title: John 3:16

text: Many books have been written that based on John 3:16. Lutheran computer scientist Donald Knuth published "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated" in 1991, examining and illustrating sixteenth verses of every third chapter in the Bible books. In 2009, Lucado wrote "3:16: The Numbers of Hope", where portions of the verse is titled in its chapters. Pawson wrote "Is John 3:16 the Gospel?", where he analyses every words and grammatical structure of the verse and remarked as the "most misunderstood verse". "John 3:16: What's It All About?" and "Mission 3:16", were written by Harris in 2015 and Borthwick in 2020 respectively.


title: Piedmont

text: Piedmont ( ; , ) is a region of Northwest Italy, one of the 20 regions of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east and the Aosta Valley region to the northwest; it also borders Switzerland to the northeast and France to the west. It has an area of making it the second largest region of Italy after Sicily and a population of 4,269,714 as of 31 January 2021. The capital of Piedmont is Turin.


title: Piedmont

text: The French "Piedmont", the Italian "Piemonte", and other variant cognates come from the medieval Latin or , i.e., , meaning "at the foot of the mountains" (referring to the Alps), attested in documents from the end of the 12th century.


title: Piedmont

text: Piedmont is surrounded on three sides by the Alps, including Monviso, where the river Po rises, and Monte Rosa. It borders with France (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur), Switzerland (Ticino and Valais) and the Italian regions of Lombardy, Liguria, Aosta Valley and for a very small part with Emilia Romagna. The geography of Piedmont is 43.3% mountainous, along with extensive areas of hills (30.3%) and plains (26.4%).


title: Piedmont

text: Piedmont is the second largest of Italy's 20 regions, after Sicily. It is broadly coincident with the upper part of the drainage basin of the river Po, which rises from the slopes of Monviso in the west of the region and is Italy's largest river. The Po drains the semicircle formed by the Alps and Apennines, which surround the region on three sides.


title: Piedmont

text: The countryside is very diverse: from the rugged peaks of the massifs of Monte Rosa and Gran Paradiso to the damp rice paddies of Vercelli and Novara, from the gentle hillsides of the Langhe, Roero and Montferrat to the plains. 7.6% of the entire territory is considered protected area. There are 56 different national or regional parks; one of the most famous is the Gran Paradiso National Park, between Piedmont and the Aosta Valley.


title: Piedmont

text: Piedmont has a typically temperate climate, which on the Alps becomes progressively temperate-cold and colder as it climbs to altitude. In areas located at low altitudes, winters are relatively cold but not very rainy and often sunny, with the possibility of snowfall, sometimes abundant. Snowfall, on the other hand, is less frequent and occasional in the northeast areas. Summers are hot with local possibilities of strong thunderstorms.


title: Piedmont

text: Piedmont was inhabited in early historic times by Celtic-Ligurian tribes such as the Taurini and the Salassi. They were later subdued by the Romans (c. 220 BC), who founded several colonies there including "Augusta Taurinorum" (Turin) and "Eporedia" (Ivrea). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the region was successively invaded by the Burgundians, the Ostrogoths (5th century), East Romans, Lombards (6th century), and Franks (773).


title: Piedmont

text: In the 9th–10th centuries there were further incursions by the Magyars, Saracens and Muslim Moors. At the time Piedmont, as part of the Kingdom of Italy within the Holy Roman Empire, was subdivided into several marches and counties.


title: Piedmont

text: In 1046, Otto of Savoy added Piedmont to the County of Savoy, with a capital at Chambéry (now in France). Other areas remained independent, such as the powerful "comuni" (municipalities) of Asti and Alessandria and the marquisates of Saluzzo and Montferrat. The County of Savoy became the Duchy of Savoy in 1416, and Duke Emanuele Filiberto moved the seat to Turin in 1563. In 1720, the Duke of Savoy became King of Sardinia, founding what evolved into the Kingdom of Sardinia and increasing Turin's importance as a European capital.


title: Piedmont

text: The Republic of Alba was created in 1796 as a French client republic in Piedmont. A new client republic, the Piedmontese Republic, existed between 1798 and 1799 before it was reoccupied by Austrian and Russian troops. In June 1800 a third client republic, the Subalpine Republic, was established in Piedmont. It fell under full French control in 1801 and it was annexed by France in September 1802. In the Congress of Vienna, the Kingdom of Sardinia was restored and furthermore received the Republic of Genoa to strengthen it as a barrier against France.


title: Piedmont

text: Piedmont was a springboard for Italian unification in 1859–1861, following earlier unsuccessful wars against the Austrian Empire in 1820–1821 and 1848–1849. This process is sometimes referred to as "Piedmontisation". However, the efforts were later countered by the efforts of rural farmers.


title: Piedmont

text: The House of Savoy became Kings of Italy, and Turin briefly became the capital of Italy. However, when the Italian capital was moved to Florence, and then to Rome, the administrative and institutional importance of Piedmont was reduced. The only recognition of Piedmont's historical role was that the crown prince of Italy was known as the Prince of Piedmont. After Italian unification, Piedmont was one of the most important regions in the first Italian industrialization.


title: Piedmont

text: The gross domestic product (GDP) of the region was 137.4 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 7.8% of Italy's GDP. GDP per capita at purchasing power parity was 31,300 euros or 104% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 111% of the EU average.


title: Piedmont

text: Since 2006 the Piemonte Agency for Investments, Export and Tourism began to facilitate outside investment and promote Piedmont's industry and tourism. It was the first Italian institution to combine the activities being carried out by pre-existing local organizations to promote the territory internationally.


title: Piedmont

text: The region contains major industrial centres, the most important of which is Turin, home to the FIAT conglomerate, but mass-market FIAT cars are not produced anymore, only small-scale manufacturing of luxury Maserati cars (36,702 in 2020). Most of the ex-FIAT plants now belong to other companies: aerospace is owned by Leonardo S.p.A., turbo jet engines by General Electric, high-speed trains by Alstom, bearings by SKF. FIAT does not exist anymore as an independent company, car production belongs to Stellantis, and trucks, buses, tractors, agriculture and construction machines are produced by the independent company CNH Industrial (most manufacturing activity takes place in the United States, in Piedmont only the production of New Holland excavators in San Mauro Torinese and IVECO diesel engines in Turin). Neither of them are headquartered in Turin anymore, however, some research and development centres are still working.


title: Piedmont

text: Formerly famous automotive design companies also were sold to global automotive groups: Italdesign Giugiaro to Volkswagen, Ghia to Ford, Pininfarina to Mahindra; Bertone goes into bankruptcy in 2014. Massive decline in automotive industry caused that other regions like Veneto (€163 billion in 2018) and Emilia-Romagna (€161 billion in 2018) surpassed Piedmont (€137 billion in 2018) in GDP and relative high unemployment. The peak of Italian motor vehicle production is reached in 1989 with 2.22 million units, but in 2019 (before COVID pandemic) it was only 0.92 million units. Even existing Italian car production now relocated to South Italy: Pomigliano d'Arco (140,478 in 2020), Melfi (229,848 in 2020), Atessa (257,026 in 2020) because of cost cutting.


title: Piedmont

text: There are some important companies in high-tech manufacturing: Comau (industrial robots) and Prima Industrie (laser equipment). Silicon wafer production is in Novara by MEMC. Olivetti, once a major electronics industry whose plants were in Scarmagno and Ivrea, has now turned into a small-scale computer service company and no longer produces computers. Leonardo Elettronica in Turin-Caselle develops and manufactures airborne mission systems and airborne computers.


title: Piedmont

text: Machine building has a long tradition in Piedmont with the manufacturing of excavators, telescopic handlers, industrial refrigerators, printing machines, paper machines, packaging machines, glass machines, turbines, and high-speed trains.


title: Piedmont

text: Italy is still the world largest exporter of carded (71.8% in 2018) and combed (73.4% in 2018) wool fabrics. These are the only two types of fabrics not dominated by Chinese textile exports. There are three industrial districts that process wool in Italy. One of them, Biella, is located in Piedmont.


title: Piedmont

text: One of Italy's four industrial jewellery districts is located in Valenza. Large jewellery companies such as Damiani, Bulgari, and Cartier have factories here as do many other smaller companies.


title: Piedmont

text: Since 2006, the Piedmont region has benefited from the start of the Slow Food movement and Terra Madre, events that highlighted the rich agricultural and viticultural value of the Po valley and northern Italy. A chain of food halls Eataly works in collaboration with Slow Food. Piedmont is the leading producer of confectionery, coffee, rice, and white truffles in Italy. It is ranked 3 of 20 for the production of quality DOC and DOCG wines with 1,982,718 hl, there are 17 DOCG wines of all possible types (white, red, sweet, sparkling). In 2019, Piedmont accounted for 16.5% of wine exports from Italy, ranking second behind Veneto, with 36%. The typical food industries in Piedmont are:


title: Piedmont

text: Lowland Piedmont is a fertile agricultural region. The main agricultural products in Piedmont are cereals, including rice, representing more than 10% of national production, maize, grapes for wine-making, fruit and milk. With more than 800,000 head of cattle in 2000, livestock production accounts for half of total agricultural production in Piedmont.


title: Piedmont

text: Piedmont is one of the great winegrowing regions in Italy. More than half of its of vineyards are registered with DOC designations. It produces prestigious wines as Barolo and Barbaresco from the Langhe near Alba, and the Moscato d'Asti and sparkling Asti from the vineyards around Asti. The city of Asti is about east of Turin in the plain of the Tanaro River and is one of the most important centres of Montferrat, one of the best known Italian wine districts in the world, declared officially on 22 June 2014 a UNESCO World Heritage site. Indigenous grape varieties include Nebbiolo, Barbera, Dolcetto, Freisa, Grignolino and Brachetto.


title: Piedmont

text: Tourism in Piedmont employs 75,534 people and involves 17,367 companies operating in the hospitality and catering sector, with 1,473 hotels and other tourist accommodation. The sector generates a turnover of €2,671 million, 3.3% of the €80,196 million total estimated spending on tourism in Italy. The region is popular with both foreign visitors and those from other parts of Italy. In 2002 there were 2,651,068 total arrivals, 1,124,696 (42%) of whom were foreign. The traditional leading areas for tourism in Piedmont are the Lake District ("Piedmont's riviera"), which accounts for 32.84% of total overnight stays, and the metropolitan area of Turin, which accounts for 26.51%.


title: Piedmont

text: In 2006, Turin hosted the XX Olympic Winter Games and in 2007 it hosted the XXIII Universiade. Alpine tourism tends to concentrate in a few highly developed stations like Alagna Valsesia and Sestriere. Around 1980, the long-distance trail Grande Traversata delle Alpi (GTA) was created to draw more attention to the variety of remote, sparsely inhabited valleys.


title: Piedmont

text: Within the tourism industry in Piedmont, a reference to the system of Royal Residences has to be made. First of all, it is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites since 1997 and, secondly, it represents a peculiarity of the region, since such a network cannot be found elsewhere in Italy. The Residences of the Royal House of Savoy belong to the historical and cultural heritage of Piedmont and nowadays they play a central role in the tourism field. In a reality in which the tourism industry is characterized by an amalgam of several players and stakeholders, the creation of a system or network like the one of the Royal Residences represents an added benefit for the whole territory as well as a competitive edge. Therefore, considering that tourism is a key factor in the creation of long-lasting value and working in a cooperative and collaborative perspective is essential, the network of the Royal Residences represents an example worth of notice.


title: Piedmont

text: There are links with neighbouring France via the Fréjus and Colle di Tenda tunnels as well as the Montgenèvre Pass. Piedmont also connects with Switzerland by the Simplon and Great St Bernard passes. It is possible to reach Switzerland via a normal road that crosses eastern Piedmont, starting from Arona and ending in Locarno, on the Swiss border. The region has the longest motorway network amongst the Italian regions (about 800 km). It radiates from Turin, connecting it with the other provinces in the region, as well as with the other regions in Italy. In 2001, the number of passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants was 623 (above the national average of 575).


title: Piedmont

text: Turin-Caselle International Airport has domestic and international flights and handle 3,952,158 passengers and 3,334 tons of cargo in 2019 (before COVID-19 pandemic).


title: Piedmont

text: The economy of Piedmont is anchored on a rich history of state support for higher education, including some of the leading universities in Italy. Piedmont is home to the famous University of Turin, the Polytechnic University of Turin, the University of Eastern Piedmont and, more recently the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute.


title: Piedmont

text: The population density in Piedmont is lower than the national average. In 2008 it was equal to 174 inhabitants per km, compared to a national figure of about 200. The Metropolitan City of Turin has 335 inhabitants per km, whereas Verbano-Cusio-Ossola is the least densely populated province, with 72 inhabitants per km.


title: Piedmont

text: The population of Piedmont followed a downward trend throughout the 1980s, a result of the natural negative balance (of some 3 to 4% per year), while the migratory balance since 1986 has again become positive because of immigration. The population remained stable in the 1990s.


title: Piedmont

text: The Turin metro area grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s due to an increase of immigrants from southern Italy and Veneto and today it has a population of approximately two million. , the Italian national institute of statistics (ISTAT) estimated that 310,543 foreign-born immigrants live in Piedmont, equal to 7.0% of the total regional population. Most immigrants come from Eastern Europe (mostly from Romania, Albania, and Ukraine) with smaller communities of African immigrants.


title: Piedmont

text: The Regional Government ("Giunta Regionale") is presided by the President of the Region ("Presidente della Regione"), who is elected for a five-year term and is composed by the President and the Ministers, who are currently 14, including a Vice President ("Vice Presidente").


title: Piedmont

text: In the last regional election, which took place on 29–30 March 2010, Roberto Cota (Lega Nord) defeated incumbent Mercedes Bresso (Democratic Party). In 2014 Cota chose not to stand again for president and the parties composing his coalition failed to agree on a single candidate, resulting in a landslide victory for Sergio Chiamparino, a Democrat who had been Mayor of Turin from 2001 to 2011. Sergio Chiamparino has been in charge between 2014 and 2019, when Alberto Cirio (Forza Italia) became the new President of the Region.


title: Piedmont

text: As in the rest of Italy, Italian is the official national language. The main local languages are Piedmontese, Insubric (spoken in the eastern part of the region), Occitan (spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Province of Cuneo and the Metropolitan City of Turin), and Franco-Provençal (spoken by another minority in the alpine heights of the Metropolitan City of Turin), like in the Susa valley and Walser (spoken by a minority in the Province of Vercelli and Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola).


title: Piedmont

text: In football, notable clubs in Piedmont include Turin-based Juventus and Torino, who have won 43 official top-flight league championships (as of the 2020-21 season) between them (36 titles won by Juventus and seven by Torino), more than any other city in Italy. Juventus is the most successful club in Italy, having won the most league titles (36), Coppa Italia titles (14) and Suppercoppa Italiana titles (9) of any team in the country. Other smaller teams include the old "Piedmont Quadrilateral" components Novara, Alessandria, Casale, Pro Vercelli. With the pre-World War II success of Pro Vercelli in 1910s and Juventus in 1930s, as well as winning cycles of Torino during the "Grande Torino" years and Juventus in different eras since 1950, the region became the most successful in terms of championships won. Also Casale and Novese contributed with one "scudetto" each.


title: Piedmont

text: Other local teams include volleyball teams Cuneo (male) and AGIL Novara (female), basketball teams Biella Basketball and Junior Casale, ice hockey team Hockey Club Turin, and roller hockey side Amatori Vercelli, who have won three league titles, an Italian Cup and two CERS Cups.


title: Tyler Henry

text: Tyler Henry Koelewyn (born 1996) is an American reality show personality who appears in the series "Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry" as a clairvoyant medium. The series began its broadcast on the E! Television Network in the United States in January 2016. He has published two books.


title: Tyler Henry

text: Critics have alleged that Henry's readings are performed using deceptive cold reading and hot reading techniques, and not "psychic" powers.


title: Tyler Henry

text: Henry is a native of Hanford, California, a small rural city near Fresno. He graduated from Hanford's Sierra Pacific High School and didn't attend college.


title: Tyler Henry

text: In November 2015, Henry appeared on "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" where he gave a reading to one of the Kardashian sisters.


title: Tyler Henry

text: In January 2016, "Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry" premiered on E!. In March 2016, it was announced that E! had ordered a second season of the show. Henry published a memoir titled "Between Two Worlds: Lessons from the Other Side" the same year. In 2022, he published a second book, "Here & Hereafter: How Wisdom from the Departed Can Transform Your Life Now".


title: Tyler Henry

text: In February 2018, "People" printed an article in advance of the third season of "Hollywood Medium". The article detailed Henry's claims about his abilities, the development of his "powers", and his reading with La Toya Jackson set to air in the new season, in which he claimed to contact Michael Jackson.


title: Tyler Henry

text: "Hollywood Medium" ended after four seasons in 2019. His next series, "Life After Death with Tyler Henry", premiered on March 11, 2022, on Netflix.


title: Tyler Henry

text: Henry has given readings to many celebrities, such as Nancy Grace, Alan Thicke, retired NBA player John Salley and actors Monica Potter, Amber Rose, Jaleel White, the Kardashians, Corey Feldman, Carmen Electra, Matt Lauer, Chad Michael Murray, Rick Fox, Megan Fox, Chrissy Metz, Kristin Cavallari, Bobby Brown, Roselyn Sanchez, The Try Guys, and Tom Arnold.


title: Tyler Henry

text: On December 13, 2016, actor Alan Thicke died due to aortic dissection at the age of 69. Several months before his death, Thicke was the subject of a reading done for the "Hollywood Medium" TV show. Among the many topics discussed by Henry, the concern of possible heart problems was addressed, with Henry suggesting that Thicke had a heart problem like "multiple men" in Thicke's family. After Thicke died, this part of his reading was referenced by Henry's fans as evidence that Henry had actually predicted Thicke's death. Various news outlets reported on this. Susan Gerbic challenged the claim that this was a successful psychic prediction, arguing that "Henry was again playing the odds" given that heart disease is the "number one cause of death for American males".


title: Tyler Henry

text: It is the opinion of scientific skeptics that mediumship is a con and that Henry is no exception. Skeptical activists and others concerned with Henry's rise in popularity have actively attempted to counter the public perception that what Henry claims to do reflects reality. In particular, they have argued that Henry relies on a mix of cold reading techniques and prior knowledge of his subjects, or hot reading, to make his claims. Specific examples where it is alleged that he used these techniques include sessions with Ronda Rousey, Carole Radziwill, Matt Lauer, and Nancy Grace.


title: Tyler Henry

text: Critics have argued that Henry's actions are exploitative, and he has been dismissed as one of many mediums who lack training in counselling, resulting in a "tremendous" risk of harm. Henry reportedly welcomes skepticism about his work: "I am content with people asking questions", he told the "Fresno Bee".


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: In January 2021, a short squeeze of the stock of the American video game retailer GameStop () and other securities took place, causing major financial consequences for certain hedge funds and large losses for short sellers. Approximately 140 percent of GameStop's public float had been sold short, and the rush to buy shares to cover those positions as the price rose caused it to rise even further. The short squeeze was initially and primarily triggered by users of the subreddit r/wallstreetbets, an Internet forum on the social news website Reddit, although a number of hedge funds also participated. At its height, on January 28, the short squeeze caused the retailer's stock price to reach a pre-market value of over US$500 per share ($125 split-adjusted), nearly 30 times the $17.25 valuation at the beginning of the month. The price of many other heavily shorted securities and cryptocurrencies also increased.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On January 28, some brokerages, particularly app-based brokerage services such as Robinhood, halted the buying of GameStop and other securities, citing the next day their inability to post sufficient collateral at clearing houses to execute their clients' orders. This decision attracted criticism and accusations of market manipulation from prominent politicians and businesspeople from across the political spectrum. Dozens of class action lawsuits have been filed against Robinhood in U.S. courts, and the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services held a congressional hearing on the incident.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: The unusually high price and volatility continued after the peak in late January. On February 24, the GameStop stock price doubled within a 90-minute period, and then averaged in the neighborhood of $200 per share for another month. On March 24, the GameStop stock price fell 34 percent to $120.34 per share after earnings were released and the company announced plans for issuing a new secondary stock offering. On March 25, the stock recovered dramatically, rising by 53 percent.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Short selling is a finance practice in which an investor, known as the short-seller, borrows shares and immediately sells them, hoping to buy them back later ("covering") at a lower price, return the borrowed shares (plus interest) to the lender and profit off the difference. The practice carries an unlimited risk of losses, because there is no inherent limit to how high a stock's price can rise. This is in contrast with taking a long position (simply owning the stock), where the investor's loss is limited to the cost of their initial investment.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Short sellers are exposed to a risk of short squeezing, which occurs when the shorted stock jumps in value due, for instance, to a sudden piece of favorable news. Short sellers are then forced to buy back the stock they had initially sold, in an effort to keep their losses from mounting. Purchasing the stock to cover their short positions raises the price of the shorted stock, thus triggering more short sellers to cover their positions by buying the stock. This can result in a cascade of stock purchases and an even bigger jump of the share price.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: GameStop, an American chain of brick-and-mortar video game stores, had struggled in recent years due to competition from digital distribution services, as well as the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which reduced the number of people who shopped in-person. As a result, GameStop's stock price declined, leading many institutional investors to short sell the stock. On January 22, 2021, approximately 140 percent of GameStop's public float had been sold short, meaning some shorted shares had been re-lent and shorted again. Analysts at Goldman Sachs later noted that short interest exceeding 100 percent of a company's public had only occurred 15 times in the prior 10 years.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: However, in mid-2019, investor Michael Burry's Scion Asset Management acquired a 3.3-percent stake in GameStop and wrote to the company's board of directors, identifying overlooked value in the company and urging them to buy back shares. In August 2020, Ryan Cohen (the former CEO of online pet food retailer Chewy) revealed a 9-percent investment in GameStop, leading some to believe that the stock was undervalued. In January 2021, Cohen joined GameStop's board, triggering a stock rally.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: The subreddit r/wallstreetbets is an online community on Reddit, a social news website. The community is known for discussion around meme stocks and high-risk stock transactions. Observers congregating around r/wallstreetbets believed the company was being significantly undervalued, and with such a large amount of the shares being short they could trigger a short squeeze, by driving up the price to the point where short sellers had to capitulate and cover their positions at large losses.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Even before the short squeeze, there had been interest in GameStop (ticker symbol: GME). Keith Gill, known by the Reddit username "DeepFuckingValue" and the YouTube and Twitter alias "Roaring Kitty", purchased around $53,000 in call options on GameStop's stock in 2019 and saw his position rise to a value of $48 million by January 27, 2021. Gill, a 34-year-old marketing professional and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) from Massachusetts, stated that he began investing in GameStop during the summer of 2019, after believing the stock to be undervalued. He shared information regarding his investment on r/wallstreetbets, providing regular updates on the investment's performance, including times when the investment had plunged. He stated on January 29, 2021, after the GameStop short squeeze, that he "thought this trade would be successful" but "never expected what [had] happened over the last week", adding that he planned to continue his YouTube channel as Roaring Kitty and potentially buy a house.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Another user, "Stonksflyingup", posted a humorous video on October 27, 2020, explaining how a short position by Melvin Capital could be used to execute a short squeeze, using a scene from "Chernobyl" to illustrate how the hedge fund would blow up similarly to a nuclear reactor.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On January 27, 2021, technology news website Mashable reported that the subreddit had broken pageview records due to the short squeeze, receiving 73 million pageviews in 24 hours. r/wallstreetbets was the fastest-growing subreddit at the time – the community surged by more than 1.5 million users overnight (to a total of 6 million members) on January 29.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Suggested factors included anger of some investors towards Wall Street hedge funds for their role in the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, or the general democratization of the stock market coupled with the ability of retail traders to communicate instantaneously through social media.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: In January 2021, Reddit users on the r/wallstreetbets subreddit built the foundations for a short squeeze on GameStop, pushing up the stock price significantly. This occurred shortly after a comment from Citron Research predicting the value of the stock would decrease. The stock price increased 1,500 percent by January 27 over the course of two weeks, and its high volatility caused trading to be halted multiple times. According to Dow Jones market data, more than 175 million shares of GameStop were traded on January 25, the second largest total in a single day, surpassing its 30-day average volume of 29.8 million shares. Some of those investing into the stock were young teenage investors.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Later analysis by a cyber security company of social media posts suggested that thousands of automated bots may have hyped GameStop stock, Dogecoin, and other stocks, on social media. However, it is unclear the extent to which the suspected bot accounts influenced trading.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: After GameStop's stock closed up 92.7 percent on January 26, business magnate Elon Musk tweeted "Gamestonk!!"—a reference to the "stonks" meme rising in popularity at the time—along with a link to the r/wallstreetbets subreddit. A brief, sharp rise in the share price to over $200 followed Musk's tweet. , the all-time highest intraday stock price for GameStop was $483.00 (nearly 190 times the low of $2.57 reached 9 months earlier in April 2020). In pre-market trading hours the same day, it briefly hit over $500, up from $17.25 at the start of the month.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: The r/wallstreetbets Discord server was banned on January 27 for violating the company's restrictions on hate speech. However, users quickly formed similar servers on the application, and Discord reversed its decision the next day, attempting to help the community moderate its server instead.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On January 27, r/wallstreetbets triggered a short squeeze on AMC Theatres (ticker symbol: AMC), a company in a similar position to GameStop. The value of AMC Networks (ticker symbol: AMCX) also increased significantly, which was believed to have happened because of the stock's name being similar to AMC's. Disruptions and restrictions limiting trade have been reported on multiple brokerages such as Charles Schwab Corporation, its subsidiary TD Ameritrade, and Robinhood. According to Bloomberg, U.S. trading volumes (by share count) on January 27 exceeded the peak set in October 2008 during the financial crisis, and was the third-highest in dollar terms within the last 13 years on record.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On January 28, more than 1 million GameStop shares, then worth $359 million, were deemed failed-to-deliver. On that day, GameStop's total market cap reached $33.7 billion which made it temporarily the highest valued company on the Russell 2000 index.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: According to the "Financial Times", a "gamma squeeze" also took place in addition to the short squeeze: as traders bet on the rise of stocks by purchasing call options, options sellers hedge their positions by purchasing the underlying stocks (here, GameStop and the related securities), thereby driving their prices even higher.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On January 28, Robinhood halted purchases of GameStop, AMC Theatres, BlackBerry Limited, Nokia Corporation, and other volatile stocks from its trading platform; customers could no longer open new positions in the stock, although they could still close them. Other brokerages soon followed suit. Many traders were furious, and called for class-action lawsuits in multiple popular Reddit posts. After the markets closed, Robinhood announced it would begin to allow "limited buys" of the affected securities starting the following day, although it was unclear what "limited buys" entailed. Trading platforms such as UK-based Trading212 and Israel-based eToro blocked buys of GameStop and other stock while continuing to allow sales. Webull halted buy orders for stocks affected by the squeeze, but soon thereafter allowed orders to continue. Anthony Denier, the CEO of Webull, stated that increased collateral requirements for their clearing house meant Webull themselves were restricted from opening new positions. Some users alleged that Robinhood was selling shares without consent; Robinhood denied these allegations.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Several brokerage firms, including Robinhood, stated on January 29 that the restrictions were the result of clearing houses raising the required collateral for executing trades. Because there is a two-day lag between the moment when investors purchase a security and the moment cash and securities are actually exchanged, brokerage firms have to post collateral at clearing houses to guarantee the proper settlement of their clients' orders. Clearing houses include the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) for equities and the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) for options. Clearing houses must have enough collateral on hand to settle a member's outstanding transactions in the event any particular member firm fails—to prevent cascading failures of other members—and can demand additional collateral (i.e., margin calls) from members if market volatility starts to increase. Brokerage firms claimed that the increased collateral could not be provided in time, and, as a result, trading had to be halted. The DTCC, for instance, increased the total industrywide collateral requirements from $26 billion to $33.5 billion, noting that the large trading volumes in specific stocks "generated substantial risk exposures at firms that clear these trades [...] particularly if the clearing member or its clients are predominantly on one side of the market". On January 29, it was reported that Robinhood had raised an additional $1 billion to protect the company from the financial pressure placed by the increased interest in particular stocks and meet the collateral requirements of clearing houses.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: As of January 29, Robinhood was still imposing limits on the trading of GameStop, AMC, and Blackberry stocks. On January 30, Robinhood announced it had increased the restrictions from the sale of 13 securities to 50, including companies such as Rolls-Royce Holdings and Starbucks Corporation. However, on January 31, Robinhood announced it had removed several of these restrictions and would only limit the sale of eight securities.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On February 1 and 2, the stock price for GameStop declined substantially, losing more than 80 percent of its value from its intraday peak price, recorded during the previous week. GameStop shares lost 60 percent of their value on February 2, closing below $100 for the first time in a week. Reports estimated that about $27 billion in value had been erased. Other assets affected by the short squeeze and put under company trading restrictions, such as AMC and Blackberry shares, also declined in value. CNN reported that the drop was partly due to restrictions imposed by Robinhood and other brokers on the number of shares that could be purchased at once by their clients. The short squeezed securities' prices continued to decline during the week.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Despite the decline, some r/wallstreetbets users rallied to convince other users to hold on to the shares, arguing either that they would increase in value or that such an action would send a political message. As the stock prices continued to decline, some of the recent investors held on to their shares, and suffered significant losses.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On February 24, GameStop share prices doubled in heavy volume in the final 90 minutes of trading, with the company's stock halting twice, shortly before closing at $91.70, a 104-percent gain. Gains continued in after-hours trading, nearing an additional 100 percent. Similar gains, although not as high, were reported with cinema operator AMC, clothing retailer Express and communications software group BlackBerry. Reports could not identify a specific cause for the surge. The jump came a day after GameStop announced its chief financial officer Jim Bell would resign to help 'accelerate GameStop's transformation'.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On March 8, the stock saw continued rising of 41 percent to $194.50, and with around 25 percent of the stocks being shorted at this time. On March 9, the stock surged to its highest point since January, resulting in a market capitalization over $17 billion. Shares closed at $246.90, and increased a further 3 percent in after-hours trading. On the morning of 10 March, the stock rose as high as $348.50, before being paused for volatility, and then dropping 40 percent by 12:30 pm EST to the previous day's close.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On March 24, the GameStop stock price fell 34 percent to $120.34 per share after earnings were released and the company announced plans for issuing a new secondary stock offering worth up to $1 billion.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: By March 24, short interests had dropped to 15 percent, compared to the 141 percent level at its peak in January.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: By January 28, 2021, Melvin Capital, an investment fund that heavily shorted GameStop, had lost 30 percent of its value since the start of 2021, and by the end of January had suffered a loss of 53 percent of its investments. Citadel LLC and firm partners then invested $2 billion into Melvin, while Point72 Asset Management's investment added $750 million, for a total investment of $2.75 billion, before Melvin told CNBC that they covered (closed) their position on January 26, although the exact amount was not disclosed. On January 27, a Melvin Capital spokesperson stated that the fund had closed its position after repositioning its portfolio. For the month of February, Melvin posted a 22-percent gain, but it would need much more to break even from their earlier losses; they were reported to have suffered further losses during the GME's continued resurgence in May 2021. Melvin ultimately shut down on May 18, 2022.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: According to a report by Bloomberg, Andrew Left, an activist short seller and head of Citron Research, had also shorted the stock and claimed to have closed the position as a total loss. In an interview, he claimed that the company had covered the majority of its short positions in the range of $90 per share at a loss of 100 percent, retaining a small, manageable position. Due to the enormous losses, Left stated that Citron Research would stop providing short-sell analysis, and instead focus on "long side multibagger opportunities for individual investors". Other firms that incurred large losses include D1 Capital Partners, which lost $4 billion (20 percent of its capital).


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On January 26, it was reported that short sellers had lost a total of $6 billion due to the squeeze. According to Morgan Stanley, a number of hedge funds covered their short positions and sold shares in their portfolio to reduce leverage and market exposure, in some of the largest such actions within 10 years. On February 1, GameStop short interest fell to 39 percent of free-floating shares, from 114 percent in mid-January, according to IHS Markit. The data was described by Bloomberg News as "potentially an early sign that the short squeeze that propelled GameStop... has progressed." Trading on March 8, specifically, caused $609 million in losses from short sellers.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: According to "The New York Times", the short squeeze has called into question the viability of short selling as an investment strategy.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: After GameStop's share price spiked again in May 2021, it was reported that Light Street Capital, run by so-called "tiger cub" Glen Kacher, was down more than 20 percent during 2021.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On June 22, 2021, White Square Capital, a London-based hedge fund that was reported to have suffered "double-digit" losses betting against GameStop, announced that it would be shutting down.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: As of January 31, executives at BlackBerry and GameStop had sold more than $22 million in stock since January 1. There is no allegation of insider trading among BlackBerry executives, according to CBS News. Three BlackBerry executives sold nearly $1.7 million of the company's stock, with one of the executives, Chief Financial Officer Steve Rai, selling all of his shares in the company excepting unvested employee stock options.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: GameStop Chair Kathy Vrabeck and board member Raul Fernandez sold shares from January 13 to 16, making $1.4 million, and likewise, board member Lizabeth Dunn cashed in $156,700. GameStop CEO George Sherman owns over 2.3 million shares in the company, according to Bloomberg News. These shares were worth $44 million on December 31, but reached $1.1 billion when GameStop's stock reached $469, briefly making him a billionaire, before the value of his stock dropped to $901 million on January 29.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: While the short squeeze was initially reported as being driven by retail investors, it later emerged that a substantial part of the market activity surrounding GameStop and the related securities was conducted by hedge funds, who had made substantial profits from the short squeeze. An analysis by Reuters concluded that some of Wall Street's largest asset managers were able to realize gains both from their share stakes, as well as from lending out stocks to short sellers. Similarly, an analysis by investment bank JP Morgan Chase suggested that institutional investors were heavily involved in the trading activity related to the short squeeze. Brokerages, trading systems and market makers have also gained from higher-than-average volume of transfers.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Hedge fund manager Senvest Management, which had previously bought a five percent stake in GameStop when shares were at $10, made a profit of $700 million, exiting its position after Elon Musk tweeted "Gamestonks!". Asset manager BlackRock had a roughly 13-percent stake in GameStop, which was worth $2.6 billion at the peak. Mudrick Capital Management made a profit of close to $200 million in January 2021 on its holdings of AMC debt, and a profit of $50 million writing call options on AMC and GameStop stock. The mutual fund Morgan Stanley Institutional Inception saw a 30-percent rise in its value based in part due to the 346,943 GameStop shares it had purchased in September 2020. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, through its investment manager Ensign Peak Advisors, bought 46,000 shares of GameStop in 2020, and saw the value of its investment jump 900 percent.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: The trading led to increase in the stock of the Koss Corporation, and by selling stock the executives and directors of the company were able to earn $45 million, which was greater than the company's valuation in 2020.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Many retail investors and r/wallstreetbets users bought shares of GameStop and other affected securities as they were reaching their peak prices or shortly afterwards. Other investors held onto their long positions while the stock prices were declining rapidly, amid widespread calls on r/wallstreetbets to hang on to the failing shares. In an "ask me anything session" on r/wallstreetbets, entrepreneur Mark Cuban also encouraged GameStop buyers to hold on to their stock if they were able to. As the stock prices continued to decline, many retail investors suffered significant losses, with some r/wallstreetbets users losing a majority of their savings.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Apart from GameStop, many other heavily shorted securities (as well as securities with low short interest) saw increases in their prices:


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: The shares of GME Resources, an Australian mining company with Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) symbol GME, increased more than 50 percent during intraday trading, closing with a 13.3-percent increase on January 28. This was speculated to have been due to a joke or mistake, as the ASX symbol was the same as GameStop's NYSE ticker symbol (GME).


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Amateur traders in Malaysia were inspired by the GameStop short squeeze to target shares for Malaysian latex glove makers on Bursa Malaysia as a countermove against the devaluation of the sector by institutional investors following the lifting of a ban on short selling in the country earlier in January 2021. Top Glove, Hartalega and Supermax respectively recorded increases in shares as high as 15 percent, 10 percent and 9.2 percent during intraday trading on January 29, before closing with respective increases of 8.5 percent, 5.4 percent and 3.7 percent. The rally call was reportedly organized from r/bursabets, a Malaysian offshoot of r/wallstreetbets named after the Malaysian stock exchange. On March 2, Rocket Mortgage saw a more than 70 percent spike in its stock price due to a surge in trading following discussion of the company on r/wallstreetbets, but the Rocket Mortgage stock price reverted to its pre-surge level the next day.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: After brokerages halted the buying of GameStop and other securities, the price of several cryptocurrencies also began to increase substantially, with Dogecoin's value increasing over 800 percent. Users of the subreddits r/CryptoCurrency and r/SatoshiStreetBets attempted to pump up Dogecoin to make it "the next GME/Bitcoin". In addition, the price of Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, increased 20 percent in value to more than $37,000 after Elon Musk endorsed it in his Twitter bio, partially related to the surge in the GameStop share price by Reddit users. Robinhood then began limiting the trading on Dogecoin.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Following the stock market surge, futures for silver began to rapidly increase as well, although later news reports clarified that it was unclear who was behind the rise. On January 28 and 29, the price of silver rose 10 percent. The surge also had an effect on the prices of gold and copper on the London Metal Exchange. On February 1, the price of silver hit an eight-year high as GameStop shares continued their volatile tendency, with trading being halted at least once as the price fell by double-digit percentages. Users on r/wallstreetbets deny involvement in the increasing price of silver, instead blaming the increase on institutions and hedge funds with positions in silver, such as Citadel, seeking to offset losses on GameStop.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On January 27, 2021, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others in the Biden administration were monitoring the situation. Yellen convened a meeting of financial regulators, including the heads of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to discuss the volatility surrounding the short squeeze. Because Yellen had received speaking fees from Citadel before becoming treasury secretary, she sought and received permission from Treasury Department ethics lawyers before convening the meeting. The regulators were not seen as likely to view the volatility as creating any systemic risks.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that Congress would also be reviewing it. Senator Sherrod Brown announced that the Senate Banking Committee would hold a hearing on the state of the stock market and the alleged market manipulation surrounding the GameStop short squeeze. Representative Byron Donalds called for Congress to launch "an immediate investigation into Citadel, L.L.C. and Robinhood".


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On January 29, 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced it was reviewing the incident with the aims "to protect retail investors" from "abusive or manipulative trading activity" and "to identify and pursue potential wrongdoing".


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Attorney General of New York Letitia James confirmed in a press release that her office would look into the matter, saying "We are aware of concerns raised regarding activity on the Robinhood app, including trading related to the GameStop stock".


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he would also investigate the decision of brokerages to limit the buying of securities related to GameStop and other stocks, saying that it "stinks of corruption". His investigation has extended to 13 entities, including Discord, Robinhood, the trading platforms Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrade, and Citadel Financial.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On January 28, 2021, the House Financial Services Committee announced that it would convene a hearing to discuss online trading platforms. On February 18, 2021, the committee, chaired by Representative Maxine Waters, held a remote hearing titled "Game Stopped? Who Wins and Loses When Short Sellers, Social Media, and Retail Investors Collide". Witnesses at the hearing included Reddit user and investor Keith Gill, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, Melvin Capital CEO Gabriel Plotkin, Cato Institute financial regulation expert Jennifer J. Schulp, and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev. Representatives focused their attention on Robinhood's role in the event, asking Tenev why the brokerage had limited the trading of some securities and if it had clearly communicated its business model to its customers. They also questioned whether Robinhood was encouraging its customers to take excessive risks in order to generate a profit and whether it had the appropriate infrastructure and funding to handle influxes of new clients. Several committee members expressed skepticism at the practice of payment for order flow and pressed Griffin and Tenev on the issue. Representative Brad Sherman accused Griffin of trying to evade his questions. At various points during his initial testimony and questioning, Gill made references to memes. Committee members also discussed increasing short-selling regulation.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On March 17, 2021, the Financial Services Committee held a second hearing, which focused on the regulation of payment for order flow and gamification of investing.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: A Robinhood customer filed a class-action lawsuit against the company on January 28, 2021, for halting trading on GameStop. The lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, claimed that Robinhood "purposefully, willfully, and knowingly removing the stock 'GME' from its trading platform in the midst of an unprecedented stock rise thereby deprived retail investors of the ability to invest in the open-market"; the lawsuit also accused Robinhood of "manipulating the open-market". Several other investors began using the app DoNotPay to automatically join the lawsuit.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: A second class-action was filed in the Northern District of Illinois claiming that Robinhood's decision to halt trades of BlackBerry, Nokia and AMC was made "to protect institutional investment at the detriment of retail customers". Similarly, a man in Colorado filed a federal lawsuit against Robinhood as well as Citadel, Charles Schwab, Interactive Brokers, Open to the Public Investing, TD Ameritrade, and Webull, alleging he "was forced into a situation by which he was essentially forced to sale his equities at a drastically reduced position given the new market condition set by these supposedly neutral brokerage houses, taking significant losses and being incapable of trading in these publicly held equities that he had performed significant due diligence and research on, and relied upon over the course of his job as a day trader." As of February 2, 2021, Robinhood was facing 34 separate class-action lawsuits. In January 2022, a federal court ruled that investors could not pursue negligence and breach of fiduciary duty claims, citing Robinhood's customer agreement which allowed for restrictions on trading. The same judge had previously dismissed a lawsuit alleging that there was collusion between brokerages and Citadel Securities.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: A lawsuit was filed in a court in Massachusetts by securities class action firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro on behalf of an investor against Keith Gill. The suit alleges Gill misrepresented himself as an amateur investor to inflate the stock price.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On February 8, 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released a sample letter providing guidance to companies seeking to raise capital during periods of "extreme price volatility". It requires that companies outline the related risks in their financial disclosures and encourages companies to contact the SEC prior to launching such offerings.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: In reaction to the short squeeze, some Democratic politicians have expressed support for a financial transactions tax, arguing that it would raise revenue and curb speculative betting.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: In June 2022, a 140-page report released by the United States House Committee on Financial Services called for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to craft new rules to address market risks highlighted by the events of January 2021, including a liquidity rule and framework governing liquidity planning for clearing brokers.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: A variety of politicians and commentators across the political spectrum made statements in support of those driving up the price of GameStop and other stocks, as well as against Robinhood and other companies' decision to limit these trades, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Ted Cruz, Representatives Ro Khanna, Ted Lieu, and Rashida Tlaib, Fox Business host Charles Payne, and conservative political commentators Rush Limbaugh, Ben Shapiro, and Donald Trump Jr.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Senator Elizabeth Warren criticized both the short sellers and the buyers, and argued that more regulation was needed. She stated that the large investors and hedge funds who were criticizing the rally "have treated the stock market like their own personal casino while everyone else pays the price". She also called for stronger regulatory action from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission "to ensure that markets reflect real value, rather than the highly leveraged bets of wealthy traders or those who seek to inflict financial damage on those traders."


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: In an interview with CNBC, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin criticized the investors' behavior as based on reckless speculation and called for a 30-day suspension of trading GME stock, stating "I think we've all recognized the current pandemic has created a unique situation where many have gotten into day-trading and really have no idea exactly what they're doing ... I think small-time investors like that, unsophisticated investors, are going to be hurt by this." In another CNBC interview joined by Canadian businessman and "Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary, O'Leary disputed Galvin's assertions, saying that real-world education was positive; that the risk of being targeted by "social media vigilantes" would dissuade hedge funds from aggressively selling short stocks; and zero-commission brokerage apps such as Robinhood had sparked a growing interest in retail investing.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On January 28, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli told reporters that the state pension fund, which had 647,500 shares in March 2020, had sold off hundreds of thousands of shares since then, benefiting from the squeeze.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: In a CNBC interview, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian compared the rally to Occupy Wall Street, saying that "it's a chance for Joe and Jane America—the retail buyers of stock—to flex back and push back on these hedge funds." Numerous journalists have also drawn comparison to the Occupy movement. Similar sentiments sympathetic for the retail investors were expressed by billionaire investors Mark Cuban and Chamath Palihapitiya. Palihapitiya, who passed on early investment opportunities in Robinhood, opined that the founding co-CEOs, Baiju Bhatt and Vladimir Tenev, lacked integrity and urged his followers to delete the app. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested the company change its name. SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk also criticized the general practice of stock shorting, calling it a "scam legal only for vestigial reasons" A number of major hedge funds had previously shorted Tesla, incurring losses of more than $40 billion as the stock rose considerably.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Several celebrities and influencers also criticized Robinhood. Actor and rapper Ja Rule, who had used Robinhood since 2014, said what the company did was "a fucking CRIME" and called the situation "an uprising". Comedian and television host Jon Stewart, after joining Twitter, expressed support for the Reddit traders in his first tweet, stating "they're joining a party Wall Street insiders have been enjoying for years". Late night host Jimmy Kimmel criticized Stewart for his tweet, sarcastically asking him "RealDonaldTrump? Is that you?"; the tweet was later deleted, Kimmel later called the Redditors "Russian disruptors" on his show. YouTuber Philip DeFranco announced he would be dropping his partnership with Robinhood, saying "Robinhood is never getting a fucking spot on my show again regardless of the offer." Barstool Sports founder David Portnoy also criticized Robinhood for its lack of "free trading". More generally, it was recognized that Wall Street was now subject to the same populist vigor (afforded by Internet connectivity) as the entertainment industry, politics, and so on.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: However, investor Michael Burry, who had acquired a 3.3-percent stake in GameStop in 2019, criticized the short squeeze, stating that "there should be legal and regulatory repercussions", and adding "this is unnatural, insane, and dangerous". In a CNBC interview, billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman angrily criticized the Reddit users' market behavior, calling it a result of the federal response to the pandemic and stating that it would "end in tears" for the retail investors.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: In March 2021, it was reported that the former basketball player Michael Jordan, who was among the most wealthy sports figures, had lost a major portion of his net worth on GameStop shares. His net worth, as reported by "Forbes", had declined by $500 million from its peak of $2.1 billion in 2019. Other co-owners of the Charlotte Hornets with Jordan also experienced heavy losses due to short positions on GameStop, being forced into tens of billions of dollars of debt as a result.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Disgruntled users review-bombed the Robinhood app on the Google Play Store after it halted the trading of GameStop securities, pushing its ratings down to one star. Google deleted at least 100,000 such reviews, calling them "coordinated or inorganic". However, after another round of negative reviews on the app dropping it to a 1.1-star rating, Google confirmed that the new reviews do not violate Google policies and will not be removed. Protesters also showed up outside Robinhood headquarters in Menlo Park, California, at the Securities and Exchange Commission headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the New York Stock Exchange. Menlo Park police reported ten separate incidents related to protests at Robinhood headquarters from January 28 to February 9, including a man throwing animal feces at the building's front door.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: "The Wall Street Journal" reported that short seller and Citron Research editor Andrew Left was being targeted online, including an incident where Left's social media accounts were hacked to text his children "threatening, profane and personal language". Several financial executives hired additional security due to online threats. Gabe Plotkin of Melvin Capital hired security after facing anti-semitic slurs and threats. Steve Cohen deleted his Twitter account after threats to his family.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: Following the decision by brokerage firm Robinhood to halt the buying of stocks affected by the short squeeze, users on Reddit and other social media called in question its relationship with Citadel Securities. "Bloomberg News" had previously reported that 40 percent of Robinhood's revenue was derived from selling customer orders to market-making firms including Citadel Securities and Two Sigma Securities, in a practice known as payment for order flow. "The Washington Post" reported that Robinhood routed more than half of its customer orders to Citadel, which was its largest market making partner by volume. Citadel Securities is the sister company to Citadel LLC, which along with Point72 Asset Management invested $2.75 billion into Melvin Capital. As Robinhood restricted trading of GameStop shares, users alleged that Citadel Securities directed Robinhood to do so. Citadel Securities stated that they did not instruct any brokerage to suspend or otherwise limit trading, and Robinhood denied that it had been pressured by Citadel. In November, a U.S. District Court dismissed a class action lawsuit ruling that investors failed to show collusion.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: During the February 18 hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee, Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev faced questioning regarding their relationship and denied that the limits imposed on the trading of GameStop shares had been requested by Citadel.


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: On September 27, 2021, Citadel released a statement through Twitter rejecting "Internet conspiracies and Twitter mobs" that alleged the firm pushed Robinhood to limit trading in GameStop. The statement was made as the hashtag #KenGriffinLied was trending on said platform, in which users accused Citadel's CEO Ken Griffin of having lied under oath to Congress. Internal Robinhood messages stemming from a class-action lawsuit, showed Robinhood executives "scrambled to talk to Citadel CEO Ken Griffin", on January 27, 2021, the day trading of GameStop and related stocks was temporally halted, according to "VICE".


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: The lawsuit alleges that on January 27, "employees of Citadel Securities and Robinhood had numerous communications with each other that indicate that Citadel applied pressure on Robinhood." Robinhood President and COO Jim Swartwoth said in an internal chat, "you wouldn't believe the convo we had with Citadel, total mess." The lawsuit alleges that a call was set up between Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, and a redacted person at Citadel Securities. It notes that Swartwout then stated, "I have to say I am beyond disappointed in how this went down. It's difficult to have a partnership when these kind of things go down this way."


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: During the Congressional hearing, lawmakers asked Ken Griffin if anyone in Citadel pressured Robinhood to restrict trading, to which he answered, "absolutely not."


title: GameStop short squeeze

text: In February 2021, Deadline Hollywood reported on Netflix's plans to develop a movie based on the events, with Mark Boal in negotiations to write and Noah Centineo set to star in the film. Separately, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) acquired the rights to make its own movie based on Ben Mezrich's book proposal "The Antisocial Network", aimed at chronicling the recent events on Wall Street. A limited-run series based on the events titled "To the Moon" was also announced. Jaime Rogozinski, who founded r/wallstreetbets in 2012, sold off his life experience to RatPac Entertainment, and a documentary based on the event, created by the studios XTR and The Optimist and partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign, is also in the works. HBO developed a mini-series, "Gaming Wall Street", which was released on March 3, 2022. The documentary "" interviewed several of the r/wallstreetbets users was released on January 28, 2022.


title: Blue screen of death

text: The Blue Screen of Death (BSoD), officially known as a Stop error or Blue Screen error, is an error screen that the Windows operating system displays in the event of a fatal system error. It indicates a system crash, in which the operating system has reached a critical condition where it can no longer operate safely, e.g., hardware failure or an unexpected termination of a crucial process.


title: Blue screen of death

text: Blue error screens have been around since the beta version of Windows 1.0; if Windows found a newer DOS version than it expected, it would generate a blue screen with white text saying "Incorrect DOS version", before starting normally. In the final release (version 1.01), however, this screen prints random characters as a result of bugs in the Windows logo code. It is not a crash screen, however; upon crashing, Windows 1.0 either locks up or exits to DOS.


title: Blue screen of death

text: Windows 3.0 uses a text-mode screen for displaying important system messages, usually from digital device drivers in 386 Enhanced Mode or other situations where a program could not run. Windows 3.1 changed the color of this screen from black to blue. Windows 3.1 also displays a blue screen when the user presses the Ctrl+Alt+Delete key combination while no programs were unresponsive. As with prior versions, Windows 3.x exits to DOS if an error condition is severe enough.


title: Blue screen of death

text: The first Blue Screen of Death appeared in Windows NT 3.1 (the first version of the Windows NT family, released in 1993) and all Windows operating systems released afterwards. In its first iteration, the error screens started with codice_1, hence it became known as a "stop error."


title: Blue screen of death

text: BSoDs can be caused by poorly written device drivers or malfunctioning hardware, such as faulty memory, power supply issues, overheating of components, or hardware running beyond its specification limits. In the Windows 9x era, incompatible DLLs or bugs in the operating system kernel could also cause BSoDs. Because of the instability and lack of memory protection in Windows 9x, BSoDs were much more common.


title: Blue screen of death

text: On September 4, 2014, several online journals, including "Business Insider", "DailyTech", "Engadget", "Gizmodo", "Lifehacker", "Neowin", "Softpedia", "TechSpot", "The Register", and "The Verge" incorrectly attributed the creation of the Blue Screen of Death to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's former CEO, citing an article by Microsoft employee Raymond Chen, entitled ""Who wrote the text for the Ctrl+Alt+Del dialog in Windows 3.1?"". The article focused on the creation of the first rudimentary task manager in Windows 3.x, which shared visual similarities with a BSoD. In a follow-up on September 9, 2014, Raymond Chen complained about this widespread mistake, claimed responsibility for revising the BSoD in Windows 95 and panned BGR.com for having "entirely fabricated a scenario and posited it as real". "Engadget" later updated its article to correct the mistake.


title: Blue screen of death

text: BSoDs originally showed silver text on a royal blue background with information about current memory values and register values. Starting with Windows Server 2012 (released in September 2012), Windows adopted a cerulean background. Windows 11 initially used a black background, but starting from build number 22000.348, switched to a dark blue background. Preview builds of Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server (available from the Windows Insider program) feature a dark green background instead of a blue one. Windows 3.1, 95, and 98 support customizing the color of the screen. In the Windows NT family, however, the color is hard-coded.


title: Blue screen of death

text: Windows 95, 98 and ME render their BSoDs in the 80×25 text mode. BSoDs in the Windows NT family initially used the 80×50 text mode on a 720×400 screen. Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista, and 7 BSoDs use the 640×480 screen resolution. Windows 2000 used the built-in kernel mode font while XP, Vista, and 7 use the Lucida Console font. Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 use Segoe UI. On UEFI machines, the BSoDs use the highest screen resolution available. On legacy BIOS machines, they use the 1024×768 resolution by default, but they can also be configured to use the highest resolution available (via the 'codice_2' parameter in Boot Configuration Data). Windows 10, versions 1607 and later, uses the same format as Windows 8, but has a QR code which leads to a Microsoft Support web page that tries to troubleshoot the issue step-by-step.


title: Blue screen of death

text: In the Windows NT family of operating systems, the blue screen of death (referred to as "bug check" in the Windows software development kit and driver development kit documentation) occurs when the kernel or a driver running in kernel mode encounters an error from which it cannot recover. This is usually caused by an illegal operation being performed. The only safe action the operating system can take in this situation is to restart the computer. As a result, data may be lost, as users are not given an opportunity to save it.


title: Blue screen of death

text: The text on the error screen contains the code of the error and its symbolic name (e.g. "0x0000001E, KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED") along with four error-dependent values in parentheses that are there to help software engineers fix the problem that occurred. Depending on the error code, it may display the address where the problem occurred, along with the driver which is loaded at that address. Under Windows NT, the second and third sections of the screen may contain information on all loaded drivers and a stack dump, respectively. The driver information is in three columns; the first lists the base address of the driver, the second lists the driver's creation date (as a Unix timestamp), and the third lists the name of the driver.By default, Windows will create a memory dump file when a stop error occurs. Depending on the OS version, there may be several formats this can be saved in, ranging from a 64kB "minidump" (introduced in Windows 2000) to a "complete dump" which is effectively a copy of the entire contents of physical memory (RAM). The resulting memory dump file may be debugged later, using a kernel debugger. For Windows, WinDBG or KD debuggers from Debugging Tools for Windows are used. A debugger is necessary to obtain a stack trace, and may be required to ascertain the true cause of the problem; as the information on-screen is limited and thus possibly misleading, it may hide the true source of the error. By default, Windows XP is configured to save only a 64kB minidump when it encounters a stop error, and to then automatically reboot the computer. Because this process happens very quickly, the blue screen may be seen only for an instant or not at all. Users have sometimes noted this as a random reboot rather than a traditional stop error, and are only aware of an issue after Windows reboots and displays a notification that it has recovered from a serious error. This happens only when the computer has a function called "Auto Restart" enabled, which can be disabled in the Control Panel which in turn shows the stop error.


title: Blue screen of death

text: Microsoft Windows can also be configured to send live debugging information to a kernel debugger running on a separate computer. If a stop error is encountered while a live kernel debugger is attached to the system, Windows will halt execution and cause the debugger to break in, rather than displaying the BSoD. The debugger can then be used to examine the contents of memory and determine the source of the problem.


title: Blue screen of death

text: A BSoD can also be caused by a critical boot loader error, where the operating system is unable to access the boot partition due to incorrect storage drivers, a damaged file system or similar problems. The error code in this situation is STOP 0x0000007B (INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE). In such cases, there is no memory dump saved. Since the system is unable to boot from the hard drive in this situation, correction of the problem often requires using the repair tools found on the Windows installation disc.


title: Blue screen of death

text: Before Windows Server 2012, each BSoD displayed an error name in uppercase (e.g. APC_INDEX_MISMATCH), a hexadecimal error number (e.g. 0x00000001) and four parameters. The last two are shown together in the following format:


title: Blue screen of death

text: Depending on the error number and its nature, all, some, or even none of the parameters contain data pertaining to what went wrong, and/or where it happened. In addition, the error screens showed four paragraphs of general explanation and advice and may have included other technical data such the file name of the culprit and memory addresses.


title: Blue screen of death

text: With the release of Windows Server 2012, the BSoD was changed, removing all of the above in favor of the error name and a concise description. Windows 8 also added a sad-emoticon as well (except on the Japanese versions). The hexadecimal error code and parameters can still be found in the Windows Event Log or in memory dumps. Since Windows 10 version 1607, the screen features a QR code for quick troubleshooting. Windows 10 versions 2004–22H2 and Windows 11 changed the text slightly from "Your PC ran into a problem" to "Your device ran into a problem".


title: Blue screen of death

text: Windows 9x is a community nickname given for Microsoft's line of consumer-oriented operating systems released from 1995 to 2000. The series includes Windows 95, 98, and ME (although the latter OS does not match the naming scheme of the two prior OSes). All Windows 9x operating systems are based on the Windows 95 kernel and MS-DOS, with the MS-DOS portion running versions 7 and 8.


title: Blue screen of death

text: The Windows 9x operating systems used the Blue Screen of Death as the main way for virtual device drivers to report errors to the user. This version of the BSoD, internally referred to as "codice_3", gives the user the option either to restart the computer or to continue using Windows. This behavior is in contrast with the Windows NT versions of the BSoD, which prevents the user from using the computer until it has been powered off or restarted (usually automatic).


title: Blue screen of death

text: The most common BSoD is displayed on an 80×25 text-mode screen, which is the operating system's way of reporting an interrupt caused by a processor exception; it is a more serious form of the general protection fault dialog boxes. The memory address of the error is given and the error type is a hexadecimal number from 00 to 11 (0 to 17 decimal). The error codes are as follows:


title: Blue screen of death

text: In Windows 95 and 98, a BSoD occurs when the system attempts to access the file "codice_4","codice_5",or"codice_6" on the hard drive. This could be inserted on a website to crash visitors' machines as a prank. In reality, however, they are reserved device names for DOS systems. Attempting to access them causes a crash, which in turn brings up said BSoD. On March 16, 2000, Microsoft released a security update to resolve this issue.


title: Blue screen of death

text: One famous instance of a Windows 9x BSoD occurred during a presentation of a Windows 98 beta given by Bill Gates at COMDEX on April 20, 1998: The demo PC crashed with a BSoD when his assistant, Chris Capossela, connected a scanner to the PC to demonstrate Windows 98's support for Plug and Play devices. This event brought thunderous applause from the crowd and Gates replied (after a nervous pause): "That must be why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet."


title: Blue screen of death

text: Stop errors are comparable to kernel panics in macOS, Linux, and other Unix-like systems, and to bugchecks in OpenVMS. Windows 3.1 displays a Black Screen of Death instead of a blue one. Some versions of macOS (notably OS X Lion) also displays a Black Screen of Death as well, usually pointed to a graphics card or sleep/wake issue. Windows 98 displays a red error screen raised by the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) when the host computer's BIOS encounters a problem. The bootloader of the first beta version of Windows Vista also displays a red error screen in the event of a boot failure. The Xbox One has a Green Screen of Death instead of the blue one. In Windows 10, an Orange Screen of Death appears when there is a driver incompatibility present.


title: Blue screen of death

text: As mentioned earlier, the insider builds of Windows Server 2016 and later, Windows 10, and Windows 11 displays a green screen.


title: Julie Delpy

text: Julie Delpy (; born 21 December 1969) is a French-American actress, film director, screenwriter, and singer-songwriter. She studied filmmaking at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, and acted in more than 30 films, including "Europa Europa" (1990), "Voyager" (1991), "" (1993), the "Before" trilogy (1995, 2004, 2013), "An American Werewolf in Paris" (1997), and "2 Days in Paris" (2007).


title: Julie Delpy

text: She has been nominated for three César Awards, two Online Film Critics Society Awards, and two Academy Awards. She moved to the United States in 1990 and became a US citizen in 2001.


title: Julie Delpy

text: Delpy was born in Paris, the only child of Albert Delpy, a Vietnamese-born French actor and theater director, and Marie Pillet, a French actress in feature films and the avant-garde theater. Her mother was also known for signing the 1971 "Manifesto of the 343", signed by women demanding reproductive rights and admitting to having abortions when they were illegal in France. In Delpy's 2007 film "2 Days in Paris", her character's mother was played by her real mother and acknowledges signing the manifesto, mirroring her real life. Pillet died in 2009.


title: Julie Delpy

text: In 1984, at fourteen, Delpy was discovered by film director Jean-Luc Godard, who cast her in "Détective" (1985). Two years later she played the title role in Bertrand Tavernier's "La Passion Béatrice" (1987) and was nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress. She used her money from the film to pay for her first trip to New York City.


title: Julie Delpy

text: Delpy became an international celebrity after starring in the 1990 film "Europa Europa" directed by Agnieszka Holland. In the film, she plays a young pro-Nazi who falls in love with the hero, Solomon Perel, not knowing he is Jewish. She did not speak German, so she performed her role in English and her dialogue was dubbed in.


title: Julie Delpy

text: Delpy subsequently appeared in several Hollywood and European films, including "Voyager" (1991) and "The Three Musketeers" (1993). In 1993, she was cast by director Krzysztof Kieślowski for the female lead in "", the second film in Kieślowski's "Three Colors" Trilogy. She also appeared briefly in the other two films—"" and ""—in the same role. That year, she also appeared with Brendan Fraser and Donald Sutherland in the Percy Adlon feature "Younger and Younger". In 1994, she starred with Eric Stoltz in Roger Avary's directorial debut "Killing Zoe", a cult heist film capturing the Generation X zeitgeist.


title: Julie Delpy

text: She achieved wider recognition for her role opposite Ethan Hawke in director Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" (1995), where she wrote much of her own dialogue. It received glowing reviews and was considered one of the most significant films of the '90s independent film movement. Its success led to Delpy's casting in the 1997 American film "An American Werewolf in Paris".


title: Julie Delpy

text: She reprised her "Before Sunrise" character, Céline, with a brief animated appearance in "Waking Life" (2001), and again in the sequels "Before Sunset" (2004) and "Before Midnight" (2013). The initial follow-up movie earned Delpy, who co-wrote the script, her first Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.


title: Julie Delpy

text: In late 2001, she appeared alongside comedian Martin Short in the 30-minute short film "CinéMagique", a theatre-show attraction presented several times daily at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Paris. She attended the park's March 2002 opening and the inauguration of the film-based attraction, where she starred as Marguerite—a female actress with whom Short's character, George, falls in love as he stumbles through countless classic movies. "CinéMagique" won the 2002 Themed Entertainment Association award for Outstanding Themed Attraction.


title: Julie Delpy

text: In 2009, Delpy starred in "The Countess" as the title character Elizabeth Báthory. Her third film as a director, it also starred Daniel Brühl and William Hurt.


title: Julie Delpy

text: Delpy began being interested in a film-directing career when still a child, and enrolled in a summer directing course at New York University. She wrote and directed the short film "Blah Blah Blah" in 1995 which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2004, she co-wrote "Before Sunset", a sequel to the 1995 movie "Before Sunrise", with director Richard Linklater and co-star Ethan Hawke. Describing the experience, she said, "I'm not a feminist wearing overalls and hating the male gender. But I'm a definite feminist. I don't want to make "Before Sunset" into a little male fantasy, ever." She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for her work on the film.


title: Julie Delpy

text: She made her feature length directorial debut in 2002 with "Looking for Jimmy," which she also wrote and produced. In 2007 she directed, wrote, edited, and co-produced the original score for "2 Days in Paris," co-starring Adam Goldberg. It also features Delpy's real-life parents, Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy, as her character's parents.


title: Julie Delpy

text: In 2011 she wrote and directed "Le Skylab," which received a theatrical release in France but failed to find distribution in the U.S. In 2012 she released "2 Days in New York", a sequel to her 2007 film "2 Days in Paris," starring Delpy and actor Chris Rock in a role she said she wrote specifically for him. In 2013, she reunited with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke to write "Before Midnight", the sequel to "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset". She again starred with Hawke, and the film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. It screened out of competition at the Berlin International Film Festival and was released in May 2013. Delpy, Linklater and Hawke were later nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards. Responding to criticism of the film's nudity, Delpy said in interview with "GQ Magazine":


title: Julie Delpy

text: Some people were like, 'It's not feminist. You're showing your tits and he's not showing his ass.' [But] isn't it the people who are hiding women behind layers of clothes who are the misogynists? I'm a real person, so it's a statement to say, 'Alright, I'm a forty year-old woman, and this is what you get with no plastic surgery.'


title: Julie Delpy

text: "Lolo" was Delpy's second French-language feature film, and the first she'd directed since "2 Days in New York". She was also slated to write and direct the HBO movie "Cancer Vixen", starring Cate Blanchett as Marisa Acocella Marchetto, a cartoonist for "The New Yorker" who is diagnosed with cancer. The project has yet to materialize as of 2020. In early 2014, Delpy announced her next writing-directing project would be "A Dazzling Display of Splendor" and focus on a family of vaudeville performers. It has also failed to enter production as of 2020.


title: Julie Delpy

text: Delpy courted controversy in 2016 when the Oscar nominations included no Black honorees. "Two years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media ... It's funny—women can't talk. I sometimes wish I were African-American because people don't bash them afterward." She later apologized for the comment.


title: Julie Delpy

text: Delpy is also a musical artist. Three tracks from her 2003 album "Julie Delpy"—"A Waltz For A Night," "An Ocean Apart," and "Je t'aime tant"—were featured in "Before Sunset". She composed the original score for "2 Days in Paris" in which she famously performed Marc Collin's "Lalala" over the closing credits. She also wrote the music for her 2009 film "The Countess".


title: Julie Delpy

text: Delpy moved to New York in 1990 and moved to Los Angeles a few years later. She has been a naturalized US citizen since 2001, although she also retains her French citizenship. She divides her time between Paris and Los Angeles. From 2007 to 2012 she was in a relationship with German film composer Marc Streitenfeld. Their son, Leo Streitenfeld, was born in January 2009.


title: Julie Delpy

text: Delpy has expressed her commitment to correcting inaccurate assumptions regarding feminism, telling IndieWire "I'm very dedicated to feminism [but] even if I'm a feminist, I don't think all women are perfect. If we're equal to men, we are also imperfect like men ... [Some men] try to say [feminists] think that women are better than men, and I want to tell them, 'no'." In a 2007 interview with Jan Lisa Huttner, she said, "I was raised by a feminist, so I'm not a feminist. I don't need to be. I’m equal to men. I have no issues with the idea that I'm the same as a man. I have my differences; I have breasts, and different plumbing, different stuff down there. But outside of this, my consciousness, my capacity at creating, my capacity at doing things is the same as a man." However, in a 2012 interview with Emily Greenhouse in "The New Yorker", she said, "You know, I've been raised by feminists, and I'm such a feminist, there's no way I'm not going to be feminist, because my core is so deeply feminist that I can even make sexist comments about women, and I feel still a feminist."


title: Julie Delpy

text: Delpy has said she has been plagued by health problems since childhood and had to wear callipers at age eight. She also occasionally experiences migraines and panic attacks.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego (; born 19 April 1960) is a Colombian economist, politician, and former guerrilla fighter who is the current president of Colombia since 2022. He defeated Rodolfo Hernández Suárez in the second round of the 2022 Colombian presidential election on 19 June. After taking office, Petro was considered by analysts as Colombia's first-ever left-wing president.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: At 17 years of age, Petro became a member of the guerrilla group 19th of April Movement, which later evolved into the M-19 Democratic Alliance, a political party in which he was elected to be a member of the Chamber of Representatives in the 1991 Colombian parliamentary election. He served as a senator as a member of the Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) party following the 2006 Colombian parliamentary election with the second-largest vote. In 2009, he resigned his position to run in the 2010 Colombian presidential election, finishing fourth in the race.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: Due to ideological disagreements with the leaders of the PDA, he founded the Humane Colombia movement to compete for the mayoralty of Bogotá. On 30 October 2011, he was elected mayor in the local elections, a position he assumed on 1 January 2012. In the first round of the 2018 Colombian presidential election, he came second with over 25% of the votes on 27 May, and lost in the run-off election on 17 June.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: Petro was born in Ciénaga de Oro, in the department of Córdoba, in 1960. His great-grandfather, Francesco Petro, migrated from Southern Italy in 1870, which is why he has Italian citizenship. Petro was raised in the Catholic faith and has stated that he has a vision of God from liberation theology, although he also questioned God's existence.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: Seeking a better future, Petro's family decided to migrate to the more prosperous Colombian inland town of Zipaquirá, just north of Bogotá, during the 1970s.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: Petro studied at the Colegio de Hermanos de La Salle, where he founded the student newspaper "Carta al Pueblo" ("Letter to the People").


title: Gustavo Petro

text: Convinced that the guerrilla struggle could change the political and economic system of Colombia, around the age of 17, Petro became a member of the 19th of April Movement (M-19), a Colombian terrorist organization movement that emerged in 1974 in opposition to the National Front coalition after allegations of fraud in the 1970 election. He used the pseudonym of Aureliano, a character in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: With the M-19, he led the seizure of a piece of land to house 400 poor families who had been forcibly displaced by paramilitary groups, and then contributed to the construction of what would become the Bolívar 83 neighborhood. He then went completely underground and became close to Carlos Pizarro, one of the main commanders of the M-19, and insisted with him on the need for a negotiated political solution to the Colombian armed conflict and on the transition to a Constituent Assembly. During his time in 19 April Petro became a leader, and was elected ombudsman of Zipaquirá in 1981 and councilman from 1984 to 1986.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: In 1985, Petro was arrested by the army for the crime of illegal possession of arms. he was tortured for ten days in the stables of the XIII Brigade, then sentenced to 18 months in prison. It was during his incarceration that Petro shifted his ideology, no longer viewing armed resistance as a feasible strategy to gain public backing. In 1987, M-19 engaged in peace talks with the government.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: Petro graduated with a degree in economics from the Universidad Externado de Colombia and began graduate studies at the Escuela Superior de Administración Pública (ESAP). Later, he earned a master's degree in economics from the Universidad Javeriana. He then traveled to Belgium and started his graduate studies in Economy and Human Rights at the Université catholique de Louvain. He also began his studies towards a doctoral degree in public administration from the University of Salamanca in Spain.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: After the demobilization of the M-19 movement, former members of the group (including Petro) formed a political party called the M-19 Democratic Alliance which won a significant number of seats in the Chamber of Representatives in 1991, representing the department of Cundinamarca. In July 1994, he met with Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez, who had just been released from prison for his role in the February 1992 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, for an event on Bolivarian thought at the Simón Rodríguez Cultural Foundation in Bogotá, directed by José Cuesta, Petro's parliamentary assistant.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: In 2002, Petro was elected to the Chamber of Representatives representing Bogotá, this time as a member of the Vía Alterna political movement he founded with former colleague Antonio Navarro Wolff and other former M-19 members. During this period, Petro received 25 votes of 125 consulted representatives to be chosen as the 2006 "Best Congressman", against 24 that held that no representative was worthy of being considered the best because the legislative period was characterized by absenteeism and shortage of sessions.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: As a member of Vía Alterna, Petro created an electoral coalition with the Frente Social y Político to form the Independent Democratic Pole, which fused with the Alternativa Democrática in 2005 to form the Alternative Democratic Pole, joining a large number of leftist political figures.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: In 2006, Petro was elected to the Senate, mobilizing the second highest voter turnout in the country. During that year he also exposed the Parapolitics scandal, accusing members and followers of the government of mingling with paramilitary groups in order to "reclaim" Colombia.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: Senator Petro vehemently opposed the government of Álvaro Uribe. In 2005, while a member of the Chamber of Representatives, Petro denounced the lottery businesswoman Enilse López (also known as ""La Gata"" [the cat]). As of May 2009, she was imprisoned and under investigation for ties to the (now disbanded) paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Petro alleged that the AUC financially contributed to the presidential campaign of Álvaro Uribe in 2002. Uribe refuted these statements by Petro but, during his presidential reelection campaign in 2006, admitted to having received financial support from Enilse López.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: During Álvaro Uribe's second term as president, Petro encouraged debate on the Parapolitics scandal. In February 2007 Petro began a public verbal dispute with President Uribe when Petro suggested that the president should have recused himself from negotiating the demobilization process of paramilitaries in Colombia; this followed accusations that Uribe's brother, Santiago Uribe, was a former member of the Twelve Apostles paramilitary group in the mid-1990s. President Uribe responded by accusing Petro of being a "terrorist in civilian clothing" and by summoning the opposition to an open debate.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: On 17 April 2007, Petro began a debate in Congress about CONVIVIR and the development of paramilitarism in Antioquia Department. During a two-hour speech, he revealed a variety of documents demonstrating the relationship between members of the Colombian military, the current political leadership, narcotraffickers and paramilitary groups. Petro also criticized the actions of Álvaro Uribe as Governor of Antioquia Department during the CONVIVIR years, and presented an old photograph of Álvaro Uribe's brother, Santiago, alongside Colombian drug trafficker Fabio Ochoa Vázquez.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: The Minister of Interior and Justice, Carlos Holguín Sardi and the Minister of Transport, Andrés Uriel Gallego, were asked to defend the president and his government. Both of them questioned Petro's past as a revolutionary member and accused him of "not condemning the warfare of violent people". Most of Petro's arguments were condemned as mud-slinging. The day after this debate the president said "I would have been a great guerrilla because I wouldn't have been a guerrilla of mud, but a guerrilla of rifles. I would have been a military success, not a fake protagonist".


title: Gustavo Petro

text: President Uribe's brother, Santiago Uribe, affirmed that his father and the Ochoa brothers had grown up together and were in the Paso Fino horse business together. He then mentioned that he also had many photographs, taken with many people.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: On 18 April 2007, the Vigilance and Security Superintendency released a communique rejecting Petro's accusations concerning the CONVIVIR groups. The Superintendency said that many of the groups mentioned were authorized by the Departments of Sucre and Córdoba, but not by the Antioquia government; it also added that Álvaro Uribe, then Antioquia's governor, had eliminated the legal liability of eight CONVIVIR groups in 1997. It was also mentioned that the paramilitary leader known as "Julian Bolívar" had not yet been identified as such and was not associated with any CONVIVIR during the authorization of these groups.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: Petro has frequently reported threats against his life and the lives of his family, as well as persecution by government-run security organizations. On 7 May 2007 the Colombian army captured two Colombian Army intelligence non-commissioned officers who had been spying on Petro and his family in the municipality of Tenjo, Cundinamarca. These members had first identified themselves as members of the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) the Colombian Intelligence Agency but their claims were later denied by Andrés Peñate, director of the agency.


title: Gustavo Petro

text: In 2008, Petro announced his interest in a presidential candidacy for 2010. He distanced himself from government policies and, along with Lucho Garzón and Maria Emma Mejia, led a dissenting faction within the Alternative Democratic Pole. Following Garzón's resignation from the party, Petro proposed a "great national accord to end Colombia's war," based on removing organized crime from power, cleaning up the judicial system, land reform, democratic socialism and a security policy differing considerably from the policies of President Uribe. On 27 September 2009, Gustavo Petro defeated Carlos Gaviria in a primary election as the Alternative Democratic Pole candidate for the 2010 presidential election.