Zero hedge who is

Mark B. Born in Soviet-era Bulgaria, Ivandjiiski was something of a wunderkind. He spoke multiple languages, was a virtuoso pianist, and emigrated to the U. He changed his mind after graduation in , when he realized how much money he could make on Wall Street. He resigned his job at a hedge fund and, in early , Zero Hedge was launched.

Over the years, the site—and its audience—began to evolve. The audience grew rapidly over the next few years, with a single post about whiny millennials reaching 9. It was around this time that hateful, toxic views began to pollute the comments section. What Zero Hedge became, in essence, was a forum for the hateful, conspiracy-driven voices of the angry white men of the alt-right.

Racists, anti-Semites, extreme right-wingers, and conspiracy nuts were an underserved audience, and, as it turns out, a profitable one. The synergy between Zero Hedge and the Trump era was made clear last year when Facebook temporarily banned the site. I asked the former employee what this was all about. In his list of demands on the final page, he said I was to hand over the names of the people with which he believed I was conspiring.

The purported object of this conspiracy was a divorce case in Bergen County, New Jersey, that I had not previously known about, brought by a plaintiff I have never met or spoken to, who turned out to be his estranged daughter-in-law. The couple are battling over custody of their one child, alimony, and child support.

But it suggested it later learned Twitter had received a complaint from online news website BuzzFeed over a separate article. BuzzFeed did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The public felt like bungled calls were par for the course in financial news. They did, of course: Roush rightly points out that there were dozens of stories that warned investors and consumers that there was a housing bubble ready to burst. Meanwhile, online news readership eclipsed newspapers for the first time, according to a late study from the Pew Research Center.

In other words, the kindling for a renegade blog like Zero Hedge was piled high. All it needed was a match. But Zero Hedge swiftly gained traction, beginning with a series of stories on Goldman Sachs claiming that the bank had used high-frequency trading to profit through the New York Stock Exchange, reporting by New York Magazine shows. In July of that year, an ex—Goldman Sachs computer programmer had been arrested for stealing computer code from the company.

Soon after, Senator Chuck Schumer called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate high-frequency trading. The regulator complied. This, in and of itself, encapsulates the Zero Hedge viewpoint. Oft described as a permabear, the site regularly heralds a doom-and-gloom narrative.

Recent headlines include:. To be fair, has been. On Wednesday morning, Google said The Federalist had removed the comments that violated its policies and that it would take no further action. Google notified ZeroHedge of the policy violations last week and banned the website from its ad platform.

Google's ban comes after the company was notified of research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British nonprofit that combats online hate and misinformation. They found that 10 U. S-based websites have published what they say are racist articles about the protests, and projected that the websites would make millions of dollars through Google Ads. ZeroHedge and The Federalist did not respond to requests for comment.

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said it found advertisements for many companies that had otherwise made public statements supporting Black Lives Matter and the recent protests running on the websites.