What Is Juneteenth? [The Root]When Texas fell and Granger dispatched his now famous order No. 3, it wasn't exactly instant magic for most of the Lone Star State's 250,000 slaves. On plantations, masters had to decide when and how to announce the news — or wait for a government agent to arrive — and it was not uncommon for them to delay until after the harvest. Even in Galveston city, the ex-Confederate mayor flouted the Army by forcing the freed people back to work…. Hardly the recipe for a celebration — which is what makes the story of Juneteenth all the more remarkable. Defying confusion and delay, terror and violence, the newly "freed" black men and women of Texas, with the aid of the Freedmen's Bureau (itself delayed from arriving until September 1865), now had a date to rally around. In one of the most inspiring grassroots efforts of the post-Civil War period, they transformed June 19 from a day of unheeded military orders into their own annual rite, "Juneteenth,"...

"A lot of uncertainty and a lot of fear could lead to a lack of caution," [Fox Rothschild partner Jon] Heyl said. "We know that fraudsters seek to capitalise on times of chaos ... it's just a function of when there are losses. As we have seen from past crises, plaintiffs' attorneys will get creative and try to recover those in any manner they can…."

"People will use the crisis as an excuse to try to renege on contracts" [Enyo Law business intelligence director Paul] Austin added. "As well as the contractual claims, you'll have fraud claims since during the bad times fraud gets uncovered. You might also see a surge in criminal claims as a result of Covid-related fraud…."

"During periods in which global markets experience large movement upward or downward, regulators become more sensitive to perpetrators engaging in intentional and unintentional fraud or breaches of federal securities laws," [former SEC enforcement lawyer Ron Geffner] said.

“This is a classic case of buyer’s remorse,” Taubman said in a court filing Wednesday, in response to Simon’s lawsuit to break the deal. Taubman has asked for an expedited hearing to prevent Simon’s attempt to “run out the clock” on the transaction, which would cause “irreparable harm” to its shareholders…. The agreement was signed on Feb. 9, when Simon knew “full well that there was a pandemic raging in the world,” Taubman said….

Taubman would require a speedy hearing, given that the deal is scheduled to close on June 30 following shareholder approval at a special meeting of Taubman’s shareholders set on June 25.

A battle is brewing over the property, which the U.S. Department of Justice is selling after seizing it as part of a civil forfeiture action related to the Malaysian 1MDB corruption scandal. In an effort to block the sale from going through at such a low price, the Walker Tower condo board plans to exercise its right of first refusal, buying the condo itself for the same sum, then relisting it for more.

“The Pilot Program emanates from an aimless ‘one-off’ regulation, i.e., a rule that imposes significant, costly, and disparate regulatory requirements on affected parties merely to allow the Commission to collect data to determine whether there might be a problem worthy of regulation,” the court said.

The pilot program, which was recommended by an SEC-appointed committee of market experts as well as the U.S. Treasury, would have tested banning rebates for certain stocks and lowering exchange transaction fees for others.

Americans Skip Millions of Loan Payments as Coronavirus Takes Economic Toll [WSJ]The number of accounts that enrolled in deferment, forbearance or some other type of relief since March 1 and remain in such a state rose to 106 million at the end of May, triple the number at the end of April, according to credit-reporting firm TransUnion…. The surge in missed payments suggests that the flood of layoffs related to the coronavirus has left many Americans without the means to keep up with their debts. Many people have used up their stimulus checks, and unemployment benefits in high-cost areas aren’t enough to replace paychecks or to help debt-laden borrowers pay down their bills.

She believes she was fired because she pushed too hard to get senior executives in that division to embrace her plan to restructure a program for training black financial advisers. She thought the restructuring would help more recruits succeed….

“My story is the same story as those of many black people on Wall Street,” she said in an interview. “Our fate has been tied to the goodness of whatever white person is in charge. That is no way to have a career…..”

“Morgan Stanley made $41 billion last year — that’s a drop in the bucket, it’s not even a rounding error,” Ms. Booker said of Mr. Gorman’s $25 million pledge. “People have to put these things in context. If there’s a real business initiative that they’re focused on, he’d put more than six basis points into it.”

Before the world was struck by a pandemic and engulfed in a globally inept response thereto, lots of banks were laying off lots of people for lots of reasons. Well, two reasons, really: because they could, or because they had to. And no one had a greater need to lay off more people than everyone else than HSBC, which announced that it would part ways with 35,000 people just as the disease began to spread aggressively beyond China. Those people got a brief reprieve so HSBC could avoid looking even worse by casting tens of thousands of people into the plague-ridden streets and the worst global economy in almost a century, even though they are bankers.

The Financial Conduct Authority has handed German lender Commerzbank’s London branch a £37,805,400 fine for failing to enforce proper anti-money laundering controls…. The fine relates to a five year period from October 2012 to September 2017, during which the FCA published guidance on how firms could step up their efforts to tackle money laundering.

The I.P.O. Comes Roaring Back in the Pandemic [NYT]As the market has bounced back, SelectQuote, an online insurance provider; ZoomInfo, a sales software data provider; Warner Music Group, a record label; and Vroom have gone public…. Some of the biggest Silicon Valley start-ups are taking steps toward an I.P.O., too. Airbnb, the home rental start-up valued at $31 billion, said it hadn’t ruled out going public this year. Palantir, a digital surveillance company valued at $20 billion, is preparing to file for an I.P.O. in the coming weeks, said a person briefed on the start-up’s plans, who declined to be named because the talks were private….Wall Street is embracing them even though many of the companies are losing money. Vroom lost $143 million last year on $1.2 billion in revenue, according to its disclosures. The food delivery start-up DoorDash, which filed in February to go public and has seen increased use in the pandemic, has also burned through hundreds of millions in cash...

Renaissance Technologies, the quantitative hedge fund firm founded by Jim Simons, lost almost 21% this year through the first week of June in its market-neutral vehicle…. The Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund, which only trades U.S.-listed stocks that its computer models expect to rise, was down 11% this year through May.

But the sincerest form of flattery doesn’t end with those ripped from the headlines. Hedge fund performance coach Denise Shull is convinced that she’s the inspiration for Wendy Rhoades, Chuck’s wife and Axe Capital’s performance coach—and she doesn’t consider it flattering at all, going so far to sue the show for copyright infringement, the copyright in question being herself. That went nowhere, and now Shull says Andrew Ross Sorkin & co. are rubbing her face in it by dressing Rhoades in her wardrobe.

“Although we cannot predict how our common stock will be treated under a plan, we expect that common stock holders would not receive a recovery through any plan unless the holders of more senior claims and interests, such as secured and unsecured indebtedness (which is currently trading at a significant discount), are paid in full, which would require a significant and rapid and currently unanticipated improvement in business conditions to pre-COVID-19 or close to pre-COVID-19 levels.”

Tirschwell said her former boss Jess Ravich, who led TCW’s alternative products group, had coerced her into having sex in return for advancing her career.

Tirscwhell said Ravich made “unwanted” sexual advances in breakfast meetings, where she said he often wore a bathrobe, and that she was “fearful” of refusing to comply, citing threats to deprive her of resources for her fund.

The New York Mets are no strangers to losing, and even arguably to losing on purpose. But they are the Mets, and so they can’t even tank as well as anyone else, even in their own division.

Now, the Philadelphia 76ers: They know how to lose in style, and even to brand it. As part of former General Manager Sam Hinkie’s “Process,” which was to be trusted under all circumstances, the Sixers won 47 games over a three-year period, including a masterpiece 10-win season—and lost 199, all in the name of stockpiling draft picks that have allowed the team to make the playoffs in each of the past two seasons and lose in the second round.

Andrew Hauser, the BOE’s executive director of markets, said on Thursday that hedge-fund trading strategies in U.S. government debt morphed into “stress amplifiers” in March, when fund managers raced to meet rising margin calls….

“Initially these trades were conducted quietly. But as time went on, their speed and size –- running to hundreds of billions of dollars –- began to overwhelm dealers,” Hauser said at an event hosted by Bloomberg. Hauser called this development a “classic doom loop.”

Investors Are Sitting on the Biggest Pile of Cash Ever [WSJ]Assets in [money-market] funds recently swelled to about $4.6 trillion, the highest level on record, according to data from Refinitiv Lipper going back to 1992…. Other measures, like bank deposits, are also at a high….Overall stock positioning among investors remains among the lowest levels of the past decade, according to data from Deutsche Bank. New individual investors jumped into the stock market during the recent selloff, while bigger institutional investors only recently started adding to stock positions….“Everyone can see and feel that this is different and can sense the bizarre nature of the market response: we are in the top 10% of historical price earnings ratio for the S&P on prior earnings and simultaneously are in the worst 10% of economic situations,” Mr. Grantham wrote in his letter to investors.

U.S. securities regulators… are looking at whether Mr. Bass’s relentless criticism of UDF—including his allegations of widespread undisclosed problems in its loan portfolio—conveyed false or misleading statements that amounted to market manipulation….

In a letter on a Hayman-sponsored website, “UDFExposed,” Mr. Bass in 2016 accused executives of using newer investor money from UDF IV to pay dividends to shareholders in UDF III.

But Mr. Bass, on that website and elsewhere, also detailed what he saw as possible regulatory violations by UDF that never showed up in the SEC case. For instance, Hayman accused UDF’s managers of engaging in transactions with a large borrower that weren’t “arm’s-length” and said a separate UDF-affiliated REIT made loans to companies controlled by the UDF executives, then failed to properly value those loans when they weren’t repaid….

Ms. Velikonja, of Georgetown, said a market-manipulation case against Hayman and Mr. Bass would have to...

Well, they were on to something. What’s more, it wasn’t only day-trader boredom driving things. Gambling, as you may have heard, is pretty addictive, and one of the main things people gamble on—sports—is not happening right now. Some of those people—quite a lot, in fact—have apparently heard the old saw that investing in stocks is simply gambling, and taken that as an invitation rather than a warning.

The World’s Best-Performing Big Lender? Deutsche Bank [WSJ]The German bank’s shares have risen 19% this year, albeit from a low base, compared with a benchmark index of European bank stocks that has fallen 35%. That is good enough to handily outstrip the share performance of big profitable U.S. banks like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc…. It still has a lower price-to-book ratio than many of its competitors and its litany of problems have included an inability to make money and curb spending and legal troubles in Europe and the U.S.

The Dallas-based founder of Hayman Capital Management is starting a new fund that will make all-or-nothing wagers on a collapse in Hong Kong’s currency peg…. Bass… will use option contracts to leverage the new fund’s assets by 200 times, the people said….

Bass told prospective investors that the Hayman Hong Kong Opportunities Fund, LP-Prodigious Series was due to launch on June 1 and could see a 64-fold return if the currency declines by 40%

Lawyers for the bank have asked Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to review demands by some federal prosecutors that Goldman pay more than $2 billion in fines and plead guilty to a felony charge, according to three people briefed on the matter…. The request, which was made several weeks ago, is not unusual for a high-profile corporate investigation and often comes in the final stage of settlement talks. But it has been a point of pride for Goldman that it has never had to admit guilt in a federal investigation.

HC2 Holdings, Inc…. announced today its Board of Directors has appointed Wayne Barr, Jr. as interim Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Barr succeeds Philip A. Falcone, effective immediately…. “At the same time, we also want to thank Phil for his contributions to HC2,” added Mr. Glazer. “Phil helped build HC2 over the past six years, acquiring undervalued assets and growing them under the HC2 umbrella. He has set the stage for HC2 to succeed in its next chapter. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”

U.S. Stock Futures Rally Following Sharp Selloff [WSJ]Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 2%, suggesting that the blue-chips index will recover some of its losses from Thursday’s 6.9% tumble. The pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 climbed 1%.... “We can’t discount the fact that there is a lot of money sitting on the sidelines,” said Brian O’Reilly, head of market strategy for Mediolanum International Funds. “It’s a trading market at the moment—more than a long-term fundamentals market—so on any setback like yesterday, you’re likely to see people come in and bid the market higher.”

You might almost be brought to a modicum of sympathy for hedge fund managers in these difficult days, at least if you don’t know any. Bonuses are down (a bit), returns are down (some places), there are no women around to (allegedly) objectify and worse, other than your wife, and what’s the fun in that? Even if you are going back to the office, it’s going to be depressing. Even for this least sympathetic group, a modicum of compassion might rise up in your breast because you, unlike many of them, have the capacity for empathy.