I just ran across my 3.5" disks for this along with some of the support tools! Finding this book in the mall bookstore and seeing the ad in the back was a revelation for me. Best $20 I ever spent.
I wanted to learn how to make .exe files but at the time had no resources or contacts on how to even start. This book and compiler was what launched my entire career.
It allowed you to do inline assembly as well which was a lot of fun on an old DOS machine. I'm pretty sure my brother and I hit every possible way to lock up the computer or have it spontaneously reboot since we didn't really understand memory management. Lots of fun trying to make video games and putting the vga card into Mode13 or ModeX as well. Good times.
Funniest rejection I've gotten: I once applied to mid-size company and during the phone screen helped them understand the role they wanted/needed was actually a senior program manager position.
They later contacted me to thank me for helping them understand the role they needed to interview for. They adjusted the listing but said that they would not be bringing me in for an interview...
Looks like the report I was looking at was a bit dated and they don't provide the same chart in the 2019 annual report. Here is an older one though on page 92.
I was just contrasting that large institutions can short the market and easily move price due to the volume they trade at without being investigated but there is outrage when handful of random guys do and the price collapses.
They are investigated for shorting a market? I find that unlikely.
I'm not trying to pick on Goldman. They were just an example of a large institution that makes huge amounts of money by doing exactly what these guys did. Betting against the market is absolutely routine behavior.
As for Goldman, do you really think they are clearing 100 million a day by being market neutral and just collecting premiums? When they buy/sell it absolutely moves the markets just on the sheer volume.
No. They sold an equal number of future contracts so they were flat and did not need to take inventory. That part is a routine shorting scenario. The odd part of this is that market conditions caused demand to drop so far that sellers paid buyers to take the contracts (and inventory). So these guys were paid to honor their TAS contract but had already sold the inventory to others via the futures contracts.
The TAS contracts required them to buy at settlement price. They obviously did not want inventory so they sold an equal number of contracts. (Sell high, buy low). That much is a routine short scenario.
The unusual part of this scenario is that contracts were expiring (it required someone to take actual inventory) so prices at settlement went negative. So when they "bought" to cover their shorts at settlement they were paid to do so.
A group of retail traders buy contracts requiring them to buy at settlement price. (TAS) They then sell contracts to get them to a flat position so they don't actually have to take physical stock.
This part is very routine. The unusual thing is that the price actually went negative so when they "bought" to cover they were actually paid nearly $40. So they profited both off the short position and again to buy to cover.
53% of their revenue is from sales and trading. I'm only saying is that if Goldman Sachs had done this short there would not have been any outrage, calls for investigation and so on. Institutions routinely pull off massive profits from retail traders. As soon as one day it reverses then there is all this faux outrage. lol
Last year Goldman Sachs made 18 billion dollars and were profitable 236/251 days. 41 of those days they made more than 100 million dollars. Institutional traders like this routinely manipulate prices to temporarily raise/lower prices on low volume to take out stop losses and so on. News is routinely put out at the top and bottom of markets that happens to provide liquidity for these institutions. Yet, no investigations...
I wanted to learn how to make .exe files but at the time had no resources or contacts on how to even start. This book and compiler was what launched my entire career.
It allowed you to do inline assembly as well which was a lot of fun on an old DOS machine. I'm pretty sure my brother and I hit every possible way to lock up the computer or have it spontaneously reboot since we didn't really understand memory management. Lots of fun trying to make video games and putting the vga card into Mode13 or ModeX as well. Good times.