January 28, 2021 Lunch – 2000 Vietnam No. 21, Dinner – PPI Moussaka

 January 28, 2021 Lunch – 2000 Vietnam No. 21,   Dinner – PPI Moussaka 

Today all the excitement was in the stock market where there was an insurrection of sorts.  Several retail trading platforms such as Reddit and Robinkood seem to have planned an attack on large hedge fund traders that were perceived to be short Ling several stocks because they were identified to be weak or failing financially. It is not clear yet who or how the communications were carried out but there has been a surge of buying of GameStop and AMC that pushed the stock up over 100% a day for the last few days. The goal was to force the large hedge funds that were shorting those stocks to lose their investment if they were using borrowed funds due to margin calls.  The secondary goal was to make lots of money as the price of those shares sky rocketed.  In other words to turn the big institutional short sellers’ strategy on them to force them to lose their bets that those stocks would go down when they placed a short position on the stocks.  It demonstrates the power and ability of a small group of investors to organize through internet communications to create a significant movement in a few stocks.

History in now being written on this new strategy just like the Insurrection at the Capitol.  Same unique factor in both may turn out    to be the effective use of the internet to orchestrate the action.

Unfortunately for me and other average investors is that our portfolios are dropping in value as the participants sell their favored safe harbor stock positions in companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Air BNB to fund their purchases of GameStop and AMC. My portfolio has lost over 2 ½% of its value in the last two days.

Food was secondary today. I made two Lax and bagel slices for breakfast.  

Peter picked me up a No.21 at 2000 Vietnam that he delivered at 1:00 and we made a quick and easy dinner at 6:00 byte-heating squares of the moussaka we made the other night.

I opened a bottle of Faustino Rivero Reserva tempranillo from  Rioja in Spain for dinner.  It wa because we could taste thesediment, which means it was not properly racked.

 

Moussaka 

 

What was exciting and creative was that we made the chocolate mousse recipe from the Le Buvette cookbook Luke gave us for  Christmas. Suzette melted butter and dark chocolate mixed cream and confectioner’s sugar in the Kitchenad while I separated and whisked three egg yolks and beat the whites into soft peaks. Suzette then combined the whisked egg yolks and butter and chocolate into the cream and sugar mixture and I then folded that mixture into the whisked egg whites. The result was chocolate mousse that we poured into parfait glasses and chilled until 9:00 after the first half of Midsomer Mystery, when we ate them with a sniffer of cognac.

Here is the recipe.

Bon Appetit