Lilly Francus is a 25-year-old PhD student in bioinformatics at the University of California, San Diego. Before she got into the markets and started her PhD, she was a software engineer for multiple years at LinkedIn and Stripe. She’s passionate about data and modeling complex, dynamic systems, and has a strong interest in options and memes, in that order. Her background is primarily a mixture of computer science and business administration.
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Episode 178
Lilly Francus
Meme ‘Stonks’: How Call Options & Reddit Broke Wall Street | Lily Francus
Lilly Francus is a 25-year-old PhD student in bioinformatics at the University of California, San Diego. Before she got into the markets and started her PhD, she was a software engineer for multiple years at LinkedIn and Stripe. She’s passionate about data and modeling complex, dynamic systems, and has a strong interest in options and memes, in that order. Her background is primarily a mixture of computer science and business administration.
In Episode 178 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Lily Francus, a 25-year-old PhD student in bioinformatics who spends her time modeling complex, dynamic systems, trading meme stocks, and writing about options, derivatives, and how stories and ideas spread on the Internet.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or don’t have an Internet connection you will already know that some really crazy shit happened in the last couple of weeks involving the video game retailer GameStop, a number of large, Wall Street institutions, and the online community subreddit r/Wall Street Bets, which has now grown to over 8 million users.
There have been so many competing explanations put forward for what happened here that it would be impossible to try and summarize them all. Instead, this episode attempts to explain the mechanics of how it all happened. In other words, how an online community consisting primarily of retail investors managed to pump the price of GameStop’s stock to such a level that institutional investors who were short the stock were forced to cover and in the case of hedge fund Melvin Capital, get bailed out to the tune of nearly 3 billion dollars.
In this conversation, we look at how both market structure and the endogenous dynamics of the options market, combined with the proliferation of narrative in the form of Internet memes were used to organize, coordinate, and execute what was effectively a community-sourced short squeeze that caused chaos across wall street and left the financial press and the public, scrambling for answers.
While the conversation about options is specific to wall street, the memetic aspect of this story is perhaps the most fascinating, not only because understanding online culture and how narratives spread on the Internet can help you capitalize on trends and monetize momentum, but also because its application extends to pretty much any use-case you can imagine.
This week’s overtime segment is a conversation Demetri had with Real Vision Senior Editor and former CNBC reporter Ash Bennington, who he invited on the program to discuss the events of the last week and what we might expect going forward.
The episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode are available through the Hidden Forces Supercast Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
Time Codes:
9:38 Summary and update on “what happened” with GameStop, r/WallStreetBets, and institutional Wall Street
21:15 Discussion about market structure and endogenous factors related to options & positioning
41:37 Discussion about role of narrative and Internet memes in driving the price of GameStop
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Lilly Francus is a 25-year-old PhD student in bioinformatics at the University of California, San Diego. Before she got into the markets and started her PhD, she was a software engineer for multiple years at LinkedIn and Stripe. She’s passionate about data and modeling complex, dynamic systems, and has a strong interest in options and memes, in that order. Her background is primarily a mixture of computer science and business administration.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
