Twitter is the one game Cohen can’t win
Going on Twitter is like going out after midnight.
Nothing good ever happens.
Before the crazy stock market events of the past week, Steve Cohen of Greenwich was worth $14.5 billion — more than the next three MLB owners combined. Yet all the hedgefund money in the world can’t buy respect, factual accuracy or even basic human dignity on the social media app.
So after tangling over GameStop stock with Barstool
Sports founder Dave Portnoy, the baddest man on the social media planet, the Mets owner deleted his Twitter account Friday. Cohen resurfaced Saturday with a statement:
“I’ve really enjoyed the back and forth with Mets fans on Twitter which was unfortunately overtaken by misinformation unrelated to the Mets that led our family getting personal threats. So I’m going to take a break for now.
“We have other ways to listen to your suggestions and remain committed to doing that. I love our team, this community, our fans, who are the best in baseball. Bottom line is this week’s events in no way affect our resources and drive to put a championship team on the field.”
Cohen’s break from Twitter? If he’s wise, that ought to last the rest of his tenure as Mets owner.
Cohen had two indisputable things going for him when his $2.4 billion purchase of the club was approved 26-4 by MLB owners in late October: 1). He grew up a diehard Mets fan on Long Island. 2). His name isn’t Wilpon.
His introductory news conference was a success. He said he wasn’t in this to be mediocre. He wanted
something great. New York fans have high expectations and he wanted to exceed them. The Mets are a majormarket team and would have a commensurate budget. He was in this for the fans and would be disappointed if the Mets didn’t win a World Series within five years.
Mets fans took to calling him Uncle Steve and enjoyed their interchanges. He listened to their ideas. He explained the team’s moves, demonstrated a sharp wit. No, they didn’t land George Springer, but they signed catcher James McCann, upgraded their bullpen with Trevor May and — boom — acquired shortstop Francisco Lindor, one of the best all-around players in baseball, and starter Carlos Carrasco.
Still, these are the Mets and Mets things happen. Only weeks after Jared Porter was hired as GM, a report surfaced he had sent explicit texts and photos to a female reporter while he was with the Cubs in 2016. The Mets hadn’t discovered this in the interview process, but Cohen did fire Porter the next morning after he admitted the truth. Cohen’s tweet: “In my initial press conference I spoke about the importance of integrity and I meant it. There should be zero tolerance for this type of behavior.” Cohen emerged as decisive.
Still, there is no race harder and longer than trying to outdistance the past. In one of the largest criminal cases involving insider trading, Cohen’s former hedge fund firm pleaded guilty to securities and wire fraud in 2013 and paid $1.8 billion in fines. Cohen was banned from managing others’ money for two years.
No one is going to put hedge fund managers on a list with Mother Teresa, but Cohen paid his legal debt. That’s not good enough in the social media world. You never stop paying. Lives and reputations are dissected through any lens, often rejected and spat upon by the famous, infamous and usually anonymous.
A tidal wave of novice day traders, mobilized notably on Reddit’s WallStreetBets, put just about everything into video game retailer GameStop, AMC and few other struggling companies. Portnoy was among them. That has sent the share prices skyrocketing and inflicted huge losses on the hedge funds that had bets those stocks would plummet.
Since 2008, the amount of sympathy for hedge funds probably could fit into a thimble. Yet let’s be fair. The rising level of millions of amateur stock investors
are not so different than those who buy lottery tickets and gamble at the casino. Get-rich schemers come in all shapes and sizes. As one analyst put it, what is happening isn’t so different from Occupy Wall Street, except millions have tools to do something about it.
Cohen’s company Point72 has invested in Melvin Capital Management, a hedge fund that had heavily placed bets against GameStop. Run by Cohen’s former protégé Gabe Plotkin, Melvin closed out its short position in the stock after taking a huge loss. Ken Griffin’s Citadel, which executes trade orders for the trading app Robinhood, and Point72 infused $2.75 billion into the hedge fund to shore up its finances.
On Thursday, Robinhood put restrictions on GameStop, allowing selling but not buying. This led to condemnations from everyone from Elon Musk to AOC to Ted Cruz. Citadel’s deal with Robinhood already is a concern on Wall Street over special market insight. Citadel insists its marketmaking securities and hedge fund trading businesses are separate and had nothing to do with Robinhood’s trading restrictions, which were partially lifted Friday.
“PRISON TIME,” Portnoy tweeted. “Dems and Republicans haven’t agreed on 1 issue till this. That’s how blatant, illegal, unfathomable today’s events are. It also shows how untouchable @RobinhoodApp @StevenACohen2C Citadel Point72 all think they are. Fines aren’t enough. Prison or bust”
“Hey Dave,” Cohen tweeted. “What’s your beef with me. I’m just trying to make a living just like you. Happy to take this offline.”
“I don’t do offline. That’s where shady (crap) happens,” Portnoy tweeted. “I think you had strong hand in today’s criminal events to save hedge funds at the cost of ordinary people. You bailed out Melvin cause he’s your boy along with Citadel.”
“What are you talking about? I unequivocally deny that accusation,” Cohen answered. “I had zero to do with what happened today.”
The two finally agreed what transpired should be examined. “I want lie detectors everywhere,” Cohen tweeted. In interviews afterward, Portnoy said while Cohen denied it to him, he’d wager that if a full investigation were done, with subpoenas, telephone conversations, etc., you’d find out he was involved.
Portnoy did tweet Saturday that only idiots would threaten families and children.
People either love or hate Portnoy. As a sports columnist, he is the person I most fear. Portnoy can take any criticism of him or
Barstool Sports, from perceived slight to a stinging rebuke, and turn it into the Crusades. His employed minions can be vicious. His followers, mostly young men known as “Stoolies,” can be frightening. Portnoy never pleads guilty to misogyny or sexism, only to humor. Having said that, I laud him for all the money he has donated to save small businesses during the pandemic, and love the pizza reviews.
He puts up photos and videos of himself lounging at expensive vacation spots, bragging about his money, and his Stoolies don’t express jealousy of a lifestyle few of them will ever know. They exalt him. He’s like Trump in that way.
Could he inspire an insurrection to the Capitol?
The better question is could he inspire a big rally outside CitiField? Absolutely.
Portnoy wasn’t the only celebrity to go after Cohen. On Friday morning, WFAN host Boomer Esiason expressed disdain for the billionaire for tweeting he was just trying to make a living. He said he hated the way Cohen taunted individual investors with “Hey stock jockeys, keep bringing it.” He told Cohen to shut up.
“I swear to God, I’m not going to go to another Met game until I find out exactly what’s going on here,” Esiason said.
KFC, one of Barstool’s main guys and a Mets fanatic, had a different take than his boss on Twitter: “Steve Cohen gave his dumb friend a bunch of money to save him. That’s it. He doesn’t run Robinhood. He didn’t lead the charge to short GameStop and AMC. He didn’t halt trading.
“And if he did do anything wrong … good luck getting the charges to stick. My guy is Teflon. He’s Bobby Axelrod (from the Showtime series ‘Billions’). Beat the most serious case in SEC history, and you think he’s worried about the Robinhood jamokes and the Twitter mob?”
Portnoy later tweeted what drives him nuts is that all these guys will end up at some secret country club laughing at the rest of the world. That doesn’t mean Portnoy doesn’t have the power of his massive ultraloyal following and can’t cause damage and make people’s lives miserable. On Fox Business, he said he put $2 million into these various stocks, yet was willing to lose it all and use it as motivation to bring down Robinhood.
“Hate inspires me,” Portnoy said. “Spite inspires me.”
And that’s exactly why billionaire baseball owners should stay off Twitter.