By Keith Dowling
“Ape” is a nickname, a banner under which hundreds of thousands of people around the world (Warwick included) proudly celebrate their belligerent unreasonableness in the jungle of finance and investing. On internet forums like Reddit, the Apes revel in their ability to be unflappable in the face of what they believe are highly manipulated markets.
The Apes celebrate being “diamond-fisted,” a term for remaining steadfast in their position as markets are purposefully pumped and dumped. They believe that they can become immune to the psychology of fear that swings markets by having no psychology at all. They merrily congratulate one another on being “smooth brained, crayon-eaters,” on buying and holding assets, no matter what. But their self-proclaimed “stupidity” is facetious and tongue-in-cheek.
Theirs is the expressionless idiocy of a master poker player. Their strategy? Fighting the elite manipulators behind the markets, like the big hedge funds and investment houses. In 2021 the apes successfully crippled the hedge fund Melvin Capital, which placed huge bets that the videogame retail giant GameStop’s stock values would go down. The Apes flooded in and purchased these shares, driving the price up and forcing the hedge funds to purchase the stock at a much higher price. Melvin Capital suffered losses of 53%, or $6.8 billion.
One particular family of Apes is the “Silverbacks,” found on Reddit’s WallStreetSilver forum This group, of nearly 225 thousand members, contends that silver, the precious metal, is the most manipulated asset in the world, and that there is much less supply than the markets lead the public to believe. The Apes assert that the silver market is suppressed by the exponentially plentiful paper representations of silver known as “derivatives.” Their solution is to encourage one another to take physical possession of the precious metal, rather than own a paper derivative of the metal. They believe that when they physically “squeeze” the silver market, it will inevitably explode higher, collapsing the charade of the paper market, including paper currencies. The Apes celebrate this community by taking pictures of their silver hoards, commenting on one another’s stacks of “shiny.”
This week, the merry band of Silverback Apes set their collective sights on PayPal. On Friday of this last week, it was discovered that the online payment system could begin directly withdrawing increments of $2,500 from patrons’ accounts if those patrons spread “misinformation”–a term that PayPal was clear to define as being anything that the company alone deemed as such. Over the weekend, the Silverbacks switched from posting photos of their silver stockpiles to sharing screenshots of their canceled PayPal accounts. They moved as one collective “shrewdness” (the collective noun for a group of Apes). As of Monday, PayPal’s stock plunged over 6%.
One Warwick Silverback friend of mine stated “Paypal’s CEO, Dan Schulman, is a far-Left activist. He has a history of using his company to punish opposing views. The Apes love freedom and hate tyrants and liars. Now Paypal is on our radar. Dan’s made a big mistake.”
He went on to elaborate about his growing concern that our country is adopting China’s Social Credit System here. “Under this system, individuals who think and speak ideas that are deemed ‘problematic’ by the CCP can find themselves penalized and cut off from participating in the economy. In China, one’s rights and freedoms are governed by their obedience to the ruling party. PayPal is clearly attempting to start us down that path. But, they should never underestimate the Apes.”
