Texas Gambling Laws in 2021 - Key Laws and Regulations

Does anyone know where I can find any more information on this? Apparently the law has changed recently and I would like to know where it stands now. Thanks reddit!

How the Hunt Brothers Cornered the Silver Market and Then Lost it All

TL:DR: yes its long. Grab a beer.

​
Until his dying day in 2014, Nelson Bunker Hunt, who had once been the world’s wealthiest man, denied that he and his brother plotted to corner the global silver market.
Sure, back in 1980, Bunker, his younger brother Herbert, and other members of the Hunt clan owned roughly two-thirds of all the privately held silver on earth. But the historic stockpiling of bullion hadn’t been a ploy to manipulate the market, they and their sizable legal team would insist in the following years. Instead, it was a strategy to hedge against the voracious inflation of the 1970s—a monumental bet against the U.S. dollar.
Whatever the motive, it was a bet that went historically sour. The debt-fueled boom and bust of the global silver market not only decimated the Hunt fortune, but threatened to take down the U.S. financial system.
The panic of “Silver Thursday” took place over 35 years ago, but it still raises questions about the nature of financial manipulation. While many view the Hunt brothers as members of a long succession of white collar crooks, from Charles Ponzi to Bernie Madoff, others see the endearingly eccentric Texans as the victims of overstepping regulators and vindictive insiders who couldn’t stand the thought of being played by a couple of southern yokels.
In either case, the story of the Hunt brothers just goes to show how difficult it can be to distinguish illegal market manipulation from the old fashioned wheeling and dealing that make our markets work.
The Real-Life Ewings
Whatever their foibles, the Hunts make for an interesting cast of characters. Evidently CBS thought so; the family is rumored to be the basis for the Ewings, the fictional Texas oil dynasty of Dallas fame.
Sitting at the top of the family tree was H.L. Hunt, a man who allegedly purchased his first oil field with poker winnings and made a fortune drilling in east Texas. H.L. was a well-known oddball to boot, and his sons inherited many of their father’s quirks.
For one, there was the stinginess. Despite being the richest man on earth in the 1960s, Bunker Hunt (who went by his middle name), along with his younger brothers Herbert (first name William) and Lamar, cultivated an image as unpretentious good old boys. They drove old Cadillacs, flew coach, and when they eventually went to trial in New York City in 1988, they took the subway. As one Texas editor was quoted in the New York Times, Bunker Hunt was “the kind of guy who orders chicken-fried steak and Jello-O, spills some on his tie, and then goes out and buys all the silver in the world.”
Cheap suits aside, the Hunts were not without their ostentation. At the end of the 1970s, Bunker boasted a stable of over 500 horses and his little brother Lamar owned the Kansas City Chiefs. All six children of H.L.’s first marriage (the patriarch of the Hunt family had fifteen children by three women before he died in 1974) lived on estates befitting the scions of a Texas billionaire. These lifestyles were financed by trusts, but also risky investments in oil, real estate, and a host of commodities including sugar beets, soybeans, and, before long, silver.
The Hunt brothers also inherited their father’s political inclinations. A zealous anti-Communist, Bunker Hunt bankrolled conservative causes and was a prominent member of the John Birch Society, a group whose founder once speculated that Dwight Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent” of Soviet conspiracy. In November of 1963, Hunt sponsored a particularly ill-timed political campaign, which distributed pamphlets around Dallas condemning President Kennedy for alleged slights against the Constitution on the day that he was assassinated. JFK conspiracy theorists have been obsessed with Hunt ever since.
In fact, it was the Hunt brand of politics that partially explains what led Bunker and Herbert to start buying silver in 1973.
Hard Money
The 1970s were not kind to the U.S. dollar.
Years of wartime spending and unresponsive monetary policy pushed inflation upward throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then, in October of 1973, war broke out in the Middle East and an oil embargo was declared against the United States. Inflation jumped above 10%. It would stay high throughout the decade, peaking in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution at an annual average of 13.5% in 1980.
Over the same period of time, the global monetary system underwent a historic transformation. Since the first Roosevelt administration, the U.S. dollar had been pegged to the value of gold at a predictable rate of $35 per ounce. But in 1971, President Nixon, responding to inflationary pressures, suspended that relationship. For the first time in modern history, the paper dollar did not represent some fixed amount of tangible, precious metal sitting in a vault somewhere.
For conservative commodity traders like the Hunts, who blamed government spending for inflation and held grave reservations about the viability of fiat currency, the perceived stability of precious metal offered a financial safe harbor. It was illegal to trade gold in the early 1970s, so the Hunts turned to the next best thing.
📷

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; chart by Priceonomics

As an investment, there was a lot to like about silver. The Hunts were not alone in fleeing to bullion amid all the inflation and geopolitical turbulence, so the price was ticking up. Plus, light-sensitive silver halide is a key component of photographic film. With the growth of the consumer photography market, new production from mines struggled to keep up with demand.
And so, in 1973, Bunker and Herbert bought over 35 million ounces of silver, most of which they flew to Switzerland in specifically designed airplanes guarded by armed Texas ranch hands. According to one source, the Hunt’s purchases were big enough to move the global market.
But silver was not the Hunts' only speculative venture in the 1970s. Nor was it the only one that got them into trouble with regulators.
Soy Before Silver
In 1977, the price of soybeans was rising fast. Trade restrictions on Brazil and growing demand from China made the legume a hot commodity, and both Bunker and Herbert decided to enter the futures market in April of that year.
A future is an agreement to buy or sell some quantity of a commodity at an agreed upon price at a later date. If someone contracts to buy soybeans in the future (they are said to take the “long” position), they will benefit if the price of soybeans rise, since they have locked in the lower price ahead of time. Likewise, if someone contracts to sell (that’s called the “short” position), they benefit if the price falls, since they have locked in the old, higher price.
While futures contracts can be used by soybean farmers and soy milk producers to guard against price swings, most futures are traded by people who wouldn’t necessarily know tofu from cream cheese. As a de facto insurance contract against market volatility, futures can be used to hedge other investments or simply to gamble on prices going up (by going long) or down (by going short).
When the Hunts decided to go long in the soybean futures market, they went very, very long. Between Bunker, Herbert, and the accounts of five of their children, the Hunts collectively purchased the right to buy one-third of the entire autumn soybean harvest of the United States.
To some, it appeared as if the Hunts were attempting to corner the soybean market.
In its simplest version, a corner occurs when someone buys up all (or at least, most) of the available quantity of a commodity. This creates an artificial shortage, which drives up the price, and allows the market manipulator to sell some of his stockpile at a higher profit.
Futures markets introduce some additional complexity to the cornerer’s scheme. Recall that when a trader takes a short position on a contract, he or she is pledging to sell a certain amount of product to the holder of the long position. But if the holder of the long position just so happens to be sitting on all the readily available supply of the commodity under contract, the short seller faces an unenviable choice: go scrounge up some of the very scarce product in order to “make delivery” or just pay the cornerer a hefty premium and nullify the deal entirely.
In this case, the cornerer is actually counting on the shorts to do the latter, says Craig Pirrong, professor of finance at the University of Houston. If too many short sellers find that it actually costs less to deliver the product, the market manipulator will be stuck with warehouses full of inventory. Finance experts refer to selling the all the excess supply after building a corner as “burying the corpse.”
“That is when the price collapses,” explains Pirrong. “But if the number of deliveries isn’t too high, the loss from selling at the low price after the corner is smaller than the profit from selling contracts at the high price.”
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The Chicago Board of Trade trading floor. Photo credit: Jeremy Kemp

Even so, when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission found that a single family from Texas had contracted to buy a sizable portion of the 1977 soybean crop, they did not accuse the Hunts of outright market manipulation. Instead, noting that the Hunts had exceeded the 3 million bushel aggregate limit on soybean holdings by about 20 million, the CFTC noted that the Hunt’s “excessive holdings threaten disruption of the market and could cause serious injury to the American public.” The CFTC ordered the Hunts to sell and to pay a penalty of $500,000.
Though the Hunts made tens of millions of dollars on paper while soybean prices skyrocketed, it’s unclear whether they were able to cash out before the regulatory intervention. In any case, the Hunts were none too pleased with the decision.
“Apparently the CFTC is trying to repeal the law of supply and demand,” Bunker complained to the press.
Silver Thursday
Despite the run in with regulators, the Hunts were not dissuaded. Bunker and Herbert had eased up on silver after their initial big buy in 1973, but in the fall of 1979, they were back with a vengeance. By the end of the year, Bunker and Herbert owned 21 million ounces of physical silver each. They had even larger positions in the silver futures market: Bunker was long on 45 million ounces, while Herbert held contracts for 20 million. Their little brother Lamar also had a more “modest” position.
By the new year, with every dollar increase in the price of silver, the Hunts were making $100 million on paper. But unlike most investors, when their profitable futures contracts expired, they took delivery. As in 1973, they arranged to have the metal flown to Switzerland. Intentional or not, this helped create a shortage of the metal for industrial supply.
Naturally, the industrialists were unhappy. From a spot price of around $6 per ounce in early 1979, the price of silver shot up to $50.42 in January of 1980. In the same week, silver futures contracts were trading at $46.80. Film companies like Kodak saw costs go through the roof, while the British film producer, Ilford, was forced to lay off workers. Traditional bullion dealers, caught in a squeeze, cried foul to the commodity exchanges, and the New York jewelry house Tiffany & Co. took out a full page ad in the New York Times slamming the “unconscionable” Hunt brothers. They were right to single out the Hunts; in mid-January, they controlled 69% of all the silver futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange (COMEX) in New York.
📷

Source: New York Times

But as the high prices persisted, new silver began to come out of the woodwork.
“In the U.S., people rifled their dresser drawers and sofa cushions to find dimes and quarters with silver content and had them melted down,” says Pirrong, from the University of Houston. “Silver is a classic part of a bride’s trousseau in India, and when prices got high, women sold silver out of their trousseaus.”
According to a Washington Post article published that March, the D.C. police warned residents of a rash of home burglaries targeting silver.
Unfortunately for the Hunts, all this new supply had a predictable effect. Rather than close out their contracts, short sellers suddenly found it was easier to get their hands on new supplies of silver and deliver.
“The main factor that has caused corners to fail [throughout history] is that the manipulator has underestimated how much will be delivered to him if he succeeds [at] raising the price to artificial levels,” says Pirrong. “Eventually, the Hunts ran out of money to pay for all the silver that was thrown at them.”
In financial terms, the brothers had a large corpse on their hands—and no way to bury it.
This proved to be an especially big problem, because it wasn’t just the Hunt fortune that was on the line. Of the $6.6 billion worth of silver the Hunts held at the top of the market, the brothers had “only” spent a little over $1 billion of their own money. The rest was borrowed from over 20 banks and brokerage houses.
At the same time, COMEX decided to crack down. On January 7, 1980, the exchange’s board of governors announced that it would cap the size of silver futures exposure to 3 million ounces. Those in excess of the cap (say, by the tens of millions) were given until the following month to bring themselves into compliance. But that was too long for the Chicago Board of Trade exchange, which suspended the issue of any new silver futures on January 21. Silver futures traders would only be allowed to square up old contracts.
Predictably, silver prices began to slide. As the various banks and other firms that had backed the Hunt bullion binge began to recognize the tenuousness of their financial position, they issued margin calls, asking the brothers to put up more money as collateral for their debts. The Hunts, unable to sell silver lest they trigger a panic, borrowed even more. By early March, futures contracts had fallen to the mid-$30 range.
Matters finally came to a head on March 25, when one of the Hunts’ largest backers, the Bache Group, asked for $100 million more in collateral. The brothers were out of cash, and Bache was unwilling to accept silver in its place, as it had been doing throughout the month. With the Hunts in default, Bache did the only thing it could to start recouping its losses: it start to unload silver.
On March 27, “Silver Thursday,” the silver futures market dropped by a third to $10.80. Just two months earlier, these contracts had been trading at four times that amount.
The Aftermath
After the oil bust of the early 1980s and a series of lawsuits polished off the remainder of the Hunt brothers’ once historic fortune, the two declared bankruptcy in 1988. Bunker, who had been worth an estimated $16 billion in the 1960s, emerged with under $10 million to his name. That’s not exactly chump change, but it wasn’t enough to maintain his 500-plus stable of horses,.
The Hunts almost dragged their lenders into bankruptcy too—and with them, a sizable chunk of the U.S. financial system. Over twenty financial institutions had extended over a billion dollars in credit to the Hunt brothers. The default and resulting collapse of silver prices blew holes in balance sheets across Wall Street. A privately orchestrated bailout loan from a number of banks allowed the brothers to start paying off their debts and keep their creditors afloat, but the markets and regulators were rattled.
Silver Spot Prices Per Ounce (January, 1979 - June, 1980)
📷

Source: Trading Economics

In the words of then CFTC chief James Stone, the Hunts’ antics had threatened to punch a hole in the “financial fabric of the United States” like nothing had in decades. Writing about the entire episode a year later, Harper’s Magazine described Silver Thursday as “the first great panic since October 1929.”
The trouble was not over for the Hunts. In the following years, the brothers were dragged before Congressional hearings, got into a legal spat with their lenders, and were sued by a Peruvian mineral marketing company, which had suffered big losses in the crash. In 1988, a New York City jury found for the South American firm, levying a penalty of over $130 million against the Hunts and finding that they had deliberately conspired to corner the silver market.
Surprisingly, there is still some disagreement on that point.
Bunker Hunt attributed the whole affair to the political motives of COMEX insiders and regulators. Referring to himself later as “a favorite whipping boy” of an eastern financial establishment riddled with liberals and socialists, Bunker and his brother, Herbert, are still perceived as martyrs by some on the far-right.
“Political and financial insiders repeatedly changed the rules of the game,” wrote the New American. “There is little evidence to support the ‘corner the market’ narrative.”
Though the Hunt brothers clearly amassed a staggering amount of silver and silver derivatives at the end of the 1970s, it is impossible to prove definitively that market manipulation was in their hearts. Maybe, as the Hunts always claimed, they just really believed in the enduring value of silver.
Or maybe, as others have noted, the Hunt brothers had no idea what they were doing. Call it the stupidity defense.
“They’re terribly unsophisticated,” an anonymous associated was quoted as saying of the Hunts in a Chicago Tribune article from 1989. “They make all the mistakes most other people make,” said another.
p.s. credit to Ben Christopher
​

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis.
I am doing a separate post for the insurrection and related events. I think it is important to make sure the news in this post doesn't get overlooked.
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Russia

A new report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) found that Trump political appointees politicized intelligence around foreign election interference in 2020, resulting in significant errors. ODNI analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf delivered the report to Congress on Thursday: “Analysis on foreign election interference was delayed, distorted or obstructed out of concern over policymaker reactions or for political reasons.” The biggest misrepresentation of intel involved diminishing the threat posed by Russia and overstating the risk of interference from China.

“Russia analysts assessed that there was clear and credible evidence of Russian election influence activities. They said IC management slowing down or not wanting to take their analysis to customers, claiming that it was not well received, frustrated them. Analysts saw this as suppression of intelligence, bordering on politicization of intelligence from above.”

• WaPo: Zulauf, a career official, also found an “egregious” example of attempted politicization of the Russian interference issue in March talking points on foreign election threats, prepared “presumably by ODNI staff” and “shaped by” then-Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell.

The Justice Department and the federal judiciary revealed that the Russian Solar Winds hack also compromised their computer systems. 3% of the DOJ’s Microsoft Office 365 were potentially affected; it does not appear that classified material was accessed. The impact on the judiciary seems much more significant, jeopardizing “highly sensitive confidential documents filed with the courts.”

The sealed court files, if indeed breached, could hold information about national security, trade secrets and wiretap transcripts, along with financial data from bankruptcy cases and the names of confidential informants in criminal cases...

Appointees

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has accused U.S. Agency for Global Media Director Michael Pack of funneling $4 million in nonprofit funds to his own for-profit company. In a civil lawsuit filed last week, Racine states that for over 12 years, Pack used a nonprofit company he owned to direct money to his private documentary company, enabling “Pack to line his company’s coffers with a stream of tax-exempt dollars without...a competitive bidding process, public scrutiny, or accounting requirements regarding its spending.”
Employees at Voice of America have filed a whistleblower complaint accusing Pack of using the agency “to disseminate political propaganda in the waning days of the Trump administration. The staffers take issue with a planned speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to be broadcast from VOA headquarters. The event, to be attended by a live audience, “is a specific danger to public health and safety” in the middle of a pandemic. Finally, the whistleblowers say the event is “ a gross misuse of government resources,” costing at least $4,000 in taxpayer funds to date and using 18 employees who would otherwise be producing VOA content.
Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller has announced his appointees to the panel set to rename confederate military bases and plan the removal of confederate symbols/monuments. Most controversially, Miller named White House liaison Joshua Whitehouse, who oversaw the purge of the Defense Policy Board and the Defense Business Board last month. The other three Miller-appointees are former acting Army general counsel Earl Matthews, acting assistant secretary of Defense Ann Johnston, and White House official Sean McLean. The remaining four members will be appointed by the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.

• The 10 Army posts named in honor of Confederate generals are Camp Beauregard and Fort Polk in Louisiana, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia, Fort Rucker in Alabama, and Fort Hood in Texas.

Trump

The Trump Inaugural Committee, a nonprofit, improperly paid a $49,000 hotel bill that should have been picked up by Trump’s for-profit business. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine revealed the allegation in an existing lawsuit against the committee, which already accuses Trump’s hotel of illegally pocketing about $1 million of donors’ money. “The Trump Organization was liable for the invoiced charges...The [Committee’s] payment of the invoice was unfair, unreasonable and unjustified and ultimately conferred improper private benefit to the Trump Organization.”
The Professional Golfer’s Association voted last night to move the 2022 PGA Championship from Trump’s Bedminster course. Jim Richerson, PGA of America president, said in a statement that “it has become clear that conducting” the championship at Trump’s property would “be detrimental to the PGA of America brand” and put the organization's ability to function "at risk."
Amid speculation that Trump may spend inauguration day at his Scottish golf course, Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon warned him that even presidents can’t break the country’s pandemic restrictions. “We are not allowing people to come into Scotland now without an essential purpose, which would apply to him, just as it applies to everybody else. Coming to play golf is not what I would consider an essential purpose,” she said.
Trump is on a Presidential Medal of Freedom spree, giving out the award to sports figures and Republican allies. Last Monday, Trump awarded the medal to Rep. Devin Nunes for his work undermining the FBI’s investigation of Russia’s election interference. “Devin Nunes’ courageous actions helped thwart a plot to take down a sitting United States president,” the White House press release states. Likewise, Trump gave the medal to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for his “effort to confront the impeachment witch hunt” and “exposing the fraudulent origins of the Russia collusion lie.”

• The day after Trump supporters rampaged through the Capitol, Trump awarded the medal to retired professional golfers Annika Sorenstam and Gary Player. The president planned on giving New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick the medal on Thursday, but he declined the offer, saying that “the tragic events of last week occurred and the decision has been made not to move forward with the award.”

Courts

Dominion Voting Systems filed suit against pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for defamation. Powell falsely claimed that Dominion had rigged the election, that Dominion was created in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chávez, and that Dominion bribed Georgia officials for a no-bid contract,” the lawsuit states. Citing millions spent on security for employees, damage control to its reputation, and future losses, Dominion requests damages of more than $1.3 billion.

• Dominion's lawyer told reporters last week the lawsuit against Powell “is just the first in a series of legal steps.” Ari Cohn, a free speech and defamation lawyer, told WaPo: “If I had to guess I would say that [Poulos] wants a very public vindication with a ruling establishing that Sidney Powell defamed them and that her statements were baseless...That's not something you generally get in a settlement agreement.”
  
• Just last week, Trump again said at a rally that Dominion machines allowed “fraudulent ballots” to be counted during the 2020 election (clip).
  

The Supreme Court declined to fast track eight Trump-related cases related to the 2020 election, ensuring they won’t be taken up before Biden’s inauguration. The cases include one brought by attorney Lin Wood against Georgia’s Secretary of State, the so-called “Kraken” cases, and three brought by Trump’s campaign. It is possible the lawsuits will be declared moot after Biden is sworn in.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases alleging that the Treasury Dept. incorrectly distributed Coronavirus aid meant for tribal governments. The Lower 48 Tribes argue that Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) are not eligible for CARES Act funding, while the Trump administration wants to divvy up the money between tribes and ANCs.

Immigration

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s final attempt to restrict U.S. asylum laws. District Judge James Donato (Obama appointee) ruled in favor of advocacy groups who argued that acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf lacked authority to impose the new rules, which would have resulted in the denial of most asylum applications.

“The government has recycled exactly the same legal and factual claims made in the prior cases, as if they had not been soundly rejected in well-reasoned opinions by several courts,” Donato wrote. “This is a troubling litigation strategy. In effect, the government keeps crashing the same car into a gate, hoping that someday it might break through.”

On Monday, acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf submitted his resignation, citing the recent court ruling that he is not a valid appointee to the position. His resignation letter does not cite the Capitol riots or Trump’s language inciting the insurrection. FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor will be the new acting secretary.

"Unfortunately, this action is warranted by recent events, including the ongoing and meritless court rulings regarding the validity of my authority as Acting Secretary. These events and concerns increasingly serve to divert attention and resources away from the important work of the Department in this critical time of a transition of power," Wolf added.

A new Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy will make it harder for immigrant minors to obtain asylum in the U.S. The change was made at the end of last month by then-acting agency leader Tony Pham, who served in the position for less than five months.

Beginning Dec. 29, ICE officers were told that they must review whether an immigrant child is still “unaccompanied” each time they encounter the minor… The memo indicates that the evaluation by ICE officers can come at any time, including when an officer is reviewing immigration court records of a child, and if it’s determined that an immigrant is no longer unaccompanied, they will move to change their status.
Such a change could lead to making some children ineligible to have their asylum claims initially heard and processed… “If implemented aggressively, this policy could significantly decrease the number of children who ultimately receive asylum in the United States,” said Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “They are really putting the onus on ICE officers to do everything they can as frequently as they can to remove these designations.”

The Trump administration is still awarding border wall contracts, even in areas where private land has not yet been acquired. The move will make it more difficult for Biden to stop construction of the border wall.

Attempts to halt construction completely, as Biden promised, will prove difficult, particularly if contracts continue to be struck -- a challenge [acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark] Morgan acknowledged Tuesday. "They could terminate those contracts if they want to, but that's going to be a very lengthy, messy process," Morgan said.
"We're going to have to go into settlement agreements with each individual contractor," Morgan added, noting, that payments will have to be made for what they've already done, as well as for materials produced. He estimated the process could cost billions.

Trump is set to visit Alamo, Texas, today to celebrate the completion of more than 400 miles of the border wall. You can watch the event on YouTube at 3:00 pm eastern.

Miscellaneous

Stories that didn’t fit in the above categories...
The Trump administration auctioned off leases to drill oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge last week. Only two private companies bid, each winning large tracts of land. Knik Arm Services, from Alaska, paid $1.6 million for a 50,000-acre tract along the Arctic Ocean. A subsidiary of Australian company 88 Energy paid $800,000 to win the smallest tract.
One of the Health and Human Services Department’s final acts under Trump was finalizing the removal of Obama-era regulations barring discrimination among HHS grantees. The change will allow recipients of federal grant money - like adoption and foster agencies - to discriminate against LGBTQ people and those of a different religion.

Human Rights Campaign: “Statistics suggest that an estimated two million LGBTQ adults in the U.S. are interested in adoption… Further, research consistently shows that LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in the foster care system, as many have been rejected by their families of origin because of their LGBTQ status, and are especially vulnerable to discrimination and mistreatment while in foster care. This regulation would only exacerbate these challenges faced by LGBTQ young people.

Story Time: Silver short squeeze

How the Hunt Brothers Cornered the Silver Market and Then Lost it All

TL:DR: yes its long. Grab a beer.

​
Until his dying day in 2014, Nelson Bunker Hunt, who had once been the world’s wealthiest man, denied that he and his brother plotted to corner the global silver market.
Sure, back in 1980, Bunker, his younger brother Herbert, and other members of the Hunt clan owned roughly two-thirds of all the privately held silver on earth. But the historic stockpiling of bullion hadn’t been a ploy to manipulate the market, they and their sizable legal team would insist in the following years. Instead, it was a strategy to hedge against the voracious inflation of the 1970s—a monumental bet against the U.S. dollar.
Whatever the motive, it was a bet that went historically sour. The debt-fueled boom and bust of the global silver market not only decimated the Hunt fortune, but threatened to take down the U.S. financial system.
The panic of “Silver Thursday” took place over 35 years ago, but it still raises questions about the nature of financial manipulation. While many view the Hunt brothers as members of a long succession of white collar crooks, from Charles Ponzi to Bernie Madoff, others see the endearingly eccentric Texans as the victims of overstepping regulators and vindictive insiders who couldn’t stand the thought of being played by a couple of southern yokels.
In either case, the story of the Hunt brothers just goes to show how difficult it can be to distinguish illegal market manipulation from the old fashioned wheeling and dealing that make our markets work.
The Real-Life Ewings
Whatever their foibles, the Hunts make for an interesting cast of characters. Evidently CBS thought so; the family is rumored to be the basis for the Ewings, the fictional Texas oil dynasty of Dallas fame.
Sitting at the top of the family tree was H.L. Hunt, a man who allegedly purchased his first oil field with poker winnings and made a fortune drilling in east Texas. H.L. was a well-known oddball to boot, and his sons inherited many of their father’s quirks.
For one, there was the stinginess. Despite being the richest man on earth in the 1960s, Bunker Hunt (who went by his middle name), along with his younger brothers Herbert (first name William) and Lamar, cultivated an image as unpretentious good old boys. They drove old Cadillacs, flew coach, and when they eventually went to trial in New York City in 1988, they took the subway. As one Texas editor was quoted in the New York Times, Bunker Hunt was “the kind of guy who orders chicken-fried steak and Jello-O, spills some on his tie, and then goes out and buys all the silver in the world.”
Cheap suits aside, the Hunts were not without their ostentation. At the end of the 1970s, Bunker boasted a stable of over 500 horses and his little brother Lamar owned the Kansas City Chiefs. All six children of H.L.’s first marriage (the patriarch of the Hunt family had fifteen children by three women before he died in 1974) lived on estates befitting the scions of a Texas billionaire. These lifestyles were financed by trusts, but also risky investments in oil, real estate, and a host of commodities including sugar beets, soybeans, and, before long, silver.
The Hunt brothers also inherited their father’s political inclinations. A zealous anti-Communist, Bunker Hunt bankrolled conservative causes and was a prominent member of the John Birch Society, a group whose founder once speculated that Dwight Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent” of Soviet conspiracy. In November of 1963, Hunt sponsored a particularly ill-timed political campaign, which distributed pamphlets around Dallas condemning President Kennedy for alleged slights against the Constitution on the day that he was assassinated. JFK conspiracy theorists have been obsessed with Hunt ever since.
In fact, it was the Hunt brand of politics that partially explains what led Bunker and Herbert to start buying silver in 1973.
Hard Money
The 1970s were not kind to the U.S. dollar.
Years of wartime spending and unresponsive monetary policy pushed inflation upward throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then, in October of 1973, war broke out in the Middle East and an oil embargo was declared against the United States. Inflation jumped above 10%. It would stay high throughout the decade, peaking in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution at an annual average of 13.5% in 1980.
Over the same period of time, the global monetary system underwent a historic transformation. Since the first Roosevelt administration, the U.S. dollar had been pegged to the value of gold at a predictable rate of $35 per ounce. But in 1971, President Nixon, responding to inflationary pressures, suspended that relationship. For the first time in modern history, the paper dollar did not represent some fixed amount of tangible, precious metal sitting in a vault somewhere.
For conservative commodity traders like the Hunts, who blamed government spending for inflation and held grave reservations about the viability of fiat currency, the perceived stability of precious metal offered a financial safe harbor. It was illegal to trade gold in the early 1970s, so the Hunts turned to the next best thing.
📷

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; chart by Priceonomics

As an investment, there was a lot to like about silver. The Hunts were not alone in fleeing to bullion amid all the inflation and geopolitical turbulence, so the price was ticking up. Plus, light-sensitive silver halide is a key component of photographic film. With the growth of the consumer photography market, new production from mines struggled to keep up with demand.
And so, in 1973, Bunker and Herbert bought over 35 million ounces of silver, most of which they flew to Switzerland in specifically designed airplanes guarded by armed Texas ranch hands. According to one source, the Hunt’s purchases were big enough to move the global market.
But silver was not the Hunts' only speculative venture in the 1970s. Nor was it the only one that got them into trouble with regulators.
Soy Before Silver
In 1977, the price of soybeans was rising fast. Trade restrictions on Brazil and growing demand from China made the legume a hot commodity, and both Bunker and Herbert decided to enter the futures market in April of that year.
A future is an agreement to buy or sell some quantity of a commodity at an agreed upon price at a later date. If someone contracts to buy soybeans in the future (they are said to take the “long” position), they will benefit if the price of soybeans rise, since they have locked in the lower price ahead of time. Likewise, if someone contracts to sell (that’s called the “short” position), they benefit if the price falls, since they have locked in the old, higher price.
While futures contracts can be used by soybean farmers and soy milk producers to guard against price swings, most futures are traded by people who wouldn’t necessarily know tofu from cream cheese. As a de facto insurance contract against market volatility, futures can be used to hedge other investments or simply to gamble on prices going up (by going long) or down (by going short).
When the Hunts decided to go long in the soybean futures market, they went very, very long. Between Bunker, Herbert, and the accounts of five of their children, the Hunts collectively purchased the right to buy one-third of the entire autumn soybean harvest of the United States.
To some, it appeared as if the Hunts were attempting to corner the soybean market.
In its simplest version, a corner occurs when someone buys up all (or at least, most) of the available quantity of a commodity. This creates an artificial shortage, which drives up the price, and allows the market manipulator to sell some of his stockpile at a higher profit.
Futures markets introduce some additional complexity to the cornerer’s scheme. Recall that when a trader takes a short position on a contract, he or she is pledging to sell a certain amount of product to the holder of the long position. But if the holder of the long position just so happens to be sitting on all the readily available supply of the commodity under contract, the short seller faces an unenviable choice: go scrounge up some of the very scarce product in order to “make delivery” or just pay the cornerer a hefty premium and nullify the deal entirely.
In this case, the cornerer is actually counting on the shorts to do the latter, says Craig Pirrong, professor of finance at the University of Houston. If too many short sellers find that it actually costs less to deliver the product, the market manipulator will be stuck with warehouses full of inventory. Finance experts refer to selling the all the excess supply after building a corner as “burying the corpse.”
“That is when the price collapses,” explains Pirrong. “But if the number of deliveries isn’t too high, the loss from selling at the low price after the corner is smaller than the profit from selling contracts at the high price.”
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The Chicago Board of Trade trading floor. Photo credit: Jeremy Kemp

Even so, when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission found that a single family from Texas had contracted to buy a sizable portion of the 1977 soybean crop, they did not accuse the Hunts of outright market manipulation. Instead, noting that the Hunts had exceeded the 3 million bushel aggregate limit on soybean holdings by about 20 million, the CFTC noted that the Hunt’s “excessive holdings threaten disruption of the market and could cause serious injury to the American public.” The CFTC ordered the Hunts to sell and to pay a penalty of $500,000.
Though the Hunts made tens of millions of dollars on paper while soybean prices skyrocketed, it’s unclear whether they were able to cash out before the regulatory intervention. In any case, the Hunts were none too pleased with the decision.
“Apparently the CFTC is trying to repeal the law of supply and demand,” Bunker complained to the press.
Silver Thursday
Despite the run in with regulators, the Hunts were not dissuaded. Bunker and Herbert had eased up on silver after their initial big buy in 1973, but in the fall of 1979, they were back with a vengeance. By the end of the year, Bunker and Herbert owned 21 million ounces of physical silver each. They had even larger positions in the silver futures market: Bunker was long on 45 million ounces, while Herbert held contracts for 20 million. Their little brother Lamar also had a more “modest” position.
By the new year, with every dollar increase in the price of silver, the Hunts were making $100 million on paper. But unlike most investors, when their profitable futures contracts expired, they took delivery. As in 1973, they arranged to have the metal flown to Switzerland. Intentional or not, this helped create a shortage of the metal for industrial supply.
Naturally, the industrialists were unhappy. From a spot price of around $6 per ounce in early 1979, the price of silver shot up to $50.42 in January of 1980. In the same week, silver futures contracts were trading at $46.80. Film companies like Kodak saw costs go through the roof, while the British film producer, Ilford, was forced to lay off workers. Traditional bullion dealers, caught in a squeeze, cried foul to the commodity exchanges, and the New York jewelry house Tiffany & Co. took out a full page ad in the New York Times slamming the “unconscionable” Hunt brothers. They were right to single out the Hunts; in mid-January, they controlled 69% of all the silver futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange (COMEX) in New York.
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Source: New York Times

But as the high prices persisted, new silver began to come out of the woodwork.
“In the U.S., people rifled their dresser drawers and sofa cushions to find dimes and quarters with silver content and had them melted down,” says Pirrong, from the University of Houston. “Silver is a classic part of a bride’s trousseau in India, and when prices got high, women sold silver out of their trousseaus.”
According to a Washington Post article published that March, the D.C. police warned residents of a rash of home burglaries targeting silver.
Unfortunately for the Hunts, all this new supply had a predictable effect. Rather than close out their contracts, short sellers suddenly found it was easier to get their hands on new supplies of silver and deliver.
“The main factor that has caused corners to fail [throughout history] is that the manipulator has underestimated how much will be delivered to him if he succeeds [at] raising the price to artificial levels,” says Pirrong. “Eventually, the Hunts ran out of money to pay for all the silver that was thrown at them.”
In financial terms, the brothers had a large corpse on their hands—and no way to bury it.
This proved to be an especially big problem, because it wasn’t just the Hunt fortune that was on the line. Of the $6.6 billion worth of silver the Hunts held at the top of the market, the brothers had “only” spent a little over $1 billion of their own money. The rest was borrowed from over 20 banks and brokerage houses.
At the same time, COMEX decided to crack down. On January 7, 1980, the exchange’s board of governors announced that it would cap the size of silver futures exposure to 3 million ounces. Those in excess of the cap (say, by the tens of millions) were given until the following month to bring themselves into compliance. But that was too long for the Chicago Board of Trade exchange, which suspended the issue of any new silver futures on January 21. Silver futures traders would only be allowed to square up old contracts.
Predictably, silver prices began to slide. As the various banks and other firms that had backed the Hunt bullion binge began to recognize the tenuousness of their financial position, they issued margin calls, asking the brothers to put up more money as collateral for their debts. The Hunts, unable to sell silver lest they trigger a panic, borrowed even more. By early March, futures contracts had fallen to the mid-$30 range.
Matters finally came to a head on March 25, when one of the Hunts’ largest backers, the Bache Group, asked for $100 million more in collateral. The brothers were out of cash, and Bache was unwilling to accept silver in its place, as it had been doing throughout the month. With the Hunts in default, Bache did the only thing it could to start recouping its losses: it start to unload silver.
On March 27, “Silver Thursday,” the silver futures market dropped by a third to $10.80. Just two months earlier, these contracts had been trading at four times that amount.
The Aftermath
After the oil bust of the early 1980s and a series of lawsuits polished off the remainder of the Hunt brothers’ once historic fortune, the two declared bankruptcy in 1988. Bunker, who had been worth an estimated $16 billion in the 1960s, emerged with under $10 million to his name. That’s not exactly chump change, but it wasn’t enough to maintain his 500-plus stable of horses,.
The Hunts almost dragged their lenders into bankruptcy too—and with them, a sizable chunk of the U.S. financial system. Over twenty financial institutions had extended over a billion dollars in credit to the Hunt brothers. The default and resulting collapse of silver prices blew holes in balance sheets across Wall Street. A privately orchestrated bailout loan from a number of banks allowed the brothers to start paying off their debts and keep their creditors afloat, but the markets and regulators were rattled.
Silver Spot Prices Per Ounce (January, 1979 - June, 1980)
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Source: Trading Economics

In the words of then CFTC chief James Stone, the Hunts’ antics had threatened to punch a hole in the “financial fabric of the United States” like nothing had in decades. Writing about the entire episode a year later, Harper’s Magazine described Silver Thursday as “the first great panic since October 1929.”
The trouble was not over for the Hunts. In the following years, the brothers were dragged before Congressional hearings, got into a legal spat with their lenders, and were sued by a Peruvian mineral marketing company, which had suffered big losses in the crash. In 1988, a New York City jury found for the South American firm, levying a penalty of over $130 million against the Hunts and finding that they had deliberately conspired to corner the silver market.
Surprisingly, there is still some disagreement on that point.
Bunker Hunt attributed the whole affair to the political motives of COMEX insiders and regulators. Referring to himself later as “a favorite whipping boy” of an eastern financial establishment riddled with liberals and socialists, Bunker and his brother, Herbert, are still perceived as martyrs by some on the far-right.
“Political and financial insiders repeatedly changed the rules of the game,” wrote the New American. “There is little evidence to support the ‘corner the market’ narrative.”
Though the Hunt brothers clearly amassed a staggering amount of silver and silver derivatives at the end of the 1970s, it is impossible to prove definitively that market manipulation was in their hearts. Maybe, as the Hunts always claimed, they just really believed in the enduring value of silver.
Or maybe, as others have noted, the Hunt brothers had no idea what they were doing. Call it the stupidity defense.
“They’re terribly unsophisticated,” an anonymous associated was quoted as saying of the Hunts in a Chicago Tribune article from 1989. “They make all the mistakes most other people make,” said another.
p.s. credit to Ben Christopher

So, I'm running the Masks of Nyarlathotep prequel chapter in Peru for some friends of mine. We've done a few standalone CoC scenarios before but this is our first major campaign.
My PCs are:
Magnolia: A young rich, highly sociable and well connected dilettante from New York City.
Lawrence: A disgraced young son of an English lord who's sorta making a living as a con artist nowadays.
Smokey: A young grease monkey from New England who's also a WWI vet.
Mimi: An occult history academic from New Orleans who also has a bit of a gambling addiction.
Mike: A bootlegger and career criminal from Texas. Traveling with the crew partially to avoid the law in Texas.
Something I want to get better at as a GM in general is being able to integrate character specific story stuff into my games, although admittedly I haven't asked the players to go super in-depth with their backstories and so I only have a little bit more to work off of then the short synopsis I have here.
For Magnolia and Lawrence, I feel like I can pretty easily integrate their connections into the New York and England chapters when we get there. However, for the other PCs I'm not so sure.
For Smokey, I'm thinking I might have him run into someone he know from the war at some point and that be an additional avenue they have to get information, but I'm not sure when or where to introduce that, or if I should do something else.
For Mimi, she already gets a few chances to shine as the group's most academic character but I'm not sure if I can introduce some more story hooks for her. One thing though is that it's kind of become a running joke with that player that she develops a crush on all the older, professorial, academic men that she meets so that could be a fun hook to plan for and integrate.
Mike is the one I'm least sure of how to find a connection for him. I suppose the law catching up with him or running into old criminal contacts would make sense, but given the globetrotting nature of the adventure I'm not sure where that would make sense to do so.

Team has been involved in a substantial number of the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries’ most significant merger and acquisition transactions, holding key positions at, and transacting with Scientific Games Corp, Inspired Gaming Group, FOX Bets, Ocean Casino Resort, Resorts International Holdings, PokerStars, DraftKings, Mohegan Sun, Caesars Entertainment Corporation, Harrah’s Entertainment, Tropicana Entertainment, Inc., TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming, Facebook, Inc, Wynn Resorts, Dubai World/MGM Resorts
Here's all the Bios. These guys are stellar! TEKK closed at $10.30 today. Still cheap!
If you don't like to read... you don't like to make money!!!!
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Matthew Davey — Chief Executive Officer and Director
Mr. Davey has over 25 years of experience within the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming ecosystems, as well as experience in the public sector. He is an experienced public company executive officer and board member. He has served in executive management positions across the gaming technology arena. Over the course of Mr. Davey’s career, he oversaw more than ten mergers and acquisitions and over $1.2 billion in debt and equity capital raised to support the companies he has led.
Most recently, Mr. Davey was Chief Executive Officer of SG Digital, the Digital Division of Scientific Games Corp. (“Scientific Games”) (Nasdaq: SGMS). SG Digital was established following the purchase by Scientific Games of NYX Gaming Group Limited (“NYX”) (formerly TSXV: NYX), where Mr. Davey served as Chief Executive Officer and Director. The NYX acquisition provided Scientific Games with a vehicle to significantly accelerate the scale and breadth of its existing digital gaming business, including the strategic expansion into sports betting. In his capacity as Chief Executive Officer of NYX, Mr. Davey developed and implemented a corporate strategy that generated strong revenue growth. Mr. Davey shaped company strategy to focus on digital gaming supplier platforms and content that provided various gaming operators with the underlying gaming and sports betting systems for their online gaming business. In 2014, Mr. Davey oversaw the initial public offering of NYX, and his experience in the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries helped NYX recognize momentum as a public company. After the public offering, from 2014 to 2018, Mr. Davey oversaw seven acquisitions which helped establish NYX as one of the fastest growing global B2B real-money digital gaming and sports betting platforms. These acquisitions included:
• OpenBet: In 2016, NYX completed the $385 million acquisition of OpenBet. This was one of the more complex and transformative acquisitions that Mr. Davey oversaw at NYX. Through securing co-investments from William Hill (LSE: WMH), Sky Betting & Gaming and The Stars Group (formerly Nasdaq: TSG, TSX: TSGI), Mr. Davey was able to get the acquisition from Vitruvian Partners completed successfully, winning the deal against much larger and well capitalized competitors. By combining two established and proven B2B betting and gaming suppliers, NYX was well positioned to provide customers with exciting player-driven solutions across all major product verticals and distribution channels. This allowed NYX to become the leading B2B omni-channel sportsbook platform in the market and the supplier to over 300 gaming operators globally with an extensive library of desktop and mobile game titles, including more than 700 on NYX platforms and more than 2,000 on the OpenBet platform.
• Cryptologic/Chartwell: In 2015, NYX completed the $119 million acquisition of Cryptologic and Chartwell. The acquisition provided NYX with more than 400 titles of additional leading gaming content, a broader customer base, and direct exposure to PokerStars and Intercasino, part of the Gamesys Group (LSE: GYS) — two of the world’s largest online casino offerings.
• OnGame: In 2014, NYX completed the distressed acquisition of OnGame, a premier poker content, platform and service provider. This acquisition provided NYX with one of the best poker products in the industry, access to several regulated jurisdictions, and a valuable talent pool that was instrumental in the growth of NYX. The addition of OnGame further established a path for NYX to continue its growth in both European and U.S. markets.
These acquisitions, together with meaningful organic growth, increased NYX’s revenue from $24 million in 2014 to $184 million annualized in 2017. During that time, Mr. Davey helped build NYX to have over 200 customers in the global gaming industry and a team of 1,000 employees. Mr. Davey’s success at NYX ultimately led to its sale to Scientific Games for $631 million in 2018.
Mr. Davey joined Next Gen Gaming, the predecessor to NYX, in 2000 as the Vice President of Technology, was appointed as Executive Director in 2003 and named Chief Executive Officer in 2005. Prior to that, he was the Senior Consultant for Access Systems, a company that specializes in the provision of back-end software for licensed online casinos. Prior to joining Access, Mr. Davey worked for the Northern Territory Government specializing in matters pertaining to the internet and e-commerce along with roles in the Department of Racing and Gaming. Mr. Davey received a Bachelor of Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Northern Territory University, Australia (also known as Charles Darwin University).
Robin Chhabra — President
Mr. Chhabra has been at the forefront of corporate acquisition activity within the digital gaming landscape for over a decade. His prior experience includes leading corporate strategy, M&A, and business development at two of the global leaders in the digital gaming industry, The Stars Group (“TSG”) and William Hill, and a leading supplier, Inspired Gaming Group (Nasdaq: INSE). Mr. Chhabra served on the Group Executive Committees of each of these companies. From 2017 to May 2020, Mr. Chhabra served as Chief Corporate Development Officer at TSG and, from 2019 to August 2020, he also served as the Chief Executive Officer of Fox Bet, a leading U.S. online gaming business which is the product of a landmark partnership between TSG and FOX Sports, a transaction which he led. During that period, Mr. Chhabra led several transactions which transformed TSG into the largest publicly listed online gambling operator in the world by both revenue and market capitalization and one of the most diversified from a product and geographic perspective with revenues of over $2.5 billion. Mr. Chhabra’s M&A experience is extensive and covers multiple global geographies across the digital gaming value chain and includes the following:
• TSG/Flutter Entertainment Merger: In 2019, Mr. Chhabra led the TSG M&A team that was responsible for TSG’s $12.2 billion merger with Flutter Entertainment (LSE: FLTR). The merger between TSG and Flutter Entertainment is the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date. The combination created the largest publicly listed online gaming company with approximately 13 million active customers and leading product offerings, which include sports betting, online casino, fantasy sports and poker. The combined entity includes some of the world’s most iconic digital gaming brands such as Fanduel, Fox Bet, Sky Bet, PaddyPower, Betfair, PokerStars and SportsBet. TSG/Flutter Entertainment is one of the most geographically diverse digital gaming and media companies with leading positions in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany and Georgia.
• TSG/Sky Betting and Gaming (“SBG”): In 2018, Mr. Chhabra led the acquisition of SBG from CVC Capital Partners and Sky plc, Europe’s largest media company, in a transaction valued at $4.7 billion. At the time of the acquisition SBG was the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom and one of the fastest growing of the major operators having doubled its online market share in three years. The acquisition of SBG provided TSG with (a) greater revenue diversification, significantly enhanced expertise and exposure to sports betting just ahead of the judicial overturn of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) by the U.S. Supreme Court, (b) a leading position within the United Kingdom, the world’s largest regulated online gaming market, (c) improved products and technology as a result of the addition of SBG’s innovative casino and sports book offerings and a portfolio of popular mobile apps, and (d) expertise in deeply integrating sports betting with leading sports media companies, positioning TSG to create more engaging content, deliver faster growth and decrease customer acquisition costs.
• William Hill (LSE: WMH): At William Hill, from 2010 to 2017, Mr. Chhabra served as Group Director of Strategy and Corporate Development where he led several transactions which contributed to William Hill’s transformation from a land-based gambling operator in the United Kingdom to a leading online-led international business. Mr. Chhabra led William Hill’s entry into the U.S. sports betting and online lottery markets with the acquisition of four businesses, including the simultaneous acquisitions of three U.S. sportsbooks, Cal Neva, American Wagering and Brandywine Bookmaking, in 2011 for an aggregate purchase price of $55 million. These businesses ultimately led William Hill to achieve a leading position in the U.S. sports betting market with a market share of 24% in 2019. Additionally, Mr. Chhabra played a key role in structuring William Hill’s successful joint venture with PlayTech Plc (LSE: PTEC) in 2008. The combined entity created one of the largest online gambling businesses in Europe at the time of its formation and led to William Hill’s buyout of Playtech’s interest for $637 million in 2013. Prior to the transaction, William Hill had struggled in its attempt to establish a strong online gaming platform and a meaningful presence outside the United Kingdom.
Mr. Chhabra has also successfully completed four transactions worth over $1.2 billion in Australia, the world’s second largest regulated online gambling market, and various partnerships in Asia. Additionally, he completed several technology and media related transactions, including William Hill’s investment in NYX, where he worked with Mr. Davey on NYX’s transformational acquisition of OpenBet.
Prior to working in the gaming sector, Mr. Chhabra was an equities analyst and a management consultant. Mr. Chhabra received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Eric Matejevich — Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Matejevich is a seasoned gaming executive with extensive experience in both the online gaming and traditional casino industries. From February to August 2019, he served as Trustee and Interim-Chief Executive Officer of Ocean Casino Resort (“Ocean”) (formerly Revel Casino, which had a construction cost of $2.4 billion) in Atlantic City, where he successfully led the management team through an ownership change and operational turnaround effort. Over the course of seven months, Mr. Matejevich managed to reduce the property’s weekly cash burn of $1.5 million to an annualized cash flow run rate in excess of $20 million.
Prior to Ocean, from 2016 to 2018, Mr. Matejevich served as the Chief Financial Officer of NYX. At NYX, he focused his efforts on integrating the company’s many acquisitions and multiple debt refinancings to simplify its capital structure and provided liquidity for growth initiatives. Additionally, Mr. Matejevich was instrumental to the executive team that sold NYX to Scientific Games for $631 million.
Prior to NYX, from 2004 to 2014, Mr. Matejevich was the Chief Financial Officer of Resorts International Holdings and later, from 2011, also the Chief Operating Officer of the Atlantic Club Casino, a property under the Resorts International Holdings umbrella — a Colony Capital (NYSE: CLNY) entity. As Chief Financial Officer, he provided managerial oversight for all finance functions for a six-property casino company with annual gaming revenue exceeding $1.3 billion, 10,000 gaming positions, 7,000 hotel rooms and over 11,000 staff members during his tenure. Mr. Matejevich led the transition effort to integrate a four-casino, $1.3 billion acquisition from Harrah’s Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment (Nasdaq: CZR). As Chief Operating Officer of Atlantic Club, he lobbied for and was successful in obtaining the first internet gaming legislation passed in the United States. The Atlantic Club was the sole New Jersey casino proponent of the legislation.
Prior to serving in various gaming positions, Mr. Matejevich was a Vice President of High Yield Research for Merrill Lynch, where he managed the corporate bond research effort for the gaming and leisure sectors and marketed high yield and other debt transactions totaling $4.8 billion. Mr. Matejevich received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
Our Board of Directors
Morris Bailey — Chairman
Over the past 10 years, Mr. Bailey has been a leader in turning around Atlantic City, as well as being among the first gaming executives to embrace online gaming and sports betting in the United States. In his efforts, Mr. Bailey partnered with two of the largest digital gaming companies in the world, PokerStars, part of the Stars Group, and DraftKings (Nasdaq: DKNG). In 2010, Mr. Bailey bought Resorts Atlantic City (“Resorts”) and initiated a comprehensive renovation which allowed for the property to be rebranded and repositioned. In 2012, Mr. Bailey signed an agreement with Mohegan Sun to manage the day-to-day operations of the casino. In addition to Mohegan Sun’s operational expertise and ability to reduce costs via economies of scale, Resorts gained access to their robust customer database. Soon thereafter, Mr. Bailey and his team focused on bringing online gaming to the property. In 2015, Resorts established a platform to engage in online gaming by partnering with PokerStars, now part of the $24 billion Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR), to operate an online poker room in Atlantic City. In 2018, Resorts announced deals with DraftKings and SBTech to open a sportsbook on-property and online. For 2020 year-to-date, Resorts has performed in the top quartile in internet gross gaming revenue in New Jersey. Mr. Bailey’s efforts in New Jersey helped set the framework for expansion of online sports and gaming throughout the United States.
In addition to his gaming interests, Mr. Bailey has over 50 years of experience in all facets of real estate development, asset M&A, capital markets and operations and is the founder, Chief Executive Officer and Principal of JEMB Realty, a leading real estate development, investment and management organization. Mr. Bailey has notable investment experience within the energy, finance and telecommunications sectors through investments in the Astoria Energy Plant, Basis Investment Group and Xentris Wireless.
Tony Rodio — Director Nominee
Mr. Rodio has nearly four decades of experience in the gaming industry. Most recently, Mr. Rodio served as the Chief Executive Officer and director of Caesars Entertainment Corporation (“Caesars”) (Nasdaq: CZR), one of the world’s most diversified casino-entertainment providers and the most geographically diverse U.S. casino-entertainment company, from April 2019 until its acquisition by Eldorado Resorts, Inc. in July 2020. Mr. Rodio led Caesars through its $17.3 billion merger with Eldorado Resorts, one of the largest transactions in the gaming industry to date. Additionally, Mr. Rodio was instrumental to Caesars’ expansion into the digital gaming industry and oversaw the implementation of new digital segments such as its Scientific Games powered retail sportsbook solution that now operates in various states throughout the U.S. From October 2018 to May 2019, Mr. Rodio served as Chief Executive Officer of Affinity Gaming. Prior to Affinity Gaming, he served as President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Tropicana Entertainment, Inc. (“Tropicana”) for over seven years, where he was responsible for the operation of eight casino properties in seven different jurisdictions. During his time at Tropicana, Mr. Rodio oversaw a period of unprecedented growth at the company, improving overall financial results with net revenue that increased more than 50% driven by both operational improvements and expansion across regional markets. Mr. Rodio led major capital projects, including the complete renovation of Tropicana Atlantic City and Tropicana’s move to land-based operations in Evansville, Indiana. Each of these initiatives, among others, generated substantial value for Tropicana. Ultimately, Mr. Rodio’s efforts at Tropicana led to its sale to Eldorado Resorts in 2018 for $1.85 billion. Prior to Tropicana, Mr. Rodio held a succession of executive positions in Atlantic City for casino brands, including Trump Marina Hotel Casino, Harrah’s Entertainment (predecessor to Caesars), the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort and Penn National Gaming. He has also served as a director of several professional and charitable organizations, including Atlantic City Alliance, United Way of Atlantic County, the Casino Associations of New Jersey and Indiana, AtlantiCare Charitable Foundation and the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming Hospitality & Tourism. Mr. Rodio brings extensive knowledge of and experience in the gaming industry, operational expertise, and a demonstrated ability to effectively design and implement company strategy. Mr. Rodio received a Bachelor of Science from Rider University and a Master of Business Administration from Monmouth University.
Marlon Goldstein — Director Nominee
Mr. Goldstein is a licensed attorney with nearly 20 years of experience in the gaming space. He joined The Stars Group (Nasdaq: TSG)(TSX: TSGI) in January 2014 as its Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary until his retirement from the company in July 2020 following the merger of TSG with Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR). Mr. Goldstein also previously served as the Executive Vice-President, Corporate Development and General Counsel of TSG. Mr. Goldstein was also the senior TSG executive based in the United States and was one of the primary architects of TSG’s strategic vision for its U.S.-facing business. During his tenure, TSG grew from an approximately $500 million market-cap company to an approximately $7 billion market-cap company through a combination of organic growth and strategic mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Goldstein participated in numerous M&A transactions and capital markets offerings at TSG, including several transformational transactions in the digital gaming industry. Notable transactions in which Mr. Goldstein was involved include:
• TSG/Flutter Merger: In 2019, TSG merged with Flutter for a $12.2 billion transaction value, the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date.
• TSG/Fox Bet Partnership: In 2019, TSG entered into a partnership with FOX Sports to create FOX Bet in the U.S., a leading U.S. online gaming business. Wall Street Research estimates an approximate $1.1 billion valuation for Fox Bet post-partnership with The Stars Group.
• TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming: In 2018, TSG acquired Sky Betting & Gaming, the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom at the time, for $4.7 billion.
• TSG/CrownBet and William Hill: In 2018, TSG simultaneously acquired CrownBet and William Hill, two Australian operators, for a total of $621 million in a multi-part transaction.
• TSG/PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker: In 2014, TSG acquired The Rational Group, which operated PokerStars and Full Tilt and was the world’s largest poker business, for $4.9 billion.
Through his ability to legally structure large and complex transactions, Mr. Goldstein was integral to TSG’s vision of becoming a full-service online gaming company. Additionally, he assisted in structuring TSG’s capital markets activity, which generated liquidity for acquisitions and strengthened its balance sheet.
Prior to joining TSG, Mr. Goldstein was a principal shareholder in the corporate and securities practice at the international law firm of Greenberg Traurig P.A., where he practiced for almost 13 years. Mr. Goldstein’s practice focused on corporate and securities matters, including mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings, and financing transactions. Additionally, Mr. Goldstein was the founder and co-chair of the firm’s Gaming Practice, a multi-disciplinary team of attorneys representing owners, operators and developers of gaming facilities, manufacturers and suppliers of gaming devices, investment banks and lenders in financing transactions, and Indian tribes in the development and financing of gaming facilities.
Mr. Goldstein brings experience and insight that we believe will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target business. Mr. Goldstein received a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in accounting from Emory University and a Juris Doctorate with highest honors from the University of Florida, College of Law.
Sean Ryan — Director Nominee
Mr. Ryan is a digital media and technology operator with extensive global experience in online payments, e-commerce, marketplaces, mobile ad networks, digital games, enterprise collaboration platforms, blockchain, real money gaming and online music. Since 2014, Mr. Ryan has been serving as Vice President of Business Platform Partnerships at Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) (Nasdaq: FB), where he leads a more than 500 person global organization that manages the Payments, Commerce, Novi/Blockhain, Workplace and Audience Network businesses. Prior to his current role, Mr. Ryan was hired in 2011 as the Director of Games Partnerships to lead and grow the global Games business at Facebook. While the Director of Games Partnerships, Mr. Ryan focused on re-shaping Facebook’s games and monetization strategies to derive more value for Facebook, its users and its partners, including the addition of a Real Money Gaming offering in regulated markets. Mr. Ryan’s team helped accelerate a major trend in engagement through cross-platform games and therefore the opportunity to increase users through establishing games on multiple platforms. Prior to joining Facebook, Mr. Ryan created the new social and mobile games division at News Corp, an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by Rupert Murdoch. While at News Corp, Mr. Ryan led the acquisition of Making Fun, a San Francisco social-game start-up, that created News Corp’s games publishing division.
Before joining News Corp., Mr. Ryan founded multiple digital businesses such as Twofish, Meez, Open Wager and SingShot Media. Mr. Ryan co-founded Twofish in 2009, a virtual goods and services platform that provided developers with data analytics and insights for individual application’s digital economies. Twofish was later sold to online payments provider Live Gamer, where Mr. Ryan served on the board of directors. From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Ryan founded and led Meez.com, a social entertainment service combining avatars, web games and virtual worlds. The white label social casino gaming company Open Wager was spun out of Meez and was later sold to VGW Holdings, Mr. Ryan also co-founded SingShot Media, an online karaoke community, which was sold to Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: EA) and merged into its Sims division.
We believe Mr. Ryan’s experience will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target and would provide an expanded perspective on the digital gaming landscape. Mr. Ryan received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Tom Roche — Director Nominee
Mr. Roche has more than 40 years of experience in the gaming industry as a regulator, advisor and independent auditor. Mr. Roche joined Ernst & Young (“EY”) as a partner in 2003 and opened its Las Vegas office. He was subsequently appointed as the Office Managing Partner and Global Gaming Industry Market Leader. In 2016, Mr. Roche relocated to the EY Hong Kong office to supervise the expansion of the EY Global Gaming Industry practice in the Asia Pacific region. Mr. Roche has been integral to numerous transactions that have shaped the current gaming landscape, including:
• Wynn Resorts (Nasdaq: WYNN) initial public offering: Mr. Roche was the lead partner on Wynn Resort’s initial public offering, which raised $450 million in 2002.
• Harrah’s Entertainment/Apollo Management Group & Texas Pacific Group: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory advisory services on the buyout of Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s largest casino company at the time, for $17.1 billion.
• Dubai World/MGM Resorts: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory and due diligence advisory services to Dubai World in its approximately $5.1 billion investment in MGM. Dubai World bought 28.4 million MGM shares, or 9.5 percent of the casino operator, for $2.4 billion. It then invested $2.7 billion to acquire a 50% stake in MGM’s CityCenter Project, a $7.4 billion 76-acre Las Vegas development of hotels, condos and retail outlets.
• MGM Growth Properties (NYSE: MGP) initial public offering: Mr. Roche provided tax and structural transaction services to MGM Resorts in the creation of MGM Growth Properties, a publicly traded REIT engaged in the acquisition, ownership and leasing of large-scale destination entertainment and leisure resorts. MGM Growth Properties raised $1.05 billion in its 2016 initial public offering.
Mr. Roche also directed EY advisory services to boards and management teams for profit improvement and technology related initiatives. In addition, Mr. Roche provided advisory support to the American Gaming Association on several research projects, including those specifically related to sports betting, the revocation of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) and anti-money laundering best practices in the gaming industry. Equally, he has assisted government agencies in numerous international locations with enhancing their regulatory approach to governing the industry especially in the online gambling sector.
Prior to joining Ernst & Young, Mr. Roche served as Deloitte’s National Gaming Industry Leader and as the co-head of Andersen’s Gaming Industry Practice in Las Vegas. In 1989, Mr. Roche was appointed by then Governor of the State of Nevada, Robert Miller, to serve as one of three members of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board for a four-year term, where he was directly responsible for the Audit and New Games Lab Divisions. As a board member, he spent a substantial amount of time assisting global jurisdiction regulators enact gaming legislation in the design of their regulatory structure. During his career, Roche has been involved in numerous public and private offerings of equity and debt securities. His background includes providing casino regulatory consulting services to casino licensees and to federal and state agencies including the National Indian Gaming Commission and the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, and industry associations such as the Nevada Resort Association and the American Gaming Association.
We believe Mr. Roche’s highly regarded reputation as a gaming auditor and advisor in the gaming industry will be valuable for us and a potential business combination target. Mr. Roche is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and is licensed by the Nevada State Board of Accountancy and Mississippi State Board of Public Accountancy. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Southern California.

This research was offered for $2k guaranteeing that 2 of the 6 stocks would reach $10 in a year or it was free. I didn't pay for it, rather just tried to figure out the companies from the transcript below. MMED is one of the 6 for sure. See if you can figure them out. I believe this was offered in Sept so the current prices are obviously off. Have fun!
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What I’m about to tell you may sound like science fiction...
Yet what’s contained in this eyedropper...
Is so powerful...
The $8 TRILLION healthcare industry is on fire.
A single dose of what I’m holding... could change everything we know about the human brain.
Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, head of psychedelic research at Imperial College London, said...
What it was derived from... is truly miraculous.
Not quite plant...
Not quite living organism...
A rare hybrid species I’ll tell you more about later on.
But from this hybrid species, scientists have discovered a chemical compound... one that’s able to be grown in labs... 100% naturally, without interfering with nature.
The billionaires backing this research... like Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary... and PayPal’s Peter Thiel... are CONVINCED it’s going to be one of the greatest investments of their career.
To the doctors in the lab... it must seem like the next step of human evolution!
I call it “Living Medicine” because the atoms in this substance are truly ALIVE and could be capable of unimaginable regenerative properties.
And if the early findings are correct...
Living Medicine could be as transformative to our society as penicillin, which single-handedly fixed many serious health conditions.
That was making history THEN... What you’re looking at is making history NOW... It’s about to smash every record and scientific development we’ve seen.
Come with me now... inside the human brain.
All of our research shows... our brain loses its strength... its elasticity... That means memory... motor functions... they get worse as we age. You may have noticed this yourself with older friends or family.
Now watch... In time, it may be possible to stimulate growth for those brain cells and rebuild...
In time, it may be possible to stimulate growth for those brain cells and rebuild... perhaps even stronger than before.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg...
Imagine depression gone... forever.
Clinical trials conducted by NYU and Johns Hopkins found it helped cancer patients cure their depression within a single dose.
More research shows it could help completely reverse the battle-induced PTSD for our soldiers.
80% of smokers quit after one single dose! Now researchers testing it on alcoholism.
Another study by 60 Minutes found it’s nonaddictive.
I want to be clear, I’m NOT talking about marijuana or CBD right now. What is in this eyedropper is NOT marijuana or CBD.
Rather, it is a one-of-a-kind substance called “psilocybin.”
This is found ONLY in the unique hybrid species I’m going to show you.
And while this is still in trial research periods, I believe this Living Medicine is at the forefront of EVERYTHING that’s going to accelerate brain science in the next 10 years. I’m absolutely certain of it.
And I’m not the only one who thinks this!
Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal... Palantir... and Founders Fund. One of Forbes’ 1,000 RICHEST men on the planet.
He’s completely backing this industry and one of its leading companies.
And he knows people are going to call him crazy... He recently said...
This opportunity is the most hidden breakthrough I’ve ever seen.
With the track record Peter Thiel has... wouldn’t you want to get in alongside him in this new industry?
Then there’s Christian Angermayer... the hedge fund LEGEND with $365 million in assets. He’s getting in with his buddy Peter Thiel.
Same with hedge guru Michael Novogratz and his $250 MILLION fund!
He’s also a ground-floor investor.
You know who else is getting in? Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank.
He’s betting big on Living Medicine as well – recently getting in on a $6 MILLION round of funding.
All of this activity among famous billionaires has alerted the attention of investigative reporters.
I’ve known about this alongside these billionaires for years.
I’ve been preparing for this EXACT moment.
When the companies finally see promise to emerge from the trial stage... and prepare for the moment that all of what I’m about to tell you goes mainstream.
Until now, they’ve seen explosive growth... but they’ve been too small for me to recommend to 150,000 Oxford Club Members.
But now, Living Medicine is like a giant awakening from slumber.
The market is projected to grow at an annual rate of 16.3% over the next eight years to reach $6.85 billion by 2027, according to Data Bridge Market Research.
We’re talking massive growth over time!
And while a lot of these stocks are still in their earliest and most volatile phase...
The gains can be absolutely breathtaking when you find the one.
As with any stocks in a new sector, there are those that won’t make it and will end up in the dustbin of history. But the stocks that DO MAKE it have massive upside potential.
Just look what’s been happening to the BEST Living Medicine Stocks we pulled to show you from the market.
Captiva Verde... this company was $0.20 coming out of the Corona Crash in April...
And still, even the WORST crash in financial history couldn’t keep this stock down...
Yet not a shred of media coverage. That’s how hidden from the outside this is, just like Peter Thiel said...
Imagine once it goes mainstream.
As the sector grows at that double-digit rate I mentioned to you before...
We could continue to see opportunities for incredible gains!
Sure, some of these stocks aren’t going to make it – this is a “swing for the fences”-type investment.
So I do NOT recommend you invest more than you can lose.
But when you get it right on Living Medicine stocks... the gains can be more than enough to make up for any setbacks.
Look at a stock like Revive Therapeutics.
This stock was a PENNY in December 2019.
A penny!
Meaning you don’t have to invest much and risk it – a little capital goes a LONG WAY with these.
On May 26, 2020, Revive opened at a high of $0.27. A 2,600% gain in six months.
📷
One more, just because I’m excited for you...
And I’m thrilled I finally get to put this in the hands of our Members...
This is going to be an extraordinary example... and I can’t promise these kind of results.
But this is the kind of grand slam I’m hoping to find for you!
And it also shows you the power of these stocks... and how a small investment can change your life forever...
For $1,500, you could have bought 100,000 shares of the stock.
And that $1,500 flyer...
Would have turned into a MASSIVE payday as the stock moved closer to $0.99.
Now, would you have to be lucky? You bet. And have exceptional timing? Of course.
Stocks like Ehave are rare.
And other penny stocks drop to zero.
BUT...
This is the power of investing in a brand-new market like Living Medicine.
And this is why I want everyone to know about it NOW, when it’s in the beginning stages and the profit potential is the BIGGEST.
When you can put in $500 or $1,000... and see life-changing results. And not risk a lot of capital if a stock doesn’t work out.
Up until now, I’ve been anxiously waiting because these Living Medicine stocks were too small for our hundreds of thousands of Members to get into.
When they were just a penny I couldn’t do it. These companies weren’t even off the ground yet. The risk would have been too great.
And while small caps can still be volatile... the upside potential here is too good to pass up.
Because make no mistake... we are now at a tipping point, which is why your timing couldn’t be better.
Living Medicine therapies could go completely mainstream as soon as 2021 according to two independent sources.
And the six stocks I’ve found... all of which specialize in this... sell for $2 a share on average.
Then again, it’s often been said that neuroscience is in its infancy.
We know more about the moons of Jupiter than our own brain!
That’s all about to change in the next few months... when these six tiny companies take the $8 TRILLION medical world by storm.
Only the true ground-floor guys know about this.
The REAL silicon valley power players like Peter Thiel.
The REAL shark tank investors like Kevin O’Leary.
I want you to get in now... when a small grubstake in Living Medicine... over time... could be one of the greatest investments you EVER make.
I’ve put together a special report on the BEST companies in the world creating this Living Medicine.
There are only six I would touch if I were you.
And they’re still at the absolute cheapest – they’re all $2 or less on average. Some are selling for just $0.20!
I predict these stocks will soon be trading for $10 or higher!
These six companies have the most sizable advantage from my analysis. And they have the lion’s share of this discovery and this market in their grasp.
Imagine the gains you could be sitting on all because you knew about this ONLY when the smart money billionaires knew about it.
I am going to show you how to claim the Living Medicine report that reveals ALL the companies DURING this presentation.
So if you click out and leave, you’ll get nothing.
Your profit opportunity will likely go to someone else.
But if we move quickly... I think we can play this situation just as we’ve done before with NEW and EXCITING investment trends.
My early recommendations from another service gave my readers the chance to TRIPLE their money in six months on Canopy Growth – one of the biggest names in the biz...
And DOUBLE their money on Aphria Growth in four months’ time.
Those successes were a big part of the lead-up to launching our research today... and having something at The Oxford Club completely dedicated to blazing new trails and investing in new trends.
But since 2017, as you may know, marijuana has gone into a steep bear market. The marijuana index as a whole is down almost 69%!
As a result, our track record is negative, and our average position is down 9.9%.
I hate losing money, but that is the nature of the markets sometimes. But in my view, when something goes against you, you don’t just keep following it downward.
Marijuana’s fall was a valuable lesson.
It reminded us not to risk more than you can afford to lose.
And when you have big gains on the table, like we did, take some of them!
Let the rest ride and play with house money if you want!
It also taught us that it always pays to get in at the beginning, not after everyone else is already talking about an opportunity.
BUT... something good also came out of these losses...
They’ve allowed me to build an even BETTER system for picking stocks than before.
I just closed out another MASSIVE 2,710% partial gain on Sea Ltd. in August of 2020! From a position we held for just four months!!
My system is BETTER than ever, and it’s led us straight to this new market.
Where the revenues are trending upward.
Where EVERYTHING is trending upward!
And this new market is one where the billionaires are more excited than ever!
And prices will never be cheaper. You can get in with a Shark Tank investor like Kevin O’Leary... for pennies!
That’s why I’m telling you about Living Medicine today.
It’s the next no-brainer trend...
And sources are predicting that by 2021 it could be in treatment and therapy centers, moving out of the clinical trials we’re in now.
And by 2027, it could be a $6.8 BILLION industry.
We’re talking billions...
Yet these companies barely measure in the millions!
This is why I feel that NOW is the time to get into these stocks – or you’ll regret it forever.
This is the breakthrough moment for investors, which is why the billionaires are going all-in.
For the past two years, I’ve been waiting for this trend to hit the mainstream.
Waiting to replicate these kinds of results yet again in order to lift our track record to FAR outperform anything we’ve done in the past!
I’m hot on the heels of Shark Tank investors and other famous investors... yet as far as I know, I’m the ONLY person who knows about these six stocks!
As for the profit potential...
You could be looking at the chance to turn a couple hundred bucks into major money!
For Starters, on Average ALL OF MY Stocks Are Still Under $2
For starters...
The stocks in my Living Medicine report...
Are selling for an average of LESS than two bucks.
· One is just $0.10.
· Another is $0.20.
· Another is $0.43.
Meaning they’re tiny, and the biggest gains are ahead of them!
Now, there is always risk to investing, and small stocks like this can often be even more volatile. We never recommend you bet the farm on these trades.
But when you get it right on these... you don’t have to. I showed you how $1,000 in a Living Medicine stock like Ehave turned into nearly six figures.
That’s why I actually recommend sprinkling just a little into each stock. That way you ensure yourself the best chance at success without putting down too much!
And a little bit goes a long way when my six stocks are priced between just a few cents and just a few bucks...
📷
With small stocks like these, we expect some losers along the way.
But here’s the thing...
If our best-case scenario plays out...
And we find that play that makes you 1,000% on your money...
It will NOT matter if you struck out once or twice along the way, or even if the losers are more frequent than the winners. All it takes is one big winner when you get in on these trends before everyone else.
The billionaires backing Living Medicine know it... That’s why they’ve gotten in now.
The FDA knows it... That’s why they gave this treatment a breakthrough therapy designation to expedite the development and review of this treatment..
NOW is the time to get in...
I’ve put together a package that shows you exactly what these six stocks are, and I’ve outlined their massive growth potential and profitability.
And I’ll reveal something extra to you, too...
I’ll show you how to become what’s called a "round lot" investor before these companies grow bigger and bigger.
Round lot investors are the highest status of investor.
And I’ll show you how you could accumulate hundreds or THOUSANDS of shares for just a few bucks and become one.
My report is going to walk you through everything. And you can open it on your phone, iPad, computer... whatever you want.
I will show you how to get my report on the six Living Medicine stocks and more in a moment, but first...
Let me finally tell you what this revolutionary discovery is made of.
Because Living Medicine treatment is like nothing else on Earth...
It’s funny how the world’s greatest medical breakthroughs can hide in plain sight!
But it’s truly phenomenal... no other species of plant has this chemical in it.
Literally NOTHING.
And what’s truly remarkable about this species... is that it’s not quite plant... not quite animal. It’s a rare combination hybrid.
Which may be why it’s been holding these secrets right under our noses!
The good news is... scientists have found a way to grow living medicine rapidly in a lab, so there’s no need to wait for nature to produce this miracle substance – that’s a benefit not even marijuana can boast!
And you can decide how to take it.
In a powder, packed into a small capsule, sometimes only 475 micrograms.
You can dissolve the powder into tea or liquid if you don’t prefer to swallow something – which plenty of people do.
Or you can just drop a little eyedropper under your tongue.
A cancer patient revealed to one Colorado news outlet that vials as small as this size contain more than a YEAR’S supply to medicate pain.
A small powder or liquid.
That’s it.
That’s all it takes for Living Medicine to go to work on your body and potentially help treat you within a single dose. And that’s confirmed by CNN as they interviewed doctors at NYU.
But here’s what’s TRULY revolutionary.
It could help rewire and stimulate growth in parts of your brain.
You probably know that, as we age, we become forgetful. We can’t possibly remember every nugget of information.
Basically our brains lose a couple of horsepower with each passing year.
Living Medicine could help reverse that.
Think of your brain like this... before and after Living Medicine...
One of these images looks like it has a few pathways...
The other looks like a neural superhighway.
Studies on this are still in their infancy... but neuroscience itself is in its infancy!
It is said we know more about our solar system... than what is inside our own skull.
But Living Medicine is the tip of the sword when it comes to neuroscience advancement.
This could be the ANSWER neuroscientists have been looking for. How to re-awaken those long-lost parts of the brain!
This potential of stimulating growth of brain cells is why everyone is simply astounded by Living Medicine.
Now let me tell you a little bit about the chemistry behind it.
According to the DPA, the Drug Policy Alliance...
The main active ingredient in Living Medicine.... psilocybin...
“Is not considered to be addictive, nor does it cause compulsive use.”
Johns Hopkins University determined the same thing, citing on its website...
“Research shows that the drug has low potential for abuse and dependence.”
Unlike narcotics...
Or pharmaceutical pills that become addictive...
Or even the folks who enjoy marijuana a little too much...
That’s NOT the case with this Living Medicine.
It really can offer the best possible treatment with the fewest possible side effects.
Think of those affected by Alzheimer’s, PTSD, depression and the countless brain disorders out there. The number is in the hundreds of millions according to the World Health Organization.
Hundreds of millions... that’s a lot of people this could help, right?
So let me give you a glimmer of the profit potential here...
Because I know I just explained a LOT of science and numbers here...
Let’s take a look at a marijuana pharmaceutical stock that made a similar treatment, but only for people suffering from two rare forms of seizures or epilepsy.
Only about 3 1/2 million folks have epilepsy here in the states. That is a fraction of the patient base that Living Medicine could help.
Now, this was also the FDA’s FIRST-EVER drug derived from cannabidiol.
So, even though it was a much smaller market, this treatment was a TRUE ground-floor opportunity, just like Living Medicine. It was a breakthrough! Just like Living Medicine.
This is not one I recommended. At its low, this stock went from $8 and change... to peaks of more than $124 over time.
A 1,450% gain.
14X gains!
And consider, this company’s claim to fame is making a product for just 3 1/2 million people...
Now consider...
If Living Medicine’s research continues to show positive results, someday it could treat 300 million people worldwide with depression.
And here in the States...
· 5.2 million Americans with PTSD
· 5 million people with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
· 38 million smokers.
· 8.1 million alcoholics.
I think 14x gains like GW Pharmaceuticals could be small potatoes.
Remember, that stock was $8.
And its treatment was for a FRACTION of that patient base.
The stocks I’m going to send you in my Living Medicine report are on average $2 per share.
If any one of these six companies follows the same trajectory as GW Pharmaceuticals... we could snag one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for ourselves!
And that rare and extraordinary chance is WORTH taking! That’s why the billionaires are plowing their money into it.
And it’s why Fortune magazine recently published an article begging the question, “Is this Silicon Valley’s next big bet?”
I’m telling you, it is!
This is an incredible time to get in on the ground floor.
When the billionaires like Peter Thiel and his buddies are moving in.
THE BILLIONAIRES ARE MOVING IN
Remember, Peter Thiel was in early on Facebook, SpaceX, Airbnb and Lyft.
He’s worth more than $2.3 billion because he knows how to spot a new market.
And he’s one of the first people moving in on Living Medicine.
Or how about this... do you ever watch Shark Tank or know about it?
Mr. Wonderful, millionaire Kevin O Leary, is moving in on this.
And you know how tough he is to get to invest on the show! One of the – if not THE – TOUGHEST people to convince.
And yet, he is going all-in according to the reports.
In fact, he’s behind one of the six companies I’m going to tell you about today.
So don’t get up from your chair or click out of this video – you’re literally going to get the details Mr. Wonderful invested $6.2 million to find out!
He’s not the only one...
Tim Ferriss, bestselling author and entrepreneur and worth a whopping $110 million, is also getting in on this trend.
Meanwhile, every scientist and doctor in the lab is utterly fascinated by it.
In fact, as researchers dug deeper and deeper into the origins of Living Medicine...
They actually found ancient medical texts referencing it...
They found it’s quietly been used by cultures for hundreds of years!
Throughout History Cultures Have Used This Living Medicine... in More Archaic Ways
Now... many of the world’s best medicines were actually used throughout history before they were fully understood by scientists.
Take aspirin...
It comes from the Willow plant.
And its first documented use dates back to the ancient Egyptians as an anti-inflammatory and pain reliever.
The Greeks used it too.
Hippocrates, of the Hippocractic oath fame, used Willow tea to ease the pain of childbirth.
But it wasn’t until 1897, when German chemist Felix Hoffmann discovered the actual compound for aspirin, that it took off as a modern medicine.
Today, 40,000 tons of aspirin are produced annually... generating hundreds of millions in profits every year.
Living Medicine is likely to have a similar story because it’s a natural and effective medicine.
And its use also dates back to ancient peoples.
Celtic Druids called it the “Flesh of the Gods” because of its mental-boosting attributes.
Egyptians reserved the source of the Living Medicine EXCLUSIVELY for royalty. Because they believed it increased longevity, even by their very archaic standards!
The ancient Chinese also knew about it...
Forms of Living Medicine were even documented as early as 29th century B.C. in The Divine Farmer’s Materia Medica.
They didn’t have the kind of technology or capabilities we have today.
But we’ve seen time and time again that old knowledge can have transformative modern applications.
Even as recently as 1928...
LESS than 100 years ago...
Nobody realized the mold from an old orange... would become instrumental in developing penicillin... until Alexander Fleming thought to put it under a microscope.
The SAME story is playing out with Living Medicine.
It’s untapped potential has sat for centuries...
Millennia...
Until now.
And that’s why the smart money and billionaires are so excited.
And why I am excited to get you the details on the stocks cornering the market for Living Medicine.
Remember, for less than $2 per share on these companies, we can get shoulder-to-shoulder with billionaires on the BIGGEST trend happening in medicine.
Living Medicine Is About to Go Mainstream
I wouldn’t even be wasting your time right now...
If I didn’t think this was going to go completely mainstream in the weeks and months ahead.
I mentioned before the FDA has given Living Medicine BREAKTHROUGH STATUS.
But that’s not all.
Across the country, on a state-by-state basis...
New bills are being written to start moving to allow folks to have Living Medicine.
From the West Coast and California... to the midlands like Colorado... to the southwest of New Mexico... it’s spreading everywhere like wildfire.
For instance...
A program called “Initiative 301” in Colorado was signed into effect late in 2019...
The proposal received more than 89,320 VOTES.
And with that historic vote... Initiative 301 was signed into law! These laws are paving the way for this new treatment as Living Medicine gets the necessary greenlights from the FDA and the government
But Colorado isn’t the only one!
Just a month later, California followed suit.
New Mexico has almost completely given the greenlight, and they’re ready to go.
The FDA has also allowed doctors in Texas to start researching...
Oregon is in the process of starting a program as well!
As are the researchers I told you about at Johns Hopkins in Maryland...
And Florida’s getting on board – with half a million people with Alzheimer’s in the Sunshine State, this could be huge for the state!
It’s spreading rapid-fire across the country and for good reason.
The mental health crisis... is estimated to cost the world $16 TRILLION in the next 10 years.
We are DESPERATE for something that can help treat chronic pain, pill addiction, depression, PTSD and these debilitating diseases of the mind.
To me, the writing is on the wall...
If these states can get their best scientists...
Their best schools...
Their best doctors...
Their best state legislators...
All working toward the SAME goal...
I think it’s obvious...
The main companies in this space are going to reward shareholders with once-in-a-lifetime gains.
Millions of folks are going to finally start catching on in 2020...
It’s about to hit that breakout moment. When folks start talking about it like they do their favorite show on Netflix.
That tipping-point moment... when regular folks in the mainstream start asking... how do I invest in this?
And I think these stocks are going to SKYROCKET over time.
Which is why I want you to know about them now.
And why I want to send you my report on Living Medicine which reveals the stocks.
Because this is the moment...
It could feel like watching the same movie twice.
You know how it’s going to end.
Just like when cryptocurrency got popular... just like when marijuana stocks got popular.
This is when a mega-trend emerges from the shadows.
My expertise is on finding new investment markets as they develop.
I’m quite literally the Chief Trends Strategist at The Oxford Club, with more than 100,000 Members counting on me to find it before everyone else.
And I think this Living Medicine is going to create the third new booming market of the past decade.
Think for a second...
Five years ago, people thought you were smoking pot if you told them about marijuana stocks.
Ten years ago, nobody knew what a cryptocurrency was.
People looked at you like you were insane.
Trading paper money... for digital money?
That’s how it always is.
Peter Thiel, Michael Novogratz and Christian Angermayer all jumped into crypto very early.
Now these same guys are doing it again with Living Medicine.
They’re pushing their chips back into the middle of the table...
Novogratz recently told Bloomberg reporters, “It just feels like a cultural shift is going on.”
And he’s absolutely right.
A shift is going on.
This is a HUGE moment in our culture when folks get introduced to Living Medicine.
When hundreds of millions of people worldwide have their lives changed.
It’s a before-and-after moment for all of humanity, just like penicillin or aspirin.
Kevin O’Leary, the famous Shark Tank investor, said this about Living Medicine:
“As an investor, I am attracted to [This Living Medicine Company] because they are solving health problems through federally authorized clinical trials.”
But here’s what I REALLY love about Living Medicine compared with cryptocurrencies or pot stocks or other trends I saw...
Living Medicine can actually SOLVE the problems we are facing eventually.
Sure, crypto might one day have a clear purpose. We’re still waiting for when that day will come.
And medical marijuana is helping a LOT of people.
But I told you those stories only to show you the power of early adoption...
And how it pays to get in early with the smart money.
Now here’s why Living Medicine is so much better than those short-lived trends...
The companies creating this Living Medicine are working to help thousands of people right now with chronic pain, depression, brain function and more.
This is a LONG-term trend that will only get bigger.
This is a $34 BILLION potential market... and the companies I’m sharing with you have market caps in the mere millions.
They could grow 10... 20... 50 times in size and still have room to go.
They could grow 1,000 TIMES in size... and still be worth only a billion.
And the most breathtaking part of it is...
You can get in for an average of $2 a share on these companies I’m going to show you.
More than that...
You get to be a part of history and helping people.
Veterans with PTSD...
Cancer patients with depression...
Alzheimer’s patients who have trouble remembering their friends and family.
This is a chance to actually do some good in the world by backing these companies as they explode in value.
Living Medicine can help countless people within a single dose.
Get this...
80% of smokers who took Living Medicine... were able to quit the habit cold turkey within three doses.
This stuff is UBER-powerful.
Which is why an eyedropper of this Living Medicine could rewrite history books and medical journals on treatment.
It’s kind of how medical marijuana played out for investors...
Remember when they started realizing marijuana could treat disorders? And it suddenly blew up?
From Parkinson’s...
To helping folks who abused prescriptions...
That’s why when you look back at history, you see how the companies that were FIRST to try this revolutionary idea... were rewarded handsomely...
Abattis Pharmaceuticals launched from $0.03 to $2.21.
That’s a peak gain of 7,226% in three months’ time!
If you had been lucky enough to time it perfectly, it could have turned $500 into more than $36,000!
Sure, plenty of marijuana stocks were busts.
But I can’t even count how many weed stocks blasted off back then, when it was still a brand-new industry.
That’s why I think it’s important to at least give yourself a chance here with a small investment.
Yes, you could lose it. But the potential reward is so big that in my opinion, it is well worth it.
Ask yourself...
Do you want to get in on an opportunity like those again?
An opportunity accepted by billionaires and the people pouring money into it?
The medical professionals testing it?
The FDA giving it breakthrough therapy status?
That’s what’s in front of you right now.
Living Medicine is the FUTURE!
Now, I said before that I love this development because it can actually HELP people.
More and More Research Is Coming Out... Living Medicine Is the Next Big Thing!
When something starts to become big, everyone acts like they have a hand in it.
Every company suddenly latches onto the trend, even if they aren’t in on it!
That’s why you can’t just pick a Living Medicine company all willy-nilly.
But I think these stocks...
All at an average under $2 a share...
Represent the best opportunity in this space.
And don’t worry, you do NOT need to be a private accredited investor like Peter Thiel and his buddies to get in on these Living Medicine companies.
I’ve identified the only publicly traded ones investors should be looking at.
Bloomberg reported on February 11, 2020, “Move over pot. [Living Medicine] companies are about to go public.”
MarketWatch expects the IPO market at large to “crank into high gear.”
And I can’t help but think it’s because of this MASSIVE new development...
Green Entrepreneur published a report saying...
“[Living Medicines] are following a similar trajectory to cannabis – and investors are taking notice.”
Remember the tech boom, when companies like this would IPO nonstop, and it lifted the well-established companies EVEN HIGHER?
You’re watching the same show twice... You should know what’s going to happen.
It’s a telltale sign this market is about to enter its next massive growth phase.
Let Me Detail the ONLY Publicly Traded Companies Worth Looking at... Trading Under $2 on Average
The first company sells for less than a quarter.
It just inked a $500,000 deal with another group that wants the right to grow Living Medicine here in the United States.
It actually has a proprietary extraction technology it first perfected in the hemp industry.
It’s a proven system, something I love to see. And now it’s applying its extraction technique to Living Medicine.
A few more bullet points that come from my own analysis include...
· Its majority-owned subsidiary just completed the design for a preclinical study for using Living Medicine for weight loss and food craving. Obesity is a global epidemic killing 2.8 million people each year.
· The company has more than 200 wellness formulas in various stages of commercialization with 14 patent applications filed.
· The company currently has retail operations in three countries but plans to expand to 12 more.
· The global wellness market is a $4.2 trillion opportunity.
· The company’s management team includes people who cut their teeth at Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble as well as Skechers and Aritzia. This, to me, legitimizes this company BIG-time.
My Second Living Medicine Company...
The second company is testing easy-to-use Living Medicine drops...
Now, I told you before you could get in with a Shark Tank investor...
Mr. Wonderful is an investor in this company. He was part of a $6 MILLION investing round.
And shares are just $0.44.
As if that wasn’t reason enough to get excited...
On the board of directors is none other than legendary Bruce Linton, who took Canopy Growth to the mainstream.
That stock launched to $50 at its peak!
Imagine what this Living Medicine stock could do with Bruce at the wheel again.
Even if this stock went to only HALF that – $25 a share – that would be a 5,581% increase!
Of course, we’re going to have to time it just right and nothing is guaranteed in investing... but we’re swinging for the fences, and we’ve already got Mr. Wonderful on third base!
My Third Living Medicine Company
The third company is just a buck and change.
Thirty percent of shares are held by insiders – a great sign!
Yet just 1.7% of institutions know about this.... It’s on only 1.7% of banks’ radars.
And here is what has me on the edge of my seat...
As I mentioned before, the billionaires and hedge fund guys are among the ONLY ones who know about Living Medicine...
And they’re certainly going to do whatever it takes to profit from it.
You better believe when this company gets discovered by the other institutions and ownership increases, it’s going to send the share price even higher!
This is what I mean when I say NOW is the time to get in... when the gains are set up to be the easiest... when the shares are this cheap!
And that brings me to the next breakout company I’ve identified...
My Fourth Living Medicine Stock Is Near and Dear to Me...
The cool thing is... this was one of the FIRST companies I ever found dabbling with Living Medicine. It kind of sent me down this journey.
It’s the $5 stock I told you about. But while this one might cost a little more, I think it’s well worth it.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, this company reported record revenue of $33 million, an increase of 152%. And this was its 10th consecutive quarter of record revenue.
So these guys are hanging in there while countless businesses are closing up shop forever.
That’s what you want, a company that can weather the storm!
It also has a partnership with the blue chip company 3M, further legitimizing this company’s product.
In my opinion, this is one of the most solid companies in the space.
This Fifth Living Medicine Company Is Off the Charts!
My fifth company is expanding globally and growing its operations. It’s based in Canada but now has operations in Australia and Malaysia.
This is pivotal because you want those companies that are capturing global markets, not just here in the States.
We forget that there are billions of people out there with the same problems as the 300 or so million Americans in our country. It’s a BIG global market, and these guys are chasing it down.
The CEO of this company has 15 years of pharmaceutical experience, including a division of Johnson & Johnson.
Best of all, shares are less than two bucks on this company.
My Sixth and Final Living Medicine Company
My sixth and final Living Medicine stock is also a sub-$2 opportunity.
But I’ve saved this one for last for a very important reason.
It just completed a massive acquisition of a fellow company.
And with this acquisition, it gets the RIGHT to three separate Phase 1 trials and a preclinical trial.
This is a HUGE advantage out of the gate – securing the right to try a medicine.
It also secures this company a partnership with InterVivo Solutions, Canada’s largest neuroscience-focused preclinical contract research organization.
As I’ve told you today, Living Medicine is considered a breakthrough therapy by the FDA – that’s a very high status designation.
And this company already has the right to trials for its medicine.
That’s like getting a 30-second head start in a foot race. You can’t beat that advantage.
The bottom line is...
I really think this company, along with the other five I just told you about, is the best of the best.
And Living Medicine is the single most powerful investment I’ve ever seen.
I’ve put together a report called “Living Medicine: The Next Big Thing” that will show you the ticker symbols, the growth potential and the massive industry at the fingertips of these six stocks.
I also mentioned I’ll show you how to buy “round lots.”
Showing you how to possibly get hundreds or thousands of shares for just a few hundred bucks.
Because that’s the beauty of this research package I’ll be sending you.
Even if you put, say, only $500 in these stocks... we’re talking just $3,000 total to get started.
And that $3,000 could hand you LIFE-CHANGING results.
Even if we’re ULTRA-realistic and we don’t think too greedily...
A fraction of gains like that could improve your life.
I want to send you this report on all six stocks right now.
No waiting!

Part I
I heard the garage door open and we had to quickly untangle ourselves. We both hurried over to the Christmas tree and Ryan put the Santa hat back on. The sound of that garage door opening was the dividing line between my freedom of expression and the constraints my parents had forced on me. My parents entered with paper bags in their hands. I used every ounce of strength within me to push my fears and worries deep within me. Luckily, as a gay kid, I had lots of practice doing just that. Mom wore a floral front-buttoning dress with her Mariah Carey curls bouncing as she glided through.
“Honey, would you mind helping with… Oh. Hi, Ryan! How are you?”
My mother loved Ryan.
“Hey, Mrs. S.”
My mother ran over to hug him, then flipped the pompom of his hat over to the other side. “Oh how cute,” she said.” And please, I’ve known you almost as long as my son. Call my Kathy.”
She was always telling him to call her Kathy, but Ryan was the polite type, so he’d resist calling adults by first name. He’d tell people that he was a Southern gentleman because he was born in Texas, but he moved before he even had time to develop an accent.
“Sure thing, Mrs—”
“Uh-uh.”
“Kathy.
My father set down the bags in the kitchen and came over to us. He was a tall and burly guy with a hearty laugh, and a devotion to the Lord that was so strong it catapulted me into atheism. He was the kind of guy you’d think was a giant teddy bear. Dad was a successful surgeon and he did well enough in the practice that Mom was able to stay at home.
He put out his hand to shake Ryan’s hand. “Hey there, Ryan.”
I never understood this fascination with men needing to shake hands. I felt like it had to do with one showing the other up with how firm his grip was. My father was very adamant about a firm handshake being an indication of manliness. I always felt like manliness had a negative connotation, especially after being told my whole life what it took to be a man.
“Hey there, Mr.—”
“Uh-uh.”
“Doug. Let me help Brandon with the groceries.”
“Sure thing, kiddo. We got some ice cream. You can both help yourselves to some as a treat after.”
“Thanks!” we both resounded.
My dad was great at putting on a front. He was calm, cool, and collected in front of company, but Ryan and I knew damn well that he’d kill us if he found out we were together. It’s funny, in a horrifying way, that people like us died just because of who we loved. When we got back inside, Mom and Dad were in the living room checking out the tree.
“Oh, boys, this looks fabulous,” Mom boasted. “I love looking at all the ornaments and remembering the stories from when we got them.”
“Nice work, guys,” my dad chimed in. “I’m sorry that I was so late to get the tree this year. I’ve been so tied up at the hospital lately, I couldn’t find the time as of late.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I can’t take all the credit though, Ryan did most of the work.”
“Your son does do a great job of providing moral support and finding a good Christmas movie to put on, though. Prancer was on earlier.”
“Never saw it,” my dad informed.
“Oh, honey, yes we did. We took Brandon to see it when it came out in theaters.”
Mom was always helping Dad remember things. I hoped that one day, she would realize it wasn’t that he was forgetful; he just didn’t care.
“Ryan, you’re welcome to spend your winter break here with us. You could have Christmas dinner with us this and ring in the new year too,” Mom said. “I know Hanukah ended last Friday, so I’m sure your parents wouldn’t mind.”
Ryan looked at me and smiled, then back to my mother with a warmth of gratitude. “Sure, that would be lovely. Thank you for your hospitality.”
“Wonderful,” my father replied.
****
On Christmas Eve, the weather was a perfect sixty-five degrees, and on that account, we walked to Blockbuster. It had been four or five days since any word from our stalker. We were beginning to feel like our old selves where we only needed to slightly worry about getting murdered if anyone saw us as a threat to their precious masculinity.
We rented Home Alone and Black Christmas. I was the horror buff and he liked to laugh. The sun barely peeked from beneath the horizon behind us and Ryan kept turning around to see it setting. Somehow the night seemed to make the world so much smaller when he was with me, like the sky could wrap around us, keeping him next to me eternally. We didn’t say much on that walk back. We didn’t need to. If our relationship hinged on anything, it was the fact that neither of us felt pressured to say or be anything superfluous; we just were who we were with nothing extraneous to our true selves, and we loved the truth of what we were in the other.
I got to thinking about how people would always talk about how small people were in the midst of the universe in comparison to all those stars. I never really thought of it like that. I felt massive with Ryan. I felt like those stars truly were those specks that perspective portrayed them to be and I could squash them. I knew there was no Heaven up behind those endless twinkles in the night because I’d found it right beside me. At least I had at that moment until Ryan spoke.
“Brandon…”
There was something in his voice that chilled me; fear.
“Brandon, I think there’s someone following us.”
“Are you sure?”
“Not completely, but every time I turn around, he’s a little bit closer. I think it’s him.”
I felt the iciness of fear consume me. It was the kind of chill that paralyzed every nerve and muscle in my body as it traveled from my head to my toes. Once again, I was right back in my car with hands wrapped around my neck, wondering if there would be a bright white light in store for my future. I could see that Ryan was a bit more anxious than I was. There was no safety of the car for us to make a quick escape or doors to lock. We were armless.
I knew that I shouldn’t have turned around but I couldn’t help it. I had to make sure. There behind us was a man in a long dark coat and a short-brimmed hat. I couldn’t see any part of his face but his gaze fixed on the two of us. He stood still now. I cursed myself for my stupidity in allowing us to be exposed in the open like that. Sometimes I was truly just a doltish kid.
We were just a few blocks away from the house now, less if we could find a way to cut through the houses. Maybe we could use the backyards of surrounding houses to find a place to hide and elude capture. I could see Ryan’s face deep in thought, weighing the same options I did. We slowly backed up. When we took a step back, he took a step towards us. When we were still, so was he. He was playing with us.
“We’ve gotta make a run for it,” Ryan said.
“We’re nearly at a straight diagonal to my place. If we book it, we can get there.”
He counted down from three and then we were off. As would be suspected, the maniac who mimicked our pace picked up his as we began to run. We took a left into an unlit rustic house that appeared to be empty. We hopped a small chainlink fence on the left side of the abode and slipped into the backyard. The sky was quickly losing light and we could barely make our way around. We were both exasperated at the sight of the ten-foot-tall fence engulfed with vegetation that staved off our escape to the next street over.
Ryan knocked a potted plant off a glass table as we attempted to find some cover. The backyard lights came on suddenly and a man marched outside with a crowbar. He was scrawny but puffed up with irritation and apprehension at the sight of the two of us.
“Sir, don’t be angry,” Ryan began. “We’re being attacked.”
He lowered the weapon but kept his grip firm, unsure of what to believe.
“We’re just trying to make it back to my place. We thought we could maybe get there quicker through your yard. We didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.”
“All right, look,” the man began, “I’m not quite sure if I’m willing to take a gamble on your word here. My neighbor had a break in a few weeks ago. Said they came in through a window in the backyard. If you’re both willing to wait out here, I’ll have my wife—”
There wouldn’t be any waiting. Our assailant sprung from the darkness and grappled with the man. He took the crowbar from his hand and locked it around his throat, compressing his neck to let the air out. I wanted to help. I couldn’t stand to watch the sight before me but self-preservation kicked in and we used to time to make a break for it. He grabbed hold of Ryan’s shirt and tussled with him fleetingly.
The homeowner was hurt but still alive. He managed to pull the attacker’s foot and send him crashing to the ground. Their grappling bought us precious seconds as we were allowed to swing around to a few houses over and hastened our way through the surrounding homes back to mine. My dad must’ve been in surgery and my mom had a girl’s night planned with her book club or something because we couldn’t find either of them. We locked the front door and flew up to my room. Sirens wailed in the distance a few minutes later.
“Good,” I said. “That means that guy called the cops so we don’t have to worry about it.”
“Yeah, a well-to-do straight guy is definitely gonna get the law on his side quicker than a couple of sinners like us.”
“You really hate the cops, huh?”
“Yeah, Brandon, I really hate cops. I really, really hate them.”
I got the sense there was something he wasn’t telling me, but I didn’t want to force anything. We’d just narrowly missed getting killed, again, and I was trying to figure out how to comprehend it. I went to my window to check if I could see the lights of the sirens in the distance, and I just barely saw red and blue flashes. I searched around the perimeter of my home’s exterior to see if there was anything unusual. I was petrified of the mere thought of that madman knowing where I lived. Ryan put his arms around me and held me close. I shut my blinds immediately to armor us. His warmth felt good.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
I didn’t even realize it. He firmly held me still and his body pacified me. The sole rhythm of his breath was music to me. I could be calm in the chaos and be accompanied. If not for him, I don’t know what I’d do.
****
Christmas came and went, the first one that Ryan and I had wholly shared. He wore his Santa had and doled out the presents. I got a CD player and the new Portishead disc. My parents got Ryan a nice leather jacket. It looked killer on him. Christmas dinner was amazing and it truly was the best holiday I’d ever had.
We saved the movies for that night, being that we weren’t really in the mood after our endeavor from the night before. I made a bowl of popcorn and brought up a couple of sodas. Movies were a really big passion of mine that my other friends didn’t seem to care much for. It was something else for us to bond over. I popped Home Alone in the VCR and we sat side by side on my bed. I looked over at him and kissed his cheek.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“I’m just happy you’re here. Most people drive me crazy to spend so much time around. You don’t.”
“I’ve always liked spending this time with you,” Ryan said. “We never got a Christmas tree, for obvious reasons, so it’s nice to get to experience all that. We’re all just born and forced into some way of thinking or religion by our parents, and then we carry on the traditions we’re told to believe. It’s kind of unfair when you think about it.”
“Tell me about it. I would rather do literally anything else than go to church.”
“I hear you. Do you have any idea how much work goes into a Bar Mitzvah? When I was twelve, I spent ten months learning how to read the Torah.”
“Man, that’s rough. When I was twelve, I spent ten days memorizing Sharon Stone’s monologue from Basic Instinct so I could perform it for my cat.”
“Did she like it?”
“She meowed at me and walked away.”
“Sounds like a cat to me.”
We both laughed, and then simultaneously quieted ourselves as the movie began. After the film was over, I went out to make a round of hot chocolate and found my parents’ door shut, which allowed me to relax a little. It was a relief not to have to worry about them bargaining in on us and my life being completely ruined. When I got back to my room Ryan had already put the next movie in and fast-forwarded past the previews.
“You’re gonna make a great husband someday,” I said.
“You proposing already?”
“Not yet. I want us to have that to look forward to for a few years. But one day, you’re gonna make a great husband.”
“You will too. I sure don’t mind all the hot chocolate. You’re not too shabby at cooking either.”
****
We had gone another week without any sort of strange phone call or unnerving encounter. I didn’t want to get my hopes up that we were in the clear, but we both felt a bit calmer. Maybe the cops had apprehended our assailant, or maybe the idea of being caught had scared him off. Ryan kept a pretty hefty pocket knife on him at all times, I now slept with an iron pipe between my mattress , and we didn’t go for walks anymore.
New Year’s Eve fell on a Tuesday that year, which was nice because we got to celebrate the holiday and still have the rest of the week off from school. I was beginning to feel very comfortable with Ryan there. It was going to be hard to see him go back home when the break was over. I’d grown accustomed to him being there when I woke up in the morning, to him sharing my clothes, to him being the first voice of the day I heard.
My parents bought two bottles of Asti wine in celebration of the new year, and said that we could split a bottle between us if Ryan promised not to say anything to his parents. My mom and dad could be cool on occasion. We watched Four Rooms that night while we waited for it to get closer to midnight so we could drink our wine. My parents were watching some movie on the big screen in the living room that I had never heard of. The night was good. It was the perfect end to ‘96 and I looked forward to what 1997 would bring; graduation, prom night, the first year of college, summer.
My nearly final watch check came at 11:53. I hurried downstairs where Mom and Dad had two glasses of Asti already poured for me to bring back upstairs. I thanked them hurriedly and made it back up to my room with a few minutes to spare. I thought about how lucky I was to share this moment with him. I stared at his sweet face, deep into those blue eyes that encapsulated everything I could ever look for in another person. We had the Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on so we could count down to the ball dropping like everyone else in America. We had plans to one day see the ball drop together in Times Square. We had so many plans.
The ball began to drop with a minute left on the clock. Ryan and I simultaneously thought about all the memories we had together this past year and in the ‘90s in general. We each took a sip from our glass with five seconds left on the clock. Four seconds left, he reached for my hand and held it. Three seconds left, the crowd from the television set roared in anticipation. Two seconds left, we both finished the rest of our glass. One second left, we moved in to kiss for the new year. At midnight, my parents walked into my room. I had forgotten to lock my door.
Ryan and I separated in immense fear and backed up to the window. My blood ran cold and that same fear that paralyzed me four times before now had reemerged as crippling terror.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I said. “It’s not what it looks like, I swear.”
My parents were unflinching. They didn’t speak. They just floated over to my bed and sat down, staring at us vacantly. Ryan was silent. He knew anything he said or did was futile. My father began to roll his sleeves up, and there on his wrist, I saw it, ever so slightly; a small slightly healed puncture wound that looked to be from a key. It was him. He’d been our stalker all along.
Ryan fell to his knees. I thought it to be from fear or worry until I began to feel it too. I looked back at my empty glass and noticed the tiniest bit of power beneath the last remnants of the drink.
“Don’t fight it, honey. You’ll be out soon,” my mother said warmly.
My eyelids became too heavy to bear and I passed out.
****
I woke from my unwilling slumber to the sound of muddled voices becoming ever clear. I was downstairs at the kitchen table. I couldn’t understand what was going on. My tie was off and wrapped around my wrists, securing them behind my back to the chair. I turned to see Ryan’s eyes wide with fear. He was also bound, eyes fixed on my parents on the other side of me.
“Ryan?”
“Oh, honey, you’re awake,” my mother said, feigning compassion. “I was worried your father may have given you too much.”
“Mom? Why are you doing this? What’s—”
“Quiet,” my father ordered.
“Mom, Dad, please just let us go. Please. I’m your son. I won’t tell anyone. This can just be a big joke. Please. Oh, God, please, we can just—”
My father made his way over to me and backhanded me hard across the face. My tooth cut the inside of my cheek and blood dribbled down my mouth.
“Stop it!” Ryan shouted.
“It speaks,” my father muttered, as he slowly closed the distance between Ryan and him.
I could tell he was too terrified to utter a sound until that moment. I was so close to someone I loved so much and completely powerless to help. A flurry of thoughts and emotions ran through my mind. Why did I have to have him over? Could I have known this would happen? This was all my fault. Then my thoughts were transmuted to the last time we kissed at midnight. The last time he held me. The sweet smell of orange blossoms whenever I was near him. I could still smell him and feel him near, but now it was tinged with a sense of foreboding, and that fear was instilled by the people who called themselves my parents. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. My skin was burning, and trickles of sweat dripped down my face. My father now stood behind Ryan, who kept his eyes fixed on me. I mouthed the words “I’m sorry” to him and he just smiled pitifully back at me. Dad put his hands on Ryan's shoulders.
“Now, boys, we can’t allow the evil-spirited things going on between you two to continue to take place. Not in my house. Not on this earth. I am not going to have you disgrace this family. If this were the ‘50s, you would be lobotomized. Both of you. And if there were any sense of morale left in this country, you still would be today. So here we are.”
Ryan shook in his chair with adamant focus. The man I called my father for seventeen years stood behind him with his eyes fixed on me in a smug look of self-satisfaction. I wished at that point that I was dead, that I was gone, or never even existed. The amount of despair I felt within my entire being was exquisite and overtook me. My heart broke inside of me at that instant, and then I saw my father produce a serrated steak knife.
“No! No! Get away from him! No!” My mind switched over to anger. “Fuck you both. Fuck you both for doing this. You were never my parents. You’re empty heartless fucking people. Nothing you can say or do to me can change the fact that I love somebody and he loves me. People like you can never feel that.”
I shook violently in my chair as my desperate screams went unanswered. In that instant, time ceased. That moment went on forever and happened all at once. Ryan became aware of what was going to happen, and said, “I love you,” one last time.
He didn’t say it back though. He managed to shake free from his tether and pulled out his knife from his pocket. With a swift stroke of fate, he stuck it straight into my father’s heart. He rushed to me and set me free from my binding. My eyes teared from sheer joy I felt. My mother ran to her room, surely to escape the same fate my father had endured.
Ryan embraced me and I cried how sorry I was for everything. The last two weeks had felt like it was entirely my fault. He eased my worries and cradled my head in his hands. We finished that kiss we had started at midnight. I felt gutted by losing my father, but at the same time, I felt relieved to be free of the crushing hand of his. I felt like I could finally be free.
Suddenly, Ryan forcefully turned me around to switch places with me and there was a violent bang. I couldn’t apprehend what had happened until I saw my mother standing behind him with a smoking gun pointed at his back. A tiny bit of blood came from his mouth as he parted his lips.
“I love you,” he said. “My whole life, I never really loved anything else.”
“Shut up,” I cried. “Don’t give up on me like that. Don’t leave me here this way. We fight, remember? You’re a fighter.”
He sunk to the floor. I’d later find the bullet severed his aorta and there was nothing that would have saved him. I held his hand as his breathing shallowed. He still felt so warm as he writhed gently against the inevitable. I saw my future depart in him. I heard clicks to the gun my mother held. I wished with everything I had that it would go off and end my suffering at that moment but it jammed. I was so consumed with begging him to stay that I forgot to tell him I loved him back.
Ryan died at 2:35 a.m. on January 1st, 1997. It’s been twenty-four years since that night. I never so much as dated another person since him. My mother ended up calling the police and trying to tell them that she was defending herself against us. They were able to link the drugs in our system with barbiturates my father had stolen from the hospital. She’s still in jail. I never spoke to her again after. I still have Ryan’s senior-year portrait in my wallet. It’s all I have left of him along with the memory of better times. His family didn’t want me at his funeral so I drove out to the coast one day and had my own. When I went out to the edge of the water to say goodbye, I closed my eyes and was hit by a wave of the scent of fresh orange blossoms.