Ten million of me, you and IO apps
Ten million of me
The IO app has surpassed 10 million downloads. In fact, today's update marks 10,011,642, 65% of which on the Android platform and 35% on iOS devices. The application developed and managed by PagoPA therefore exceeds a very important goal and certainly not imaginable just a year ago. In 2020, however, the app itself has become a very useful tool for bringing citizens to a digital dimension, becoming the exclusive vehicle of services closely linked to the period of the pandemic.App IO: this is how it reached 10 million downloads
The IO app's race towards 10 million downloads began in June with the announcement of the Holiday Bonuses, which would be obtained exclusively through IO and SPID . Demand then went down until it returned to minimal numbers in November, except to surge again in December with the advent of cashback. In that phase, the Italians actually put the servers to the test with a barrage of downloads and registrations in rapid sequence, literally causing the statistics to surge for a couple of weeks. The curve then returned to rise significantly with the beginning of February, probably following the launch of the Lottery of Receipts.The route is therefore marked by precise and meaningful stages:
The increase is not only formal: starting from December, in fact, the number of daily logins with SPID and CIE has gone from a few thousand per day to an average of 250 thousand precisely by virtue of the actual use of the services provided.
The numbers of the IO app
Altogether along this path the IO app registered with these first 10 million citizens:1,885,802 holiday bonuses paid (760,953 already used) 7,569,994 subscribers to the cashback 220,581,677 transactions processed on 13,440,169 payment instruments activated By proceeding at this rate, within a few days there will be a further symbolic overtaking, i.e. the overcoming of those 10.3 million downloads that registered the Immuni app. There is no connection between the two, they have different functions, but in some ways they represented the Yin and Yang of the digital response to the pandemic. At the end of this year, Immuni is substantially out of the game despite a lot of potential, while the IO app comes out strongly strengthened although the potential was already in place well before the pandemic.
The shuffling of the cards gave to IO a special impetus, which will now have to be followed in the further multiplication of services and in the increase of the participating public administrations: Lottery and Cashback will be able to retain users for a few months, but in the meantime the country will have to demonstrate that it knows how to make a difference by loading this tool is useful so that 10 million are not an empty point of arrival, but a rich starting point.
How to download the IO app
The IO app can be used on both Android and iOS and is completely free:download IO for Android download IO for iOS Access to the app can be done either by using the Public Digital Identity System ( SPID), and the Electronic Identity Card (CIE).
Billionaire investor Bill Gross made $10 million betting against GameStop - after he was down $15 million at one point
© REUTERS/Jim Young Bill Gross. REUTERS/Jim YoungBillionaire investor Bill Gross made an ill-timed bet against GameStop in January that left him down as much as $15 million at one point. However, he held on until the video-game retailer's stock plunged, and walked away with about $10 million.
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Gross, who cofounded Pimco and ran its flagship Total Return fund, now manages money for his family and foundation. He used options to wager that GameStop's stock price would fall, he said on the Citywire Selector podcast this week.
'I knew I had an advantage over Reddit and the boys,' Gross said, highlighting his access to real-time options and volatility data on his Bloomberg terminal. However, he opened a bearish position on GameStop well before its shares peaked at north of $480 on January 28, and paid the price.
'I got in too early,' he said. 'I got short around $150 or $100 and at a decent size. I was losing millions of dollars and that's not a good feeling when you go to bed.'
'Matter of fact, you wake up three or four times in the middle of the night and you check out GameStop on the black market,' he continued.
While Gross admires Tesla CEO Elon Musk and views him as a 'modern Thomas Edison,' he didn't enjoy it when the executive tweeted 'GameStonk!!' on January 26, throwing his weight behind the short squeeze.
'Musk is a little devil and he enjoys playing these games,' Gross said. 'He's just a frisky guy and so I didn't resent that, but it doubled the stock and that's when I lost the most sleep - it was after Musk did that.'
'He probably should have known better, because that's close to yelling 'fire' in the theater,' the investor added.
Gross thought about giving up and stomaching a loss, but he was confident that some of the day traders driving up the stock wouldn't be able to resist cashing out.
'I'm not regulated here like some of the hedge funds, and my broker's not calling me for margin and so on,' he said. 'At $400 I said, 'Hell no,' and so I doubled up to catch up, which was for me a very ballsy move.'
Gross also analyzed the volatility of GameStop stock and determined that he was almost certain to come out ahead.
'It was one of those slam-dunk moments where yes, you could lose money, yes it could go to $1,000, but the volatility was priced so high that it was really hard to lose,' he said.
'Risk-reward, it became one of those 'you're the casino,'' Gross continued. 'That's when I doubled up, I sold more calls, and basically got out. I made a lot of money, maybe $10 million. But I was down $10 million and maybe down $15 million.'
Gross felt vindicated that his assessments of the human nature and herd psychology at play, as well as the swings in the stock, were correct.
'It was a nice, intellectual, non-emotional moment for me in which I correctly analyzed the social aspects and the fact that people would turn on the group and sell before others thought they were gonna sell, and the volatility being so high priced that it was really hard to win,' he said.
Regardless, Gross gave kudos to the Wall Street Bets community for their ingenuity.
'Their strategy to attack and squeeze shorts, certainly with GameStop, was a good one,' he said. 'I was really not expecting the stock to go through $10, $20, $30, $40, $100, $200, $300, $400 within the space of a few days.'
However, the astounding stock rally was never going to last, he said in a research note on February 2. 'Even without regulatory action, the plan was doomed from the beginning,' he wrote.
Gross described the investors who bought options with 750% daily volatility as 'fish at the poker table' in an earlier research note. He added that a 'musical chair, me-first exit' from GameStop was inevitable and the price was bound to return to normal levels.
