and that’s “on God”, as the younger apes say. So while he was there, he was able to benefit from having the power of the system behind him. But once he was out, he was just another John Q Public. No matter how he worked, that was how he lived. And he would always tell me, same as you’ll hear on Superstonk, “Nobody is your friend. They’re always gonna step in and bailout the offender, because it’s easier than the alternative.”

And he planted that notion firmly in my head. Thankfully, 6 months with you glorious bastards has eradicated my doubt…. But I was a kid in 2008. This dude lived through ‘62, ‘73, worked through Black Monday, Black Wednesday, Dotcom, and, with all that knowledge, watched ‘08 unfold in front of his eyes with complete and total understanding of the fuckery afoot. He saw, as he calls it, the government’s preferred method of “dealing” with these situations. Stepping in and “taking over” the offenders. Years later, those offending institutions are right back to their old game. No justice for retail. NEVER. Like you guys say, they’re ALL out to get you, you have no friends in this game, you can’t win….

“But,” I asked, “What if they CAN’T step in and unwind this?” He asked why that wouldn’t be possible. So I explained that, if everything we’d just discussed was accurate, there are, at minimum, hundreds of other mini-GME bombs out there just waiting to detonate. The SEC abolished grandfathering/”forgiving” phantom shares in 2008 after the Overstock situation was exposed, swearing they’d never do it again. So…let’s say they decided to do something similar and spit in the face of their own regulations. They step in and shut it down, forgiving all those shares. So now you’ve pissed off 5+ million retail investors, dozens of sovereign nations, and everyone is frothing at the mouth, calling for heads to roll. People might already be out in the streets, orchestrating massive movements that co-opt the many already-existing groups of citizens with massive disdain for the current system….

And while that’s happening, you’ve still got hundreds of other companies shorted to the tits that you need to address. What are you gonna do? Start working your way down the list, giving Wall St a do-over on every last one of them? Try that shit with the whole world watching, as their retirement accounts tank 60%, because that’s where it’s going regardless. “So how do they fix it piece by piece?”

That was the longest silence of my life. I had gone full tin foil, as far as my family is concerned. I was making connections that bordered on irresponsible, but I hadn’t been immediately shot down yet. My father has this….. very judgmental expression that he somehow limits solely to his eyes. But even those alone just scream “You’re an idiot, but I love and pity you.” Instead, I was now getting “hold on, lemme think.” Then he said it. “They cant.”

This was the breakthrough that I’d been searching for, without knowing it was there. I had no idea that his mental block as to the possibility of a deviation from the status quo hinged on the severity of a situation. He had never seen something THIS systemic before. There was always a culprit, or culprits. I was able to convince him to buy in because he believed in the fundamentals, but he never REALLY believed that it had the capacity for such a monumental squeeze until just now. Because by his view of the government’s favored “M.O.”, they would just step in and take over. Well, if the government needs to “own” Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the ten largest banks, most hedge funds, the DTCC, and every other large regulatory and clearing institution just for their citizens not to be destitute, maybe it’s time they just take the whole thing over, eh?

He agreed that this course of action was simply untenable. “So…what’s the right play?”, I asked.

“I don’t know.”

Not sure I’ve ever heard those words from him before.

With all his somberness in how he said it, his eyes somehow brightened. Like….. somehow, the fact that his brain didn’t IMMEDIATELY take the skeptic’s path amused and enthused him. We are different. We were born with this hope, this insane belief that we could somehow claw our way through all the bullshit to a meaningful existence, all thanks to beautiful internet movements like this one. His eyes now screamed “there’s something to this. I don’t know what this feeling is, but for once it’s not disappointment.” It was beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever been more ecstatic to score such a small victory.

This was his core tenet. After all, one of his favorite quotes is a Superstonk staple, by J Paul Getty: “If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.” He was amazed that they may actually have dug the hole THAT fucking deep, and he just opened up. He actually entertained a MODERATE amount of my tinfoil! We talked about how the implications of this…..

Okay, time out. I gotta address this. To the “the market is not the economy” squad: FUCK YOURSELVES. When the hole is THIS deep, it penetrates not just the economy, but geopolitical power dynamics. Take, for example, our relations with South Korea and Japan. When I informed pops that the Russians had divested their USD holdings, he commented about the paltry amount that was compared to an entity like China. Come to find out, Japan, one of our most important allies, holds more US treasuries than the mother fucking PRC. And how Korea had abolished naked shorting a month after learning of its existence. Whereas their greatest strategic ally was allowing this behavior to continue unchecked, to the point where U.S. markets collapse, cascading and destroying the Korean market in turn. How many sovereign nations must we betray before everyone turns on us? How many global citizens must we disenfranchise before we are exiled from the global community? Okay, sorry, moving on!…

Dont take this the wrong way….but my father hates Europe. Well…mostly France. I kid I kid. He’s one of the most inclusive dudes ever. But he’s also a rurally-raised, All-American boy that jokes about soccer being communist and the French rifles being “never fired, dropped once”. Truly all in good humor, but he’s just…that dude, you know? But that dude, swear to god, actually said “If they actually stepped in and stopped this from happening….I really don’t know why anyone wouldn’t just immediately move to Europe.”

Blew my mother fuckin mind, y’all. I can’t even put it into words.

He drew a connection this weekend. He’s a huge golf fan. His favorite golfer is Brooks Koepka, who hates this other golfer Bryson DeChambeau, who hates him back even more. Pops was THOROUGHLY amused to find out that Koepka was offering free beer to people that taunted DeChambeau on social media. He then likened that situation to the power of the GME memes I’d shown him courtesy of Reddit and Twitter…

He was getting it. He was seeing the value in our way of doing things, and the power it has on society. How it drives engagement, involvement, INTEREST. Leveraging the fascination with social media to drive REAL interest to a cause.

I don’t know what’s gonna happen for sure. Neither does pops. All we’ve managed to see eye to eye on is that the government has two options. In either, the current system goes away. Either you leave retail with one last giant “FUCK YOU!”, leaving millions disenfranchised and destitute, chomping at the bit for politician and banker blood. Or you give retail a win. One fucking win, as a gesture of good faith, that whatever new system that arises from the ashes of this fraudulent one might be the SLIGHTEST bit friendly to middle America.

Pops was mystified by the lengths we were willing to take this. 6 months of endless fuckery. 24/7 FUD, no safe harbor in sight. And still we persevered. He believes that we’ve finally reached Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point”, that us 20% of people were finally doing the 80% of the work necessary to meet the Pareto Principle. That the citizens of the world finally had sufficient interest and involvement to to drive undeniable change. And that that is what we are seeing right now. There are so many eyes, so many fingers, so many minds on this trade, there’s no way to lose. We have no liquidity requirements. We have no deadlines. We just BUY. We just HODL. That’s all there is. That’s all there’s ever been. Apes have awakened and discovered this principle, and they truly believe it. Pornstars are posing with ‘The Intelligent Investor’. Floyd Mayweather is wearing CRYP70 shorts into his fight. I’m personally seeing Shibecrap headlines by boomer news anchors on NYC cab screens. This shit is really and truly mother fucking unprecedented.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Much like the boom/bust cycle, the wave recedes only to crash harder the next time around. The proletariat is only docile until they’re not. Is this the wave that levels everything?

“I don’t know. But it’s sure gonna be interesting”, pops said.

I’m not sure I can properly thank you all for opening my father’s mind up to the idea of a decentralized movement triumphing over entrenched power. I really, truly, deeply, and forever will love each and every one of you. No matter what happens, I know what I want to dedicate the rest of my life to, but I (and papa Brov) are pretty damn bullish about the fact that apes have adopted an entire second job to combat fuckery.

Which brings me to my last point. I know you are all just as flabbergasted as me that we’ve managed to beat hedgies into submission when this isn’t even our day job. But that’s just the point. If you’re still reading this, you’ve dedicated most of your free time for the last 6 months to this movement. You’ve read every DD, every News, every Opinion, just to make sure you’ve got the full picture. And the result? You’ve got a better picture than the people you’re up against. Because you genuinely care. Feel pretty good, eh? Well…. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this isn’t magic, it’s math. This isn’t a miraculous movement. You saw a problem, you identified the issues, and went about solving them. Hundreds of thousands of you. And what you were left with was a prime example of “wisdom of the crowds”. One step ahead in every way. Smarter, better, faster, stronger. I worry that some of you are viewing this battle in a vacuum, rather than as what it represents…

We can call for campaign finance reform, to expel outside influences, etc, but at the end of the day, the only person you can trust is YOURSELF.

This is something you need to understand. This trade, this movement…is not a mistake. Because of the wisdom of the crowds, we accumulated enough data to make an intelligent play. But going forward….. you must understand this is your new second job. Yes, it already has been for months, but now we’re making it official. If you want to beat the street, you have to put in the hours. Thankfully, between us, we have hours to spare! But only if you remain diligent. This is your life now. Even if the current system collapses, the next one will be built against your interests. Are you ready to put in the work to combat fuckery? I think you are. So does pops.

I saw a light in my father’s eyes this weekend that I’ve never seen before. And I’ve never felt closer to him, and it’s all thanks to you. So much love to each and every one of you.

TLDR: “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance” - Wendel Phillips

🙌💎🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤