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Investor With Putin Ties Loaned $8 Million To Trump Entity Involved In Alleged Insider Trading

Investor With Putin Ties Loaned $8 Million To Trump Entity Involved In Alleged Insider Trading

A Russian businessman based in South Florida may have made millions off of insider trading in a scheme involving the parent company of former President Donald Trump's Truth Social platform.

The Miami Herald reported Wednesday that investor Anton Postolnikov — the nephew of a former staffer to Russian President Vladimir Putin — is mentioned in court documents from a 2023 New York securities fraud case prosecutors brought against three men from South Florida. Gerald and Michael Shvartsman, along with accomplice Bruce Garelick, allegedly pocketed $23 million from insider trading involving a 2021 merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the Miami, Florida-based Digital World Acquisition Corp.

Garelick and the Shvartsman brothers are accused of sharing non-public information with friends and colleagues in order to maximize their gains from the deal. Documents show Postolnikov loaned $8 million to Trump's company through a Caribbean bank he owns that frequently works with the pornography industry.

While neither Trump nor Postolnikov are facing any allegations of wrongdoing from the deal, the Herald reported that prosecutors could tack on more charges in a subsequent indictment. However, it remains unclear if Postolnikov will be added as an additional defendant. A separate filing by Tai Park — the defense attorney representing Michael Shvartsman — suggests that his client could face new charges of money laundering in response to his efforts to conceal his alleged insider trading profits.

Meanwhile, Garelick, who sat on the board of Digital World Acquisition Corp, is accused of making $50,000 from the merger in his work for Shvartsman's company, Rocket One Capital. Digital World is a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, which is often used as a vehicle for entities seeking to become publicly traded companies, as it involves less regulatory oversight than a traditional initial public offering (IPO). The Herald reported that months before the merger was announced, Garelick wrote a message to Postolnikov that read "Anton, Good times last night! Following up on that Trump Media Group SPAC we mentioned. The deal is going to finalize this week. Please let us know if you are interested in investing."

The murky details of the merger may be partially why the deal has yet to be approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission after being on hold for more than two years. As a result of that delay, Trump Media and Technology Group has bled approximately $1 billion in investment commitments as of fall 2023. in the first three quarters of 2023, the company only posted $3.4 million in total revenue, which is far behind competing social media companies like Facebook and X/Twitter.

University of Florida business professor Jay Ritter — an expert on publicly traded companies — told the Herald that the fact that the merger is still on hold is "pretty unprecedented." He also likened the SPAC's performance to a "meme stock," in which social media sentiment drives a stock's performance more than other traditional business metrics.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Is Andrew Wiggins The Next Big Thing In The NBA?

Is Andrew Wiggins The Next Big Thing In The NBA?

By Kent Youngblood, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

They were at the NBA rookie symposium recently, ready to pose for a photo shoot, when it just happened. An impromptu slam-dunk contest.
Memphis’ Jarnell Stokes did a reverse. Meh.

Then the Timberwolves’ Glenn Robinson III did a 360. Nice.

Fellow Wolf Zach LaVine bounced it off the wall, took it through his legs and put it down. Impressive.

And then: Andrew Wiggins. He casually dribbled into the lane, jumped, did a 360 while moving the ball behind his back, and dunked.

Wow. This is what Wolves fans should look forward to this fall.

Wiggins was wearing a Cleveland Cavaliers jersey during all this. Go ahead and watch … it’s on YouTube, of course. In the digital age you can watch young stars grow up on video.

Certainly that’s true for Wiggins, a Toronto native whose nickname is Maple Jordan. He had a dunk highlight tape at 13. It’s not hard to find video of him at the Nike Peach Jam in 2012, where he dominated Julius Randle, becoming the top high school recruit in the nation. Or his appearance at LeBron James’ skills camp that same year, when he brought James himself to his feet.

Was it kismet that had Robinson, LaVine, and Wiggins playing around? Maybe not. With the word that the Wolves will send Kevin Love to Cleveland for a package that includes Wiggins — the top pick in June’s draft after a strong freshman season at Kansas — Wolves fans should get to know the 6-8, 200-pounder with the 7-foot wingspan and 44-inch vertical jump.

According to Kansas coach Bill Self, Wiggins is the best natural athlete who has ever played for him.

“Ben McLemore was a freak,” Self said. “Brandon Rush was unbelievable. But when Andrew is turned up? He can do things athletically nobody else can do.”

The Wolves, rebuilding again, will likely give him all the room and opportunity he needs to grow.

“That’s the way he sees it,” Self said. “He’s happy. Don’t anybody feel sorry for him. I’m not saying he hasn’t been in limbo and that it hasn’t, at times, been frustrating. But he told me, ‘Coach, I’m good with this.’ He told me that two weeks ago.”

So when the trade is officially announced, Wiggins will arrive in Minnesota, aware of the hype that will come along for the ride. But he’s used to it.
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Wiggins, 19, was born into a very athletic family. His father, Mitchell, played six years in the NBA before extending his career overseas; indeed, it was in Greece that a very young Andrew fell in love with the game, able to accompany his dad to practices and games.

His mother, Marita Payne-Wiggins, won two silver medals at the 1984 Olympics as part of Canada’s 400- and 1,600-meter relay teams. She still holds national records in the 200 and 400.

His older brother, Nick, played at Wichita State.

Wiggins decided to play at Kansas in large part because he would be close to his brother, who was a senior last season. Raised in a religious home, Andrew Wiggins and his siblings still get inspirational texts almost daily from their mother.

If Wiggins fell in love with the game in Greece, it was when the family moved back to suburban Toronto that the ball really got rolling. Noting his son was getting his best competition during family games in the driveway, Mitchell moved Andrew to Huntington (W.Va.) Prep to finish his high school career. By then he was already highly touted, but restrained.

In fact, Wiggins has always had an interesting combination of confidence and humility. He grew up admiring Vince Carter and in high school talked about being able to score like Kevin Durant and get to the hoop like James.

At the same time, he kept college recruiting low key. It finally came down to Florida State (where his parents met), North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas. When he chose Kansas, he first told a reporter for his high school newspaper.

“He’s the most humble great player I’ve ever seen,” said Kansas assistant Kurtis Townsend, who did much of the recruiting of Wiggins. “He is not phony.”

When Wiggins left Huntington Prep, he wrote an open letter thanking everyone from teachers to coaches to classmates to the school janitor. Townsend remembers the day Wiggins landed in Lawrence for his first summer camp to find thousands of fans waiting. He spent more than an hour signing autographs. After his last college home game, he walked out of the locker room to find thousands more fans waiting to say goodbye. For hours, he signed his name for anyone who asked.

“Those fans were four and five deep,” Townsend said. “Lined up, down the hallways. I went out to try to save him. But he said, ‘No. They waited a long time for this, I’m going to sign every one.’ ”

—
Wiggins is making a big jump, one he might struggle with. Self knows this. When asked what the Timberwolves were getting, Self said: “An untapped athlete with a skill set that’s going to be tremendous in a short period of time. His skill set hasn’t quite caught up to his athletic ability. But when he gets more consistent, he’s going to be terrific.”

Wiggins scored more points than any freshman in Jayhawks history. He was Big 12 Freshman of the Year, on the all-conference first team, an All-America. But there were questions.

Even Self admitted that, at least to begin with, Wiggins was too nice. Certainly too deferential to teammates. To this day the most flamboyant thing Self ever saw Wiggins do was don the gaudy suit he wore to the NBA draft.

But, pushed relentlessly by Self, Wiggins got better as the year went on. “Coach Self really, at the end of the year, brought out the dog in me,” Wiggins said in a predraft interview with ESPN. “He made me get focused.”

Said Self: “He absolutely was too nice. And he’s still too nice. Flip [Saunders] will have to get more of that dog in him. He’s just young.”

The tools are undeniable. His quickness, lateral movement, and reach make him a strong defender. Townsend says Wiggins’ second jump is the most impressive he’s ever seen. Wiggins shot 44.8 percent overall at Kansas, 34.1 percent on three-pointers, and averaged 17.1 points and 5.9 rebounds per game.

Self said Wiggins needs to work on his ball-handling and passing: “As he gets better at ball-handling, he’ll get to the basket more.”

Former NBA coach and current ESPN analyst George Karl is skeptical that Wiggins’ skills will catch up to his ability. “He’s in the top 10 percent of the league athletically,” Karl said. “But where are his skills?”

ESPN college analyst Jay Bilas remembers watching a game when Wiggins jumped out of bounds but got back in and to the rim in one move. “It’s like watching a cat,” Bilas said. “That’s natural ability, and it serves him well. But his ball skills have to improve. … I think he’s got a chance to be very good, an elite-level defender. The one question mark: Does he have the motor and drive to be a great player?”

Not surprisingly, both Self and Townsend say yes.

If there is one constant in Wiggins, both say, it is that he gets motivation from every perceived slight. After a loss to Texas in February, he was called scared. Three weeks later, the day before he turned 19, he scored 21 points in a victory over the Longhorns. After playing poorly in a late-season loss to Oklahoma State, Wiggins scored 30 against the Cowboys in the Big 12 tournament.

And what could be bigger motivation than being traded away by Cleveland before even wearing that Cavaliers jersey in an NBA game?

“I would love to be at that first game they play against Cleveland,” Townsend said. “He’s going to put on a show.”

Photo via WikiCommons

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When Brain Says Buy, You May Not Know Why

When Brain Says Buy, You May Not Know Why

By Julia Rosen, Los Angeles Times

Billions of neurons fire in the brains of stock market traders as they decide whether to buy or sell shares in a matter of seconds. Some of these brain waves produce rational calculations about how best to make a profit, but others may not, suggests new research from the nascent field of neuroeconomics — a discipline that takes a physiological approach to understanding economic decision-making.

The new study shows that activity in a part of the brain associated with pleasure and reward flares to life during trading. The researchers say this may cause traders to buy too aggressively and ultimately drive stock market bubbles to inflate and burst.

Speculative bubbles have plagued economies for centuries; they occur any time prices soar far above the fundamental value of an asset. In the early 1600s, the Dutch pawned their heirlooms and sold their farms to buy contracts for tulip bulbs during an episode remembered as Tulip Mania. Many more followed, including the dot-com craze of the late 1990s and the U.S. housing bubble fueled by flimsy mortgage-backed securities that plunged the world into the worst recession since the Depression.

But economists and neurologists have long debated how and why speculative bubbles get started in the first place. At the root of the disagreement is the question of whether investors act rationally or irrationally during bubbles, and thus whether they constitute an inherent feature of financial markets.

As far back as 1988, researchers have found that bubbles emerge even in laboratory settings, when people trade in experimental markets without any uncertainty. One idea is that people simply get overly excited about rising prices — a phenomenon former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called “irrational exuberance.”

“For whatever reason, if you put a bunch of people together and they start trading, these markets generate bubbles,” said Alec Smith, a neuroeconomist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and lead author of the new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That’s exactly what Smith, who spent seven years working as a professional stock trader, found in his latest experiment. He and his colleagues set up more than a dozen experimental markets that included about 20 college-age participants who traded for 50 rounds. (While college students are not professional traders, previous studies have found no difference in their behavior, Smith said.)

Each player started with 100 units of risk-free currency and six units of a hypothetical risky asset. There wasn’t much uncertainty in the market: Traders knew the interest rate of the currency, the expected dividends on the risky asset and its fundamental value.

In each market, two or three of the traders conducted their business from the inside of an MRI machine while the researchers watched their brains in action. By tracking the flow of blood to active areas of the brain in need of oxygen, the researchers found that a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens lighted up during trading.

Set deep behind the eyes, the nucleus accumbens plays a central role in the brain’s reward circuit and helps regulate both motivation and addiction. It floods with dopamine when we get what we want, and it flares during arousal and drug use.

During the experiment, Smith and his colleagues found that activity in this powerful and not particularly rational part of the brain closely tracked rising stock prices. The more nucleus accumbens activity the scientists registered in the traders’ brains, the higher the prices rose.

Neural activity even predicted the imminence of a crash — when blood flow soared, prices reached perilous highs before tumbling back to the asset’s fundamental value.

However, not all traders showed the same brain patterns. One astute group — people who tended to sell earlier than the rest and thus earned the most during the experiments — showed activity in another part of the brain as the bubbles grew.

The anterior insula usually alerts people to physical discomfort, like a racing heartbeat or a feeling of fullness. But it has also been shown to respond to risk. In the small group of high-earning traders, the anterior insula sounded alarm bells that caused them to shed their risky assets before others.

AFP Photo / Spencer Platt

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