Greatest Companies — Episode 10

Visa doesn't lend money. It doesn't issue cards. It owns something better: the road that a huge share of the world's money has to travel, and it takes a tiny fraction of almost every journey. That position is one of the most powerful network advantages ever built.

This is the story of how a near-disastrous bank card experiment became a toll bridge over the global economy, and why competitors find it almost impossible to dislodge.

The Greatest Companies series studies the businesses that built the modern world, as proof of a simple idea: every legendary company begins with an idea that looks improbable, survives a stretch where failure looks inevitable, and reaches a point where success looks obvious. The opportunity lives in the space between the second and third.

Not investment advice; for educational and historical purposes only.

At approximately five in the morning on January 28, 2021, Robinhood received a margin call from the DTCC for three billion dollars. The clearinghouse required collateral the broker did not have. Hours later, Robinhood restricted trading in GameStop and a handful of other names. The reason was not a conspiracy. The reason was the plumbing.

This is Episode 10 of Inside the Machine: How Markets Really Work. The final core episode before the Bonus finale.

In this episode:

• How clearinghouses actually work and why they exist
• The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation — $2.15 quadrillion processed annually
• The T+2 settlement cycle and what happens between trade and settlement
• The GameStop margin call and the 5am phone call that froze the market
• The move to T+1 and what it means for retail traders

Timestamps:0:00 Cold Open — The $3 Billion Call2:00 What a Clearinghouse Actually Does5:30 The DTCC and the Scale of Settlement9:00 T+2 and What Happens Between Trade and Settle12:00 The GameStop Moment in Detail14:30 What This Means for Your Trading

Read the full article and free Mind · Method · Money trading framework:https://completetradersedge.com/how-stock-settlement-works-clearinghouse/

Born in Budapest in 1906, he spent the better part of a century speculating across the great exchanges of Europe and America. He made and lost fortunes, survived two world wars, and turned his experience into bestselling books and decades of newspaper columns. His aphorisms about patience, psychology, and the crowd are still quoted across Europe today. This is the story of André Kostolany, the speculator who became a sage.

He founded Allan Gray Limited in 1973 and later Orbis, building two of the most respected contrarian value managers in the world. His creed was simple: buy what others fear, and hold through the discomfort. Intensely private, he gave almost no interviews and let a multi-decade record speak for itself. This is the story of Allan Gray, South Africa's greatest investor.

In November 2021, Bitcoin hit $69,000. A digital JPEG of a pixelated ape sold for $3.4 million. The combined market cap of cryptocurrencies briefly exceeded $3 trillion. A 30-year-old in cargo shorts named Sam Bankman-Fried was on the cover of every business magazine on earth, called the next Warren Buffett, donating tens of millions to politicians, talking about effective altruism.

A year later, Bitcoin was at $16,000. The NFT market was a graveyard. FTX, the second largest crypto exchange in the world, valued at $32 billion, filed for bankruptcy in 11 days. Eight billion dollars of customer money was missing. SBF was arrested in the Bahamas and sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.

This is the season finale of Market Mayhem — the story of the crypto bubble and FTX collapse, the most spectacular speculative mania of the modern era, and the timeless lessons four hundred years of market history have been trying to teach us.

Market Mayhem EP18 — A Complete Trader's Edge Production

📖 Get the book: https://completetradersedge.com/market-mayhem-book/

Greatest Companies — Episode 9

Almost every advanced chip on earth, in your phone, your car, and the AI data centres reshaping the world, is made by one company in Taiwan that most people have never thought about. TSMC chose to build nothing of its own and manufacture everyone else's designs instead, and that single decision made it one of the most strategically important companies on the planet.

This is the story of the foundry model, the bet on pure manufacturing, and the advantage measured in physics and decades of accumulated know-how.

The Greatest Companies series studies the businesses that built the modern world, as proof of a simple idea: every legendary company begins with an idea that looks improbable, survives a stretch where failure looks inevitable, and reaches a point where success looks obvious. The opportunity lives in the space between the second and third.

Not investment advice; for educational and historical purposes only.

On December 21, 2020, Tesla was added to the S&P 500 index. In the weeks leading up to inclusion, the stock rose approximately seventy percent. There was no fundamental news. No earnings surprise. No product announcement. The move was driven entirely by passive index funds being forced to buy a stock they previously had no exposure to.

This is the index machine. It is now the largest single source of equity demand in the world.

This is Episode 9 of Inside the Machine: How Markets Really Work.

In this episode:

• How passive investing reshaped equity demand
• The Tesla S&P 500 inclusion as a case study
• The Russell reconstitution and quarterly rebalancing flows
• Triple witching and the mechanics of index expiry
• What passive flows mean for price discovery

Timestamps:0:00 Cold Open — Tesla's $150 Billion Move2:00 How Passive Investing Changes Demand5:30 The Tesla S&P 500 Inclusion9:00 Russell Reconstitution and Rebalancing12:00 Triple Witching and Index Expiry14:30 What This Means for Your Trading

Read the full article and free Mind · Method · Money trading framework:https://completetradersedge.com/passive-investing-etf-effect-on-stock-prices/

Greatest Companies — Episode 8

For ten years, Microsoft's stock went nowhere. The world declared it a dinosaur that had missed search, missed mobile, missed the future. Then a quiet engineer named Satya Nadella took over and built one of the most valuable companies on earth on top of the wreckage everyone had written off.

This is the story of the lost decade, the cloud bet, and the comeback almost no investor saw coming.

The Greatest Companies series studies the businesses that built the modern world, as proof of a simple idea: every legendary company begins with an idea that looks improbable, survives a stretch where failure looks inevitable, and reaches a point where success looks obvious. The opportunity lives in the space between the second and third.

Not investment advice; for educational and historical purposes only.