TL;DR: Stock Bashing is defined as someone who deliberately spreads false or exaggerated claims to drive the price of a stock down. Its illegal market manipulation, and Charles Gasparino and Jim Chanos have been caught colluding in doing it over AMC

This post by user u/stock_retail appeared on Reddit over the weekend. Apes Army takes no credit whatsoever for the information, nor do we endorse it. As always, this is not financial advice. DYOR.

Disclaimer: I am NOT a legal expert. I am posing a question. I am not making accusations. I’m also sharing things several apes have said so check their accounts for details.

I’ll document some things with special recognition to the following twitter accounts who all spotted a lot of this. Thanks to “@livestorrance” “@ryan_rigg” and “@mahatmahanning”. I’ll also share my own direct engagement below. I also know “@kongposting” and Matt Kohrs discussed some of this if you’d like to find more.

OK consider the following sequence of events (pay special attention to three accounts who turn out to be two people – gasparino and chanos – and ask yourself what their motives are):

1.) Long history of Charles Gasparino going beyond the bounds of making a case against AMC into outright bullying and not necessarily using data (or deliberately using out of context data) to say AMC is not a good investment. Wonder why? (I believe he might be short on the stock).

2.) Cue Jim Chanos who shows up on the scene (LOL – your if name rhymes with Thanos, maybe seek not to come off as a bad guy). He shows up IMMEDIATELY after a very positive earnings beat (meaning AMC did better than predicted) and says AMC’s fundamentals are getting worse. Seemed odd to me so..

3.) In response to what I personally felt was “short and distort” I posted that I would be reviewing the 10q’s (again – reminder that’s the SEC filings for earnings & balance sheet info). I said Chanos had “spun falsehoods” and that I would be doing a walk through the financials. I then received a reply from “@wallstcynic” that I IMMEDIATELY sensed was someone trolling me so I made sure they knew I wouldn’t be bumped off my corner. They never replied (screenshots here documenting 2 & 3)

4.) I never heard back from him but felt good I’d armed apes with the information needed to put the fundamentals in context and not be “distorted”. You can find that post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ApesMonkeyAround/comments/p226s6/q2_fundamentals_aka_the_fud_buster/

5.) Then this weekend we had picture-gate in which Gasparino posted a picture of an empty theater. He got caught red handed when apes realized several more “distortions” (short and distort is an addiction for these guys)… First – as I hear from several apes it seems the picture of the theater was around 7:20 in the morning. Umm-exactly how many people would you expect in a theater at that time? Second, the best part of all of this…plot twist!!! The picture (it is being alleged) was sent from Jim Chanos to Gasparino! So an investment manager takes a picture (alleged) and sends it to a media member (alleged) who then goes on the attack using his platform.

6.) The plot gets even thicker! Remember that account “@wallstcynic” who replied to me? Well they started to DM with “@ryan_riggs” (aka wolf of my street) and, with some digging from riggs, livestorrance and others it turned out cynic WAS ACTUALLY CHANOS (alleged but I think even proven as Riggs asserts cynic’s at is REGISTERED WITH THE SEC). Cynic/Chanos immediately blocks riggs. See tweet thread… https://twitter.com/Ryan__Rigg/status/1426785520445706247?s=20

7.) Unfortunately for Chanos, Riggs documents the DM’s and in that thread I share my interaction with cynic as well! DM’s documented here: https://twitter.com/Ryan__Rigg/status/1426989448085090310?s=20

8.) To cap off the day wallstcynic tries to post today that the movie Free Guy is doing terribly (it was forecast to do $20m this weekend and has approached $30m) by comparing movies to the same week in 2019 so mahatmahanning catches the fact that this week in 2019 had the opening of Marvel’s End Game!!!! Only one of the BIGGEST movies ever. LOLOLOLOL. Still think it isn’t short and distort? I used to lead a team who had to compare actuals to history to forecast the future and we knew better than to use such misleading comps. That didn’t stop Chanos from trying to scare new apes away.

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Let’s recap shall we because it’s a little dizzying. Basically through sleuthing apes unearth:

– Pattern of twisting a narrative to scare “long” investment away on AMC by Chanos and Gasparino

– Connection between Chanos and Gasparino (picturegate…if true wouldn’t that be conspiracy?)

– Use of (not so) secret “@” by an investment manager to twist a narrative against longs

Know what you’re up against apes. Study real data and know who you listen to. It’s getting real when investment managers and news media are openly teaming up to bash a stock. We know this isn’t new and we know others do it (I’m not bothering with names here but we all know). This one is just too blatant not to list out.

Let’s go!

For a really good breakdown of the Stock Bashing in video form, we recommend watching Matt Kohrs video here: