@Kyeh I only wish I’d bought in. All of that investment shit makes me nervous as fuck and, frankly, what’s insane is that folks have to play those fucking games just for the privilege of living past their exploitable labor potential and/or securing a few years of non-cog-in-the-machine joy. I do have something of a retirement coming and chose and stayed with my current job in part for that aspect.
Also fuck Wall Street and all of those arrogant fucks who add little actual value to society.
@joelmw I agree; it’s disgusting that people who do nothing more than sit on their asses and play with other people’s money can make or break a company and destroy someone else’s livelihood or retirement.
WSB takes notice that GME is extremely shorted. In other words, the Wall St. hedge fund managers were betting that they will drop even more in share value so they can sell high (at a predetermined time) while buying low.
Private investors follow WSB to buy up the outstanding shares.
The hedge funds that were expecting to buy low and sell higher are now facing private investors that are NOT selling. Supply and demand means the price goes up – and they need that supply, because the hedge funds that bet on it exceeds 100% of the outstanding shares.
???
Profit. u/deepfuckingvalue’s $50k is worth $48 million as of 15 minutes ago.
Bask in the glory that the small investors were able to give a giant middle finger to the “investors” who wanted a company to fail so they could extract even more money for themselves. The gains by the small investors are from the cost differences incurred by the hedge funds that bet on the said stock.
@LordSalem@narfcake obviously know way more about the stock market than me. But I would like to point out that their entry in about the community is
Like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal
They are up to 3.4 million degenrates following them.
I first got hooked when they found a bug in Robinhood’s system- a site where day traders buy stock. Instead of borrowing 100% of the actual cash you put in the system let you borrow whatever you wanted. Hijinks ensued.
They claim that the information CNBC gave out last night about the hedge funds closing out their positions was fradulent. And that hedge fund people are spamming their site trying to get everyone to sell.
Also one guy cashed out and paid $25,000 in college loans and another turned $97 into $4000 for his dog’s knee surgery. It’s a fascinating read.
And that hedge fund people are spamming their site trying to get everyone to sell.
@LordSalem@sammydog01 Desperation. A few days ago, one of the hedge funds took on 2.75 billion in funding to help cover their potential impending losses.
I looked through the options chain for GME and there are at least 200,000 options expiring on 1/29 that are easily ITM ($200 or less). All of those calls will be exercised on Friday resulting in 20,000,000 shares of the stock needing to be purchased. The stock is going to rocket higher and harder than your wife’s boyfriend when she let him do anal for the first time.
I love those guys and will be watching the stock ticker on my computer like a Wootoff.
@RiotDemon we all should’ve bought last week.
Can still buy in now, all should be holding until Friday at least and most claiming they will hold until it hits $1,000 minimum.
@sammydog01@Ignorant stocks is not a thing I do. I buy shares from work because I get it discounted but all these other things I just don’t get. I need someone to give me a cheap stock that I can dump a small amount of money in.
@Ignorant@RiotDemon Right now it’s kind of like a Ponzi scheme and the question is are you early enough to make a profit or late enough to lose everything.
I’m sure the guys at WSB have some cheap stocks you can play with. They’re pushing BlackBerry and AMC. I’m afraid to start because I might get hooked.
For “sensible investing” for us “little people”, Warren Buffet recommends index funds. They have done better historically, than most published trading schemes or “expert” recommends; esp after transaction costs are figured in.
Not sensible at all. : ). Lots of foolish choices at decision points, lots of reality-subversion.
Yeah, this Reddit topic, at the moment, seems to be more about the supposed pleasure of following out a classic “Crazy Theory” or “Big Dare” to the (perhaps very painful) ultimate possibility or scenario.
I hope any small fry who wind up w losses can afford those.
@f00l@Ignorant@Limewater@RiotDemon From what I see a lot of the WSB guys are playing the stock market for fun and have enough money to do it. But they’re taking a lot of people who can’t afford it down with them.
Hmmmm. Timing of this ban seems … awfully coincidental??? @sammydog01, was there a lot of hatespeech that you noticed? I just don’t believe that it has nothing to do with with the Gamestop stuff going on!
@Kyeh Like most of reddit, I lurk (via a VPN), and no, I didn’t see a lot of hate but I know the mods have a very tough time. They gained well over a million subscribers to the subreddit in just the past week and given the high stakes involved, Wall Street paying some folks somewhere to do a lot of dirty work wouldn’t surprise me any bit.
@Kyeh@narfcake It’s back. Looks like their discord got banned and the mods took down the subreddit just in case. If you haven’t been there they use a lot of socially unacceptable language daily. I don’t know if it was that or the new people.
@narfcake@sammydog01 Well, I bet those hedgefunders got it shut down to try to save themselves. I’m delighted that they got screwed on these short squeezes; I hate the way these people manipulate the market to destroy struggling companies.
It would be beyond cool if reddit or another open forum powered a permanent contest between a few wall street assholes and main street folks just trying to pay for their kids’ educations.
Investing has always been only marginally about any “invisible hand”. It’s about superstitions, inside info, educated hunches, emotionally driven irrationality, insider access to front-running trades, game theory, personal animus, and who knows what else;
and investing success has a lot to do with permanently unequal access to capital, info resources, and investing tech.
I have nothing against “masters of the universe” financial types when their investments power communities, education, and job/industry/innovation growth.
Otherwise, these “better than us” types seem to be, potentially, nice trophies, if the reddit folk can bag a few.
@IamPhenomenal Someone help! I bought it all on margin! I put my entire IRA into it and borrowed the maximum amount they’d let me, and now my account is showing -$992,863! They won’t stop calling! Please help!
@RiotDemon Ha, that is so funny. I could understand a price difference if you were comparing two different retail outlets but those are from the same place. No excuse for that.
@cengland0@f00l@RiotDemon No dis, Musk has his quirks, but I love what SpaceX is doing. “Flight proven” is their preferred term for used rockets, and it’s hard to argue that when a single rocket has made 8 flights, and they’ve got the turnaround time down to 27 days. It used to be 4 months, not 4 weeks.
And the explosions are (mostly) part of the plan. Starship is still in very early development, so the RUD events with SN8 & SN9 are unfortunate, but not catastrophic. Nobody has ever done that belly flop braking maneuver before, so it’s not surprising they’re learning a few things the hard way.
When I wanted to buy a Nintento Switch last month, Gamestop was the only place that had them both in stock and for sale at the list price. Go Gamestop!
@narfcake Yeah, they originally reported that Ameritrade locked people out too but they just added some restrictions on margins and shorting. WAIT, THE PEOPLE ON REDDIT MISLED ME?
The deeper issue is that they are operating as a brokerage and they are required to honor the investor’s requests. The execution doesn’t have to happen instantaneously, but it still has to happen. This could really run afoul of the SEC.
(I have noticed discussion about a class action lawsuit too.)
@f00l@narfcake Robinhood makes their money from hedge funds like Citadel, and Citadel told them to stop selling GME. Because Citadel is holding a ton of GME shorts. That’s what I read anyway. I expect there will be an investigation.
After the dust settles the bigger hedge funds will still win, the ones that started this might get bailed out, but even if they collapse it won’t move the needle much on the global scale.
the vast majority of average joes will lose money in this, those stories of paying off student loans etc will be outnumbered by millions of people who lost out.
@username Probably in the grand scheme of things, but it’ll make them take notice about not betting on a company dying so they can profit off the misfortune.
The thing about GME is that these HFs oversold the stock to 140% of the outstanding shares (aka the shares not restricted for trading). In order to fulfill their obligations, they’d have to buy up the outstanding shares, fulfill a group of clients, then buy those shares back to fulfill another group of clients.
“Oh, you’re laughing at the hedge fund that got juked by reddit? Well they’re bankrupt now. Are you laughing now? Is it funny now that a bunch of MBAs are out of a job? Can you laugh knowing they’re explaining to their investors that they were outmaneuvered by POTATO_IN_MY_ASS?”
I have no idea what I’m doing, and fear I’m late to the GME party, so I put $200 into AMC and $100 into NOK - I don’t expect to make millions, but won’t be devastated if I lose the $300
There was also Twitter speculation by someone in the senate who is on the committee that looks into this kind of thing (a D, with agreement by a R) that they might need to investigate manipulation of the stock market by the individual investors, but that also they may need to investigate why institutional investors were allowed to keep trading and yet the individual ones on several platforms were cut off briefly as that isn’t allowed unless one can prove stock market manipulation.
In the end likely this will not end well for a number of individuals and a few of the institutional folks selling short. And, as research shows over and over it is not possible to time the market in any reliable way.
Paying for trade info flow, thus allowing that info collector to profit from the spread of every trade, had an early champion in felon-for-eternity Bernie Madoff.
@f00l The problem with Public.com is that they use Apex Clearing for their back-end, same as M1 Finance and Stash, et al. Apex Clearing had joined the “protect hedge funds” club and stopped stock purchases (but not sells).
Looks like the squeeze is on silver now. As in the commodity. Which has been manipulated by the Hunt brothers like DeBeers manipulates the diamond market.
The Hunt Bros tried to commoditize silver, and failed.
What I heard from someone who knew them, was that the Hunts just had no idea how much (for instance, a lot) of silver was in people’s attics and pantrys.
Right now the “expert talk” about the future is almost certainly 99% blather. No one fucking knows.
Altho these experts might be onto some insight or other into some portion of what might happen.
That’s the thing about complex markets during periods of volatility. They’re always way more complex and elusive than the quants and the experts analysts think they are.
@f00l That is why I labeled it speculation. What I don’t want to see is the value of good companies damaged by these hijinks. There is actual real collateral damage that potentially could be done.
With luck (not counting on that at all) perhaps the powers that be will take a better look at how all this operates and fix problems.
PS and of course the market is really disconnected from the state of the economy right now which, in my opinion, can potentially cause some real problems too.
Yeah I don’t like seeing good companies damaged by stock market garbage conduct;
or good companies are sacked and burned when controlling invesments are made by restructuring companies who intend to strip the company of assets and employees, leverage it to the hilt, and then sell off the carcass as tho the restructuring somehow “helped”.
But this happens all the time.
And front-running trades in order to grab the spread happens all the time.
Screw the honest investor, if an investment company can make more money by cheating.
And creating stacked invesment products that no one understands, and selling them in tranches of deliberately falsified risk info, as tho these products were the formuli for eternal happiness;
And the originators then front-grabbing all the profits, so that if the investment crashes, the originators aren’t hurt:
happens all the time.
The price of Gamestop has crashed - eg lost nearly 11 billion in market value so this means most individual investors (buyers who were not “first”) and most of those who didn’t sell early on have lost all, or almost all of their money. Hedge funds selling short are back in business making money off of selling short.
They said most of Gamestop’s value is lost after brokerage firms reduced trading along with Robinhood Markets (the program used for much of this) “sided with Wall Street” and reduced some account risk. Also the report said Robinhood Markets may end up “collateral damage”. Apparently then they also got sued by users for limiting some account positions so reducing some account exposure to reduce risk to themselves and Congress may well get involved.
Well children I guess it is time to move on to a new game to entertain yourselves with. Oh… and there is speculation that the stimulus money may have helped fuel this but the feds can’t cut back on the stimulus money to help put a stop to this because it is needed for other reasons. And in other news in Malaysia there may be a rinse and repeat of this game.
Source: Bloomberg Reports so don’t trash me if you don’t agree; know better than they do; etc. I am just reporting what they said in their early morning report. And yeah I am up way too early but that is because my almost 20 year old sick cat who is on antibiotics decided to poop on the rug next to the bed and woke me up doing that; I am still up after cleaning that up waiting to see if she is done or not. Edit - she is. Nighty night.
It did close down from what is was at yesterday due to Robinhood delisting it but it came back in after hours trading and now in pre hours trading it’s currently double it’s closing price.
Looks like all sorts of things are going to be investigated by the SEC - both with investment apps and with different types of investors. Also they are likely going to look into whether or not Reddit/social media users were engaged in stock market manipulation/were the platform for that and how to deal with that since stock manipulation is illegal.
(I think that’s an alibi myself; I feel the real motives were from their clearinghouse not wanting the “little guys” win.)
u/FatAspirations has been doing daily due diligence discussions on WSB, but his one from yesterday was nuked (though not before Google cache picked it up.) I’m in awe of the amount of insight from some redditors.
I don’t know if apple’s app store did anything similar.
Some unhappy robinhood account holders are asking apple to suspend or remove Robinhood from the app store due to allegations of company fraud against account holders.
@narfcake And so likely at least 35-40 billion of that now not in retirement/pension accounts since those institutional investors own a huge chunk of stock in the market. Also most of the bottom 90% (income wise) have somewhere between 50-60% of their funds in the stock market. I took a quick look at mine. Down. The damage isn’t limited to the people who own the hedge funds and the top 10%.
@Kidsandliz Not sure what you’re saying. Most institutional investors (mutual funds, ETFs, index funds, at least) are not taking big short positions if any at all.
This Reuters report is only discussing losses on short sell positions YTD 2021 (only since Jan 1). Gamestop contribution is just over $1b; BB&B at $600m. That leaves a lot other early losses for those making short bets.
Markets go up and down. The market overall for the week is down.
This is likely completely unrelated to the reddit-driven activity.
It’s quite likely that the market as a whole will recover shortly; most corp and wall street types etc seem rather bullish re policies promoted by the Biden admin so far.
If the entire market tanks, the causes will likely have little to do with reddit or with small investor crowd behavior. The economy, as as entirity, and it’s various sectors, has far more pressing probs.
@compunaut@Kidsandliz With stocks the most you can lose is what you put in. With shorts you can theoretically lose everything they can pry from your hands. No pension fund is investing in shorts. And Reddit said there was a teacher’s pension fund that held a lot of Gamestop. Good for them.
I have a family member who deals professionally (for half a century +) with hedge funds, pension funds, insurance funds, investment banks, etc and their short and long term holdings. The stock market per se is not his concentration, but he knows their strategies. They mostly never touch shorts, or barely use them. Their orientations are closer to what one would expect from Buffett/Munger or similar.
Hedge funds who handle a lot of largish shorts are speciality firms. More high risk. Not market-dominant.
@f00l@narfcake Of course markets change daily. I did ask two of my retirement companies about this and after hemming and hawing both admitted to engaging in short selling on occasion. On what occasion they would not admit to. The losses for the institutional folks selling short have to be acquired somewhere to cover that. That somewhere would be out of the money individuals have at companies that engage in selling short and lost their “bet”.
The stock market though has other issues that in the long run will make this debacle seem like small potatoes despite some losses by individuals in their retirement accounts (looking at it from the institutional side of things). One issue that isn’t being addressed is demography. Because such a large percentage of the stock market is tied up with retirement funds, pensions, IRA’s etc. there will be a point where people, by law are required to sell (currently 72.5). Because of the boomer bubble there are going to be more people being required to sell ($ wise) than there are folks in the generations below them investing ($wise). This will drive the prices down over the long term unless we find a new group of investors.
The usual presumption is 3rd world countries as they have economies that grow (due to off shoring, etc.). At this point in time anyway it doesn’t look like 3rd world countries will make up the difference in investing in USA markets (the average age in those countries are, for the most part much younger than in the USA; for the canary in the mine look at Japan. They have the oldest average age although how their retirement works is someone different than the USA).
A couple of (good) economists I know have run the numbers and no matter which (realistic) assumptions you make this is the eventual outcome. Their explanation for such high stock prices and the extent of the upward trend is that boomers are doing last ditch investing for retirement and so is also partly responsible to for the steady upward trend of stock prices (supply and demand issues plus some other stuff). Of course economists generally do a better job of explaining the past than predicting the future BUT demography is a pretty strong predictive variable for the future and economist often don’t include that in their calculations for much of what they do in quite this way.
You can already see some of the boomer/demography effect in starter home prices (ranch or master on the first floor). Less well off boomers and new home buyers are competing for those houses driving prices up (rich boomers are building their own, upscale retirement homes when deciding to downsize). What is going to bite those with the larger houses is dropping big house prices as more boomers are finally looking to get out. The generations that will be the right age when those are bought is too small to buy all that are out there (thus prices will fall and tank the idea that owners of some of those have which is they can sell and make up what they didn’t save for retirement). Add to that the materials those McMansions are generally made out of cheap materials with around a 50 year life span for expensive parts of the construction; so near the end of their useful life without investing a lot of money. As a result they will be worth even less and some may need to invest a significant amount of money to fix those issues prior to selling (so even less profit). On the plus side geriatric needs will grow and so those industries will be growth ones. Of course then that will eventually be over built and crash too.
Demography. One of those immovable facts of life that we can’t fix except for the boomers generation being targeted for mass murder or suddenly creating out of thin air enough people in the generations below them to get rid of the bubble. Not viable options (although medicare D is doing its part to shorten life as many boomers can’t afford the non-negotiated prices for drugs they need to take on a regular basis).
@compunaut@sammydog01 No pension funds? I’d like to see citations on that. I know some retirement funds are doing it on occasion in their high risk funds. I know two companies I have retirement money in admitted to that today when I asked.
@compunaut@sammydog01 Only good for the teachers fund if they got out/get out in time (yes I know right now it is above where it was before this started but it isn’t up as high as it was). Very hard to time the market.
I don’t have any fancy citations. Or any research. Just a hunch.
My hunch is that the growth in the middle classes in SE Asia China and other similar locs will continue to drive US and other investment markets growth.
@f00l@sammydog01 The impression I got from 2 of my retirement companies (companies chosen by my jobs) is that they are more into stocks that give dividends, have a broad mix of stocks across industries to theoretically even out their risk in the “risk level/potential higher reward or higher loss” of a particular fund (growth funds vs large caps for instance, etc.)… But they admitted that in some funds they do (or perhaps hire hedge funds to do - I didn’t think to ask that - I called as I was curious what they were up to with respect to this kind of stuff) play the short sell game (and similar). With an n of 2 I can’t make huge generalizations and I haven’t bothered to hunt for credible, peer reviewed (eg not wikipedia or similar) research for an answer to that.
In any case some people lost a lot of money - be it individuals, retirement funds (even if just a few of them)… Doing what is being done is not just kicking the top 1% in the butt.
@compunaut@f00l@sammydog01 China’s median age is older than the USA (partly thank you the one child rule). Certainly there is a group (not huge by percent of their population though, although with as many people who live there the absolute numbers may be big enough to make an impact) with growing income. BUT with the wages that are going up in China they are losing manufacturing to cheaper countries. Of course they were wise and used a bunch of their budget surplus to build their own factories in least developed nations so they own much of what they use when they outsource. The biggest profit is made from turning raw materials into the product. Every other part of the manufacturing chain has lower profit. We are stupid in the USA. Off shoring to factories owned by others reduced USA profits. China has a number of policies that make it much harder for the Chinese to move money out of China.
@compunaut@f00l@sammydog01 Citations for your statement that their youth population is big enough? Big enough for what? That goes against much of the peer reviewed research I have read with respect to what is happening in their economy when you look at the impact of demography…
Yes they are buying us by taking over our manufacturing. And their market is big/population is big. And they have a growing middle/upper class and in some areas of the country fewer living in poverty. BUT demography still presents a problem, compounded by the expectation that the children take care of their parents so that will be an expense as the adults age as they don’t have the kinds of retirement systems we have here. And their median age is older than ours.
What is saving their butts as wages are going up due to a shortage of labor, is that they own the factories they build in cheaper countries. As a result they will still control much of our supply chain and reap the benefits of ownership of the factories, the greater profit turning raw materials into good, etc. If there is a WW3 they won’t need to drop a bomb if they are on the other side. Just turn the spigot off to our supply chain. That is one of the big dangers of offshoring some of what is offshored, including parts of our food supply and other basic needs that are more on the needs and not wants side of things.
And there are other logical probs w your responses. I’m sure you can work those probs out, if you wish. Whatever.
I mentioned I wasn’t going to get into citations, this ain’t an academic debate.
That’s right. I’m not defending my statement further. Make of that what you will, esp given your customary habits and approach.
I seriously doubt a majority of well-respected well-credentialed, currently practicing economists would consider your remarks in this instance and setting to be more credible than mine.
We’re both just BS-ing about our opinions off what we’ve read. (Don’t remember where at the moment.)
And I have read stuff re this issue. And we both know well how fucking impossible it is to predict with authority the kinks of economic performance out to a decade or two in the future.
And am pretty certain those economists would not consider you to be particularly more authoritative or credible in your approach to this setting than the rest of us.
(I do know some serious academics who work in various rigorous fields of study. Those people tend to understand the practical interpersonal performance uses of casual discussion and social forums, you see.)
But whatever. You have your pov, I have mine.
If you want an extensively cited formal academic debate that aims toward formal provability, such as it is; there are many reputable places for those conversations. Hmmmm?
@f00l No problem. I wasn’t making personal attacks like you are either. I realize you don’t like me and that is reflected in your comments. I was responding to ideas, not to the people who presented them. Clearly we don’t agree. I do think that when one is making major claims then sources matter though. Certainly the recent 4+ years of politics highlights the dangers of not doing that.
Mashable’s quick list of some Robinhood alternatives. They don’t review in detail how each behaved this week, so check them out before settling on one.
Amid the Wall Street drama surrounding GameStop and Robinhood, some investors taking part in the GameStop short sale are using their proceeds to do good deeds for others.
I am proud to do my part in paying forward our good fortune with a donation of 6 Nintendo Switches and games to go with them to the Children’s Minnesota Hospital.
@narfcake ControlTheNarrative is why I started following WSB. He had a few compatriots doing the same thing. They claimed to have come to an agreement with Robinhood to just pay part of what they owed. The loophole is closed now.
For anyone with some extra time, here’s an older article (2014) and video (2006) about how the hedge funds can play dirty games all for the goal of tanking a company for their own gains.
Short attacks, OPMs, leveraged buyouts, falsely rated investment products, so much more; a few more of those wall street predator types ought to be sampling federal prison accomodations.
@f00l@narfcake That’s crazy. I’m getting my popcorn ready. There’s a description of a short ladder attack for dummies- that’s what they say is happening now. That’s what I like about those guys- they dumb things down for me.
@Kidsandliz The stock shares can be sold more than once. Volume is more of a velocity indicator, not a limit. That 140% means every share outstanding changed hands about 1 1/2 times. That’s assuming 100% of all shares are in circulation, which they’re not. If 35% are in circulation, it means every share in circulation (i.e. a brokerage has custody) changed hands 4 times. The board probably has at least 20% locked up.
@Kidsandliz@mike808 140% is the early estimate and from the talking points at WSB, a number has been fulfilled, but they still need a lot more (actual) stock to fulfill the remaining shorted ones. As this still exceeds the actual outstanding shares, the HF would have to buy those back after fulfilling those orders, then fulfill the remainder, exacerbating their losses.
There was already a sizable number of “failed to delivers” a few weeks ago. This has most likely increased due to the desire not to pay $$$ for a stock they anticipated to pay $ for – and if they cannot secure it, the HF’s broker is the one that’s on the hook.
@narfcake your interpretation of the 140% was what I was thinking, not how @mike808 said it based on the context of what I read (eg “oversold” - yes I know not quite the correct terminology - vs turnover). You just said it better than I did.
@sammydog01 Saw on another board that one or more of the hedge funds that might either back the troubled ones or might be predatory on them bought up some silver recently so this driving the price up is in part to cover their potential/impending losses or costs.
If silver gets up high enough maybe I’ll consider selling my junk dimes and quarters…
@duodec@narfcake@sammydog01
There’s nothing to investigate. No insider knowledge. Just the Invisible Hand, Laissez-faire, free markets, and all that.
Investors know risks come with rewards. Also, hedge funds are required to only accept “qualified investors” which means you have to be rich enough from fucking over other people that you can’t pretend you’re a naive victim when you get fucked yourself.
In a non-corrupt free market buying GME while short interest is over 100% is a free money glitch. You’re basically betting against corruption at this point in time.
History has shown corruption is rampant so do not bet more than you’re willing to lose. Think of it as a donation against corruption that might get you a lot of money if you win.
@sammydog01 Maybe, but a disclaimer: this is not financial advice!
Those who have or are buying into this, just know it’s not going to be a quick ride. With billions at stake, the HFs are willing to play “kick the bucket” on deliverables and other “games” so they can win not lose as badly.
Reddit user imreallynotatoaster set up a GoFundMe to produce a Wall Streets Bets commercial for the SuperBowl to counter the one Robinhood is airing. The actor who played Stanley on The Office is on board.
@narfcake@sammydog01 I was sort of wondering about deadlines and actual air time left available for that too. Of course a marathon session could probably be used to create something as short as that in time if people worked their butts off around the clock.
@f00l@narfcake The thread with the go fund me had a lot of negative comments on it- I didn’t understand why.
Here’s the update GoFundMe sent me:
NOW THE AD SPOT WILL BE DURING CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS WHERE DFV AND ROBINHOOD CEO ARE TESTIFYING STARRING LESLIE DAVID BAKER FROM THE OFFICE. Credit to /u/ZebstrikaMD for the great idea.
Immediately after sending this update I am asking GoFundMe to refund all $30,000 donations to our thousands of backers in full and I will not be able to send further updates. If you would like to be involved or keep up with what we are doing follow the new GoFundMe or the new subreddit. I can’t post about this on WallStreetBets becuase they banned me for starting this even though it was in response to a top post on the sub and the new mods refused to unban me.
Read elsewhere that the subreddit got “Mod-jacked”, that the official ‘over’ moderators who had been absent have suddenly jumped in and started making changes and muting people. Also some of the proponents on the board think that when the wallstreeters/Citadel/etc successfully throttled or shut down retail sales for several days, that that broke the back of the movement. It became too hard for people to actually buy a share or ten if they wanted to, and at least Robinhood was actually selling ‘positions’ that people had put up without consent, and usually when the price was at a low point.
So looks like the battle is probably lost, but they’re hoping the lawsuits against robinhood et al will bring out all the shady shit that went on.
@duodec I don’t think Robinhood sold anyone’s shares without their consent unless they were on margin. And those would have been sold at the low because they’re allowed to do that if the negative balance gets too high. Which the low would have triggered.
@duodec@sammydog01 Don’t know anything about Robinhood’s User Agreement, but with brokerage I used in the (distant) past, they were also allowed to liquidate (sell) shares/assets to help alleviate negative balance when it reached a certain level, but only after notifying customer and allowing them opportunity for redress, meaning adding cash/assets to bring balance under ‘trigger’ point.
As alleged, automatically selling assets without ‘prior’ consent is likely where they get in big trouble.
Also, limiting trading activity is allowed (tho it gets everybody’s attention), but partially limiting (selling only, no buying; or allowing ONLY certain customers to trade) is also likely to be a legal liability.
@compunaut@sammydog01@Kidsandliz
I’m going on what I read; they said Robinhood sold ‘positions’; I don’t know if that means stocks or not. Wall street lingo isn’t my strong point though I’ve read up on some of it since this started. But I don’t have skin in this game; my wife was insistent and also even if we had she would not have had diamond hands and would have sold at a profit.
The general consensus at a couple of other sites is that Robinhood will be the sacrifice made to keep Citadel (apparently their primary backer) and other large firms from facing consequences but that they almost certainly had avoided the squeeze that would have potentially taken one or more of them out.
It would be interesting to follow up on press collusion with the big firms; there were a lot of articles and stories that seemed to be intended to drive out the retail investors or sidetrack them onto silver, or other actions that would free up stock to help the overextended companies And there were stats posted a couple days ago that showed nominal ownership of considerably more shares of Gamestop than actually exist.
Not that I expect we’ll get the truth out of the press or the feds… definitely too much intertwining going on there, as well as relief that the new admin dodged a potential liquidity crisis (again going from what I read, that would be bad).
@duodec@narfcake@sammydog01
Too bad there isn’t some kind of technology that can detect and prevent someone from selling the same thing twice. Maybe call it a “double spend” problem. Maybe put transactions on some kind of, I don’t know, call it a “public ledger”. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Well the wall street types are taking what the folks on reddit are up to more seriously. I just read an article, I forget where since I just skimmed a bunch from the digests of all three - Bloomberg? NY Times? Washington Post? that said they were tracking what folks there were up to so the could plan around that.
@Kidsandliz And I understand there are now plans to throw chaff out there with deliberately released fake info, probably with a core of trusted people who actually know the plans and targets.
Kind of like those random search bots you can run on your machine to throw chaos into Google and ISP and others attempts to completely map out your interests and such.
@duodec@Kidsandliz Both. Free markets and free speech.
/image Austin Powers Yeah, baby!
Hedge Funds are pumping stocks they hold with CTs on short interest to get WSB to go along (that’s what happened with silver. Then there’s a faction in WSB to pick something the hedge funds are short on to get them to start covering in a repeat of GME, AMC, etc., but not really, just to wag the dog as a juke while setting another target.
So it’s a giant misinformation-fest. In other words, normal Reddit with low SNR. The analytics companies are just using WSB as a data source for ML algos to pick “the next big thing”. Everyone loves to frontrun a winner and predict the future, right?
@Kidsandliz The collusion between the media (at least the financial media) and the wall streeters was pretty obvious during this event. The pileup of stories trying to get the WSB’ers to sell early, the effective diversion of interest to silver and SLV. I have no doubt (but also not going to spend time looking for ‘proof’) that the feds had their hands in this jumble too, more likely on the wall street side.
I was more referring to the WSB side, and also on apparently (and finally!) increasing interest in protecting privacy for individuals. I am gutting my ‘social media’ presence (not too hard since I never joined faceplant or most others) and pulling services back in house instead of cloud (like email).
I’ve been hearing that some companies (and some .gov agencies) are starting to view the lack of a social media presence and online history as a negative factor when searching for employment. Good thing I’m retiring soon.
Such times we live in.
@mike808
some of that is happening now and will in the future but Gamestop was a real event caused by hedge fund overreach. And the powers that be pulled out all stops to prevent taking a major hit, which included the media stories, multiple vendors/brokers crippling and blocking retail purchase of the stock, forced sales of some of the stock in investors accounts without pre-approval, etc.
Robinhood should die from this and Citadel should get hit hard and maybe even have some folks in jail. Probably 90% of the people I know with Robinhood accounts are in the process of pulling their money, transferring stock, and closing the accounts.
A lot of dirty laundry was displayed for all to see if they cared to look. Now we’ll see if .gov is going to actually do anything useful or if all the people who violated the rules, broke at least some laws, etc are going to face real consequences or just maybe some slap on the wrist penalties because you know they’re all major campaign contributors or members of the right groups, or friends of the right people.
If WSB had ‘won’ the wall streeters probably would have been bailed out by the fed anyway, and the SEC would be going after individuals who said too much or made too much on the deal.
During the hot trading peaks, lip service was paid by the big financial media to twitter activity from Mark Cuban and Elon Musk. Aside from that, I didn’t see a single small investor or wall street renegade getting a talking head slot on any financial broadcast.
Ok now this subreddit will be even more full of deliverate misfirmation and random BS than before. I’ll be interested to see if they can make genuine news again.
What about private subreddits (tho those might be vulnerable to insider trading violations: and also, without a large membership, they can’t move the market, but with a large membership, any info will travel.
@f00l The subreddit wasn’t designed to move the market. That was just a weird thing that happened. It’s just people that like to talk about stocks in a profanity filled way and show loss porn.
Keith Gill (aka u/DeepFuckingValue, aka Roaring Kitty) in the House Financial Services Committee’s hearing today:
A few things I’m not. I’m not a cat. I’m not an institutional investor. Nor am I a hedge fund. I do not have clients, nor do I provide personalized investment advice for fees and commissions. I’m just an individual whose investment in GameStop and posts in social media were based upon my own research and analysis.
Finally I’ve recouped my losses from the hedge fund shenanigans the first time around. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson and cashed out when I broke even, but nope
@Ignorant@lichme I was more thinking so you didn’t lose any money trying to screw over the short sellers since, fundamentally, the stock is incredibly overpriced for the company’s lack of value. So eventually it will slide back to something closer to where it started before this little entertainment action.
@Kidsandliz yes and if everyone sold to cover their investment the hedge funds would buy them up to cover their short eliminating any chance for a short squeeze.
@sammydog01@Ignorant@Kidsandliz By today’s events, somebody somewhere has a lot to lose - I got absolutely crushed again. With GME on SSR tomorrow, it’s definitely going to be interesting. Today feels a lot like it did in January.
The problem is, people everywhere encourage holding, while a lot of them take profits. It’s hard to tell where the top is, and where a short attack is. Time it wrong, and you lose not only what you gain, but what you initially invested. If I was in @$20 or $40 it would be a lot less dangerous
@Ignorant@lichme@sammydog01 It isn’t possible to time the market or know where the top is. Studies show that with computer programs when there is any new information the market has already taken advantage of that within, if I recall correctly, 20 seconds. Since people are still trying to manipulate this stock the odds are likely against you to begin with. I’d suggest again what I suggested before if you can’t afford to lose everything you have invested.
Note: I’m just a lurker. I’m not crazy.
@sammydog01 Don’t be so hard on yourself. You seem plenty crazy from my perspective–crazy enough to be likable at least.
@joelmw @sammydog01
/giphy crazy
My favs.
No, but I’m loving what’s going on with it!
@Kyeh I only wish I’d bought in. All of that investment shit makes me nervous as fuck and, frankly, what’s insane is that folks have to play those fucking games just for the privilege of living past their exploitable labor potential and/or securing a few years of non-cog-in-the-machine joy. I do have something of a retirement coming and chose and stayed with my current job in part for that aspect.
Also fuck Wall Street and all of those arrogant fucks who add little actual value to society.
What a fucking ridiculous society we live in.
@joelmw I agree; it’s disgusting that people who do nothing more than sit on their asses and play with other people’s money can make or break a company and destroy someone else’s livelihood or retirement.
can you r/outOfTheLoop me on this?
@LordSalem
@narfcake This is awesome. Thanks for the explanation!
WORKER BEES! HERCULES! TURKEY GREASE! AWESOME!
@LordSalem @narfcake obviously know way more about the stock market than me. But I would like to point out that their entry in about the community is
They are up to 3.4 million degenrates following them.
I first got hooked when they found a bug in Robinhood’s system- a site where day traders buy stock. Instead of borrowing 100% of the actual cash you put in the system let you borrow whatever you wanted. Hijinks ensued.
They claim that the information CNBC gave out last night about the hedge funds closing out their positions was fradulent. And that hedge fund people are spamming their site trying to get everyone to sell.
Also one guy cashed out and paid $25,000 in college loans and another turned $97 into $4000 for his dog’s knee surgery. It’s a fascinating read.
@LordSalem @sammydog01 Desperation. A few days ago, one of the hedge funds took on 2.75 billion in funding to help cover their
potentialimpending losses.@LordSalem @narfcake
Some guy on WSB says
I love those guys and will be watching the stock ticker on my computer like a Wootoff.
@LordSalem @sammydog01 Here’s a fresh reddit post that goes more in depth about how hedge funds short the stocks for profit:
Dammit, am I going to have to start paying attention to Reddit?
@brainmist Start here:
@narfcake It’s reddit so who knows but I suspect I should NOT start there, at all, ever.
@brainmist Why not? From a few years ago:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3179646/reddits-grand-vision-come-for-the-cats-stay-for-the-empathy.html
So it’s only natural to start with the cats.
@narfcake OK, but “catsubs”??
@brainmist
Cat = Cat.
Subs = Subreddits.
So am I supposed to be buying stock or something?
@RiotDemon I think you were supposed to buy it yesterday.
@RiotDemon we all should’ve bought last week.
Can still buy in now, all should be holding until Friday at least and most claiming they will hold until it hits $1,000 minimum.
@sammydog01 @Ignorant stocks is not a thing I do. I buy shares from work because I get it discounted but all these other things I just don’t get. I need someone to give me a cheap stock that I can dump a small amount of money in.
That’s the kinda gambling I could do.
@Ignorant @RiotDemon Right now it’s kind of like a Ponzi scheme and the question is are you early enough to make a profit or late enough to lose everything.
I’m sure the guys at WSB have some cheap stocks you can play with. They’re pushing BlackBerry and AMC. I’m afraid to start because I might get hooked.
@Ignorant @RiotDemon @sammydog01 Things must be insane there right now; WSB is currently set to private.
@Ignorant @narfcake @RiotDemon I’ve been a member for over a year and can’t get in. Maybe they’re putting some posting standards in place.
@narfcake @RiotDemon @sammydog01 they’ve added a thread over at /r/stocks
@Ignorant @RiotDemon @sammydog01
For “sensible investing” for us “little people”, Warren Buffet recommends index funds. They have done better historically, than most published trading schemes or “expert” recommends; esp after transaction costs are figured in.
@f00l @Ignorant @RiotDemon @sammydog01 wallstreetbets is NOT about sensible investing.
@Ignorant @Limewater @RiotDemon @sammydog01
Not sensible at all. : ). Lots of foolish choices at decision points, lots of reality-subversion.
Yeah, this Reddit topic, at the moment, seems to be more about the supposed pleasure of following out a classic “Crazy Theory” or “Big Dare” to the (perhaps very painful) ultimate possibility or scenario.
I hope any small fry who wind up w losses can afford those.
@f00l @Ignorant @Limewater @RiotDemon From what I see a lot of the WSB guys are playing the stock market for fun and have enough money to do it. But they’re taking a lot of people who can’t afford it down with them.
@f00l @Ignorant @Limewater @RiotDemon @sammydog01 recently someone asked a reasonable question about theory and answers were mainly “take that crap to /r/investing, this is a casino”
The Verge: Discord bans the r/WallStreetBets server.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/27/22253251/discord-bans-the-r-wallstreetbets-server
Hmmmm. Timing of this ban seems … awfully coincidental??? @sammydog01, was there a lot of hatespeech that you noticed? I just don’t believe that it has nothing to do with with the Gamestop stuff going on!
@Kyeh Like most of reddit, I lurk (via a VPN), and no, I didn’t see a lot of hate but I know the mods have a very tough time. They gained well over a million subscribers to the subreddit in just the past week and given the high stakes involved, Wall Street paying some folks somewhere to do a lot of dirty work wouldn’t surprise me any bit.
@Kyeh @narfcake It’s back. Looks like their discord got banned and the mods took down the subreddit just in case. If you haven’t been there they use a lot of socially unacceptable language daily. I don’t know if it was that or the new people.
@narfcake @sammydog01 Well, I bet those hedgefunders got it shut down to try to save themselves. I’m delighted that they got screwed on these short squeezes; I hate the way these people manipulate the market to destroy struggling companies.
@Kyeh @narfcake The stock also took a sixty dollar hit around the time of the discord ban.
@Kyeh @narfcake @sammydog01 it’s all after market shenanigans, it will explode out of the gate again tomorrow morning
This whole episode delights me.
Subreddit is back open, mods were cleaning up. I’m going to the moon!
@subsurfhNs We need a rocket emoji.
@sammydog01 @subsurfhNs
@sammydog01 @subsurfhNs
It would be beyond cool if reddit or another open forum powered a permanent contest between a few wall street assholes and main street folks just trying to pay for their kids’ educations.
Investing has always been only marginally about any “invisible hand”. It’s about superstitions, inside info, educated hunches, emotionally driven irrationality, insider access to front-running trades, game theory, personal animus, and who knows what else;
and investing success has a lot to do with permanently unequal access to capital, info resources, and investing tech.
I have nothing against “masters of the universe” financial types when their investments power communities, education, and job/industry/innovation growth.
Otherwise, these “better than us” types seem to be, potentially, nice trophies, if the reddit folk can bag a few.
I bought in at $340! Can’t wait to get rich! Woo-hoo!
@ShotgunX spoiler: you won’t.
@IamPhenomenal did you join just to make this comment?
@IamPhenomenal Someone help! I bought it all on margin! I put my entire IRA into it and borrowed the maximum amount they’d let me, and now my account is showing -$992,863! They won’t stop calling! Please help!
@ShotgunX Please tell me you’re joking?
@ShotgunX If you aren’t joking may I recommend reading about bankruptcy… Oh and join the class action suit referenced further down in the thread.
@ShotgunX
Plus interest and collection/court fees. Poor you.
/giphy beggars can’t be choosers
This is hilarious. Some people are going to lose a lot of money. I just hope all of it is lost by the ones that can afford it.
@RiotDemon Ha, that is so funny. I could understand a price difference if you were comparing two different retail outlets but those are from the same place. No excuse for that.
@cengland0 @RiotDemon Is that like “flight proven” with SpaceX?
@blaineg @cengland0 @RiotDemon
Hey he gives us good explosion pictures
So don’t diss him too much.
@cengland0 @f00l @RiotDemon No dis, Musk has his quirks, but I love what SpaceX is doing. “Flight proven” is their preferred term for used rockets, and it’s hard to argue that when a single rocket has made 8 flights, and they’ve got the turnaround time down to 27 days. It used to be 4 months, not 4 weeks.
And the explosions are (mostly) part of the plan. Starship is still in very early development, so the RUD events with SN8 & SN9 are unfortunate, but not catastrophic. Nobody has ever done that belly flop braking maneuver before, so it’s not surprising they’re learning a few things the hard way.
@blaineg @cengland0 @RiotDemon
Musk is a total genius, and wonderful fun to watch, and a civilization-changer.
And, frequently enough, he’s also a total ass.
Not yet sold on purchasing a Tesla. But I’m glad he’s around.
I still wish evil things on Gamestop for killing ThinkGeek.
@blaineg i too miss ThinkGeek, but before Gamestop killed it, everything ThinkGeek sold was cheaper on Amazon and Chinese retailers
@username Most things. There were still some ThinkGeek exclusives.
When I wanted to buy a Nintento Switch last month, Gamestop was the only place that had them both in stock and for sale at the list price. Go Gamestop!
They’ve locked individual investors out of buying any more GameStop so the price is falling dramatically. A win for the hedge funds.
@sammydog01 It’s mainly Robinhood that’s locking it out, no?
https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/01/28/trading-for-gamestop-amc-and-express-stocks-halted/
@narfcake Yeah, they originally reported that Ameritrade locked people out too but they just added some restrictions on margins and shorting. WAIT, THE PEOPLE ON REDDIT MISLED ME?
@sammydog01 Some folks do exaggerate things.
The deeper issue is that they are operating as a brokerage and they are required to honor the investor’s requests. The execution doesn’t have to happen instantaneously, but it still has to happen. This could really run afoul of the SEC.
(I have noticed discussion about a class action lawsuit too.)
@sammydog01 it’s climbing back up!!
@narfcake @sammydog01
I think I read something indicating that Robinhood had to seek emergency liquidity,? Did I imagine that?
I hope Robinhood isn’t simply buckling under pressure and favoring the big guys.
Otoh perhaps they made option trading too inexpensive (as a marketing ploy to their customer base), and are now hurting in consequence.
@f00l @narfcake Robinhood makes their money from hedge funds like Citadel, and Citadel told them to stop selling GME. Because Citadel is holding a ton of GME shorts. That’s what I read anyway. I expect there will be an investigation.
Is Vice a legit news site? Probably not. Anyway:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjpnz5/robinhoods-customers-are-hedge-funds-like-citadel-its-users-are-the-product
@narfcake @sammydog01
Investigation into inside info gained from dats handling badly needed.
@narfcake @sammydog01
Btw I consider Vice to be legit. Tho not mainstream. Idiosyncratic perhaps.
After the dust settles the bigger hedge funds will still win, the ones that started this might get bailed out, but even if they collapse it won’t move the needle much on the global scale.
the vast majority of average joes will lose money in this, those stories of paying off student loans etc will be outnumbered by millions of people who lost out.
@username Probably in the grand scheme of things, but it’ll make them take notice about not betting on a company dying so they can profit off the misfortune.
The thing about GME is that these HFs oversold the stock to 140% of the outstanding shares (aka the shares not restricted for trading). In order to fulfill their obligations, they’d have to buy up the outstanding shares, fulfill a group of clients, then buy those shares back to fulfill another group of clients.
This reddit post explains what’s happening:
@username
@narfcake @username
Maybe Citadel is the bad guy, not Robinhood?
Since some trading house or other had to execute those trades, it should have been obvious that someone got an advance peak at them.
I hate that sort of vig/front-running.
@narfcake, can you post a screenshot of what I’m guessing is a Twitter thing? I can never see stuff shared directly from Twitter.
@f00l @narfcake @username My son forwarded this tweet to me and I’ll type it out for you:
“Oh, you’re laughing at the hedge fund that got juked by reddit? Well they’re bankrupt now. Are you laughing now? Is it funny now that a bunch of MBAs are out of a job? Can you laugh knowing they’re explaining to their investors that they were outmaneuvered by POTATO_IN_MY_ASS?”
@f00l Here you go:
@narfcake @sammydog01 @username
Buffett on LTCM and the “borrowed money” risks
I have no idea what I’m doing, and fear I’m late to the GME party, so I put $200 into AMC and $100 into NOK - I don’t expect to make millions, but won’t be devastated if I lose the $300
And the description on Wall Street Bets is now
“Like 4chan found a bloomberg terminal illness”
@sammydog01 lol
A new site that has the teal deer in this:
https://isthesqueezesquoze.com/
What the Washington Post and The New York Times had to say on the subject:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/business/gamestop-wall-street-bets.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/28/gamestop-stocks-reddit/?wpmk=1&wpisrc=al_news__alert-economy--alert-national
There was also Twitter speculation by someone in the senate who is on the committee that looks into this kind of thing (a D, with agreement by a R) that they might need to investigate manipulation of the stock market by the individual investors, but that also they may need to investigate why institutional investors were allowed to keep trading and yet the individual ones on several platforms were cut off briefly as that isn’t allowed unless one can prove stock market manipulation.
In the end likely this will not end well for a number of individuals and a few of the institutional folks selling short. And, as research shows over and over it is not possible to time the market in any reliable way.
Paying for trade info flow, thus allowing that info collector to profit from the spread of every trade, had an early champion in felon-for-eternity Bernie Madoff.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/112537-payment-for-order-flow-madoffs-earlier-days
Random thoughts:
Robinhood Banning GameStop Proves the Free Market Is a Lie
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/robinhood-ban-gamestop-share-price-explained.html
Robinhood Is Having Its ‘DeleteUber’ Moment and Public Is Profiting From It
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/robinhood-is-having-its-deleteuber-moment-and-public-is-profiting-from-it/ar-BB1dbLOO
@f00l The problem with Public.com is that they use Apex Clearing for their back-end, same as M1 Finance and Stash, et al. Apex Clearing had joined the “protect hedge funds” club and stopped stock purchases (but not sells).
Looks like the squeeze is on silver now. As in the commodity. Which has been manipulated by the Hunt brothers like DeBeers manipulates the diamond market.
@mike808
The Hunt Bros tried to commoditize silver, and failed.
What I heard from someone who knew them, was that the Hunts just had no idea how much (for instance, a lot) of silver was in people’s attics and pantrys.
The Hunts were rich, but not that rich.
@f00l @mike808 My Dad got his cans of silver quarters out of the basement and bought a new car. A Chevette, but new. The Huntmobile.
Speculation because of this the stock market overall will be impacted negatively
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/business/gamestop-stock-market.html
@Kidsandliz
Right now the “expert talk” about the future is almost certainly 99% blather. No one fucking knows.
Altho these experts might be onto some insight or other into some portion of what might happen.
That’s the thing about complex markets during periods of volatility. They’re always way more complex and elusive than the quants and the experts analysts think they are.
@f00l That is why I labeled it speculation. What I don’t want to see is the value of good companies damaged by these hijinks. There is actual real collateral damage that potentially could be done.
With luck (not counting on that at all) perhaps the powers that be will take a better look at how all this operates and fix problems.
PS and of course the market is really disconnected from the state of the economy right now which, in my opinion, can potentially cause some real problems too.
@Kidsandliz
Yeah I don’t like seeing good companies damaged by stock market garbage conduct;
or good companies are sacked and burned when controlling invesments are made by restructuring companies who intend to strip the company of assets and employees, leverage it to the hilt, and then sell off the carcass as tho the restructuring somehow “helped”.
But this happens all the time.
And front-running trades in order to grab the spread happens all the time.
Screw the honest investor, if an investment company can make more money by cheating.
And creating stacked invesment products that no one understands, and selling them in tranches of deliberately falsified risk info, as tho these products were the formuli for eternal happiness;
And the originators then front-grabbing all the profits, so that if the investment crashes, the originators aren’t hurt:
happens all the time.
And dark pools …
And so on …
This episode is the least of it.
According to CNBC:
@narfcake How do these “upvotes” work? Does CNBC have a link with more information? CAN I GET UPVOTES TOO?
@sammydog01
@narfcake @sammydog01 You see, reddit votes up, but also down. It is like stonks, but also down.
@InnocuousFarmer @narfcake @sammydog01
My most Reddit savvy friend is also a fanatical cat lover
Coincidence or fate? You be the judge.
@f00l @InnocuousFarmer @narfcake @sammydog01 Gee, somehow I thought reddit was mostly porn. Cats, huh - I might need to check this out.
@f00l @InnocuousFarmer @Kyeh @sammydog01
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3179646/reddits-grand-vision-come-for-the-cats-stay-for-the-empathy.html
The early Friday morning Bloomberg Reports says:
The price of Gamestop has crashed - eg lost nearly 11 billion in market value so this means most individual investors (buyers who were not “first”) and most of those who didn’t sell early on have lost all, or almost all of their money. Hedge funds selling short are back in business making money off of selling short.
They said most of Gamestop’s value is lost after brokerage firms reduced trading along with Robinhood Markets (the program used for much of this) “sided with Wall Street” and reduced some account risk. Also the report said Robinhood Markets may end up “collateral damage”. Apparently then they also got sued by users for limiting some account positions so reducing some account exposure to reduce risk to themselves and Congress may well get involved.
Well children I guess it is time to move on to a new game to entertain yourselves with. Oh… and there is speculation that the stimulus money may have helped fuel this but the feds can’t cut back on the stimulus money to help put a stop to this because it is needed for other reasons. And in other news in Malaysia there may be a rinse and repeat of this game.
Source: Bloomberg Reports so don’t trash me if you don’t agree; know better than they do; etc. I am just reporting what they said in their early morning report. And yeah I am up way too early but that is because my almost 20 year old sick cat who is on antibiotics decided to poop on the rug next to the bed and woke me up doing that; I am still up after cleaning that up waiting to see if she is done or not. Edit - she is. Nighty night.
@Kidsandliz
It did close down from what is was at yesterday due to Robinhood delisting it but it came back in after hours trading and now in pre hours trading it’s currently double it’s closing price.
@Ignorant
Overseas investors weren’t shut out.
@Ignorant @sammydog01
/image stonks meme
@Ignorant @sammydog01
And ode to hedge fund managers.
@djslack That’s about how I understand it.
@sammydog01 ah, you must own some stock too then.
@djslack STONKS GO UP
Looks like all sorts of things are going to be investigated by the SEC - both with investment apps and with different types of investors. Also they are likely going to look into whether or not Reddit/social media users were engaged in stock market manipulation/were the platform for that and how to deal with that since stock manipulation is illegal.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/29/technology-202-gamestop-controversy-sparks-washington-scrutiny-robinhood-fintech-apps/
(I think you can read 3 Washington post articles a month free which they keep track of by cookies rather than making you log in or create an account.)
Article ends with:
So.
say the rich people and their minions.
The “free market” decisions to artificially favor Wall Street over Main Street at all costs is a pretty good argument towards increased socialism.
So much for even the flawed illusion of “level playing fields”.
I hope Robinhood and their trading partners go straight to hell.
@f00l Supposedly, RH was low on cash to cover their trades.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/robinhood-said-draw-credit-lines-214509076.html
(I think that’s an alibi myself; I feel the real motives were from their clearinghouse not wanting the “little guys” win.)
u/FatAspirations has been doing daily due diligence discussions on WSB, but his one from yesterday was nuked (though not before Google cache picked it up.) I’m in awe of the amount of insight from some redditors.
Also:
And, more billionaires helping billionaires:
Google salvaged Robinhood’s one-star rating by deleting nearly 100,000 negative reviews
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22255245/google-deleting-bad-robinhood-reviews-play-store
Google deletes thousands of negative Robinhood app reviews
https://nypost.com/2021/01/29/google-deletes-thousands-of-negative-robinhood-app-reviews/
Google helps Robinhood after swarm of negative reviews drops company to 1-star rating
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/google-helps-robinhood-after-swarm-of-negative-reviews-drops-company-to-1-star-rating/
I don’t know if apple’s app store did anything similar.
Some unhappy robinhood account holders are asking apple to suspend or remove Robinhood from the app store due to allegations of company fraud against account holders.
@f00l Wow.
u/DeepFuckingValue is still holding! $49+ million worth from his initial $53k a couple years ago.
Also:
https://nypost.com/2021/01/29/meet-the-redditor-who-led-the-gamestop-stock-market-frenzy/
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/29/app-robinhood-gamestop-class-action-lawsuit.html
News re and link to app that helps people automatically join the class action suit against Robinhood.
https://mashable.com/article/robinhood-app-limits-gamestop-orders-one-share/
Robinhood will now allow account holders to purchase 1 GameStop share each. They’re so thoughtful toward others!
‘Meme stock’ rally rescues AMC theaters from $600M debt
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/meme-stock-rally-rescues-amc-theaters-from-600m-debt/ar-BB1ddxFo
Hey @narfcake
Do you know of any place where we might read a legible full version the u/FatAspirations “endgame” series?
@f00l I don’t know, but I am currently laughing about some of the “wiser” things that have happened on r/WSB in the past.
As of yesterday:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-trading-shortbets-idUSKBN29X1SW
@narfcake If they are shorting Bed Bath & Beyond, shouldn’t that be called short-sheeting?
@narfcake And so likely at least 35-40 billion of that now not in retirement/pension accounts since those institutional investors own a huge chunk of stock in the market. Also most of the bottom 90% (income wise) have somewhere between 50-60% of their funds in the stock market. I took a quick look at mine. Down. The damage isn’t limited to the people who own the hedge funds and the top 10%.
@Kidsandliz Not sure what you’re saying. Most institutional investors (mutual funds, ETFs, index funds, at least) are not taking big short positions if any at all.
This Reuters report is only discussing losses on short sell positions YTD 2021 (only since Jan 1). Gamestop contribution is just over $1b; BB&B at $600m. That leaves a lot other early losses for those making short bets.
@Kidsandliz @narfcake
Markets go up and down. The market overall for the week is down.
This is likely completely unrelated to the reddit-driven activity.
It’s quite likely that the market as a whole will recover shortly; most corp and wall street types etc seem rather bullish re policies promoted by the Biden admin so far.
If the entire market tanks, the causes will likely have little to do with reddit or with small investor crowd behavior. The economy, as as entirity, and it’s various sectors, has far more pressing probs.
@compunaut @Kidsandliz With stocks the most you can lose is what you put in. With shorts you can theoretically lose everything they can pry from your hands. No pension fund is investing in shorts. And Reddit said there was a teacher’s pension fund that held a lot of Gamestop. Good for them.
@Kidsandliz @sammydog01
I have a family member who deals professionally (for half a century +) with hedge funds, pension funds, insurance funds, investment banks, etc and their short and long term holdings. The stock market per se is not his concentration, but he knows their strategies. They mostly never touch shorts, or barely use them. Their orientations are closer to what one would expect from Buffett/Munger or similar.
Hedge funds who handle a lot of largish shorts are speciality firms. More high risk. Not market-dominant.
@f00l @narfcake Of course markets change daily. I did ask two of my retirement companies about this and after hemming and hawing both admitted to engaging in short selling on occasion. On what occasion they would not admit to. The losses for the institutional folks selling short have to be acquired somewhere to cover that. That somewhere would be out of the money individuals have at companies that engage in selling short and lost their “bet”.
The stock market though has other issues that in the long run will make this debacle seem like small potatoes despite some losses by individuals in their retirement accounts (looking at it from the institutional side of things). One issue that isn’t being addressed is demography. Because such a large percentage of the stock market is tied up with retirement funds, pensions, IRA’s etc. there will be a point where people, by law are required to sell (currently 72.5). Because of the boomer bubble there are going to be more people being required to sell ($ wise) than there are folks in the generations below them investing ($wise). This will drive the prices down over the long term unless we find a new group of investors.
The usual presumption is 3rd world countries as they have economies that grow (due to off shoring, etc.). At this point in time anyway it doesn’t look like 3rd world countries will make up the difference in investing in USA markets (the average age in those countries are, for the most part much younger than in the USA; for the canary in the mine look at Japan. They have the oldest average age although how their retirement works is someone different than the USA).
A couple of (good) economists I know have run the numbers and no matter which (realistic) assumptions you make this is the eventual outcome. Their explanation for such high stock prices and the extent of the upward trend is that boomers are doing last ditch investing for retirement and so is also partly responsible to for the steady upward trend of stock prices (supply and demand issues plus some other stuff). Of course economists generally do a better job of explaining the past than predicting the future BUT demography is a pretty strong predictive variable for the future and economist often don’t include that in their calculations for much of what they do in quite this way.
You can already see some of the boomer/demography effect in starter home prices (ranch or master on the first floor). Less well off boomers and new home buyers are competing for those houses driving prices up (rich boomers are building their own, upscale retirement homes when deciding to downsize). What is going to bite those with the larger houses is dropping big house prices as more boomers are finally looking to get out. The generations that will be the right age when those are bought is too small to buy all that are out there (thus prices will fall and tank the idea that owners of some of those have which is they can sell and make up what they didn’t save for retirement). Add to that the materials those McMansions are generally made out of cheap materials with around a 50 year life span for expensive parts of the construction; so near the end of their useful life without investing a lot of money. As a result they will be worth even less and some may need to invest a significant amount of money to fix those issues prior to selling (so even less profit). On the plus side geriatric needs will grow and so those industries will be growth ones. Of course then that will eventually be over built and crash too.
Demography. One of those immovable facts of life that we can’t fix except for the boomers generation being targeted for mass murder or suddenly creating out of thin air enough people in the generations below them to get rid of the bubble. Not viable options (although medicare D is doing its part to shorten life as many boomers can’t afford the non-negotiated prices for drugs they need to take on a regular basis).
@compunaut @sammydog01 No pension funds? I’d like to see citations on that. I know some retirement funds are doing it on occasion in their high risk funds. I know two companies I have retirement money in admitted to that today when I asked.
@compunaut @sammydog01 Only good for the teachers fund if they got out/get out in time (yes I know right now it is above where it was before this started but it isn’t up as high as it was). Very hard to time the market.
@compunaut @Kidsandliz @sammydog01
I don’t have any fancy citations. Or any research. Just a hunch.
My hunch is that the growth in the middle classes in SE Asia China and other similar locs will continue to drive US and other investment markets growth.
The demographics are right for that group.
@f00l @sammydog01 The impression I got from 2 of my retirement companies (companies chosen by my jobs) is that they are more into stocks that give dividends, have a broad mix of stocks across industries to theoretically even out their risk in the “risk level/potential higher reward or higher loss” of a particular fund (growth funds vs large caps for instance, etc.)… But they admitted that in some funds they do (or perhaps hire hedge funds to do - I didn’t think to ask that - I called as I was curious what they were up to with respect to this kind of stuff) play the short sell game (and similar). With an n of 2 I can’t make huge generalizations and I haven’t bothered to hunt for credible, peer reviewed (eg not wikipedia or similar) research for an answer to that.
In any case some people lost a lot of money - be it individuals, retirement funds (even if just a few of them)… Doing what is being done is not just kicking the top 1% in the butt.
@compunaut @f00l @sammydog01 China’s median age is older than the USA (partly thank you the one child rule). Certainly there is a group (not huge by percent of their population though, although with as many people who live there the absolute numbers may be big enough to make an impact) with growing income. BUT with the wages that are going up in China they are losing manufacturing to cheaper countries. Of course they were wise and used a bunch of their budget surplus to build their own factories in least developed nations so they own much of what they use when they outsource. The biggest profit is made from turning raw materials into the product. Every other part of the manufacturing chain has lower profit. We are stupid in the USA. Off shoring to factories owned by others reduced USA profits. China has a number of policies that make it much harder for the Chinese to move money out of China.
@compunaut @Kidsandliz @sammydog01
Even with the one child policy the Chinese youth population numbers are sufficient
And the Chinese intend to buy United States a little at a time it’s a smart policy and they’re doing a decent job with it
@compunaut @f00l @sammydog01 Citations for your statement that their youth population is big enough? Big enough for what? That goes against much of the peer reviewed research I have read with respect to what is happening in their economy when you look at the impact of demography…
Yes they are buying us by taking over our manufacturing. And their market is big/population is big. And they have a growing middle/upper class and in some areas of the country fewer living in poverty. BUT demography still presents a problem, compounded by the expectation that the children take care of their parents so that will be an expense as the adults age as they don’t have the kinds of retirement systems we have here. And their median age is older than ours.
What is saving their butts as wages are going up due to a shortage of labor, is that they own the factories they build in cheaper countries. As a result they will still control much of our supply chain and reap the benefits of ownership of the factories, the greater profit turning raw materials into good, etc. If there is a WW3 they won’t need to drop a bomb if they are on the other side. Just turn the spigot off to our supply chain. That is one of the big dangers of offshoring some of what is offshored, including parts of our food supply and other basic needs that are more on the needs and not wants side of things.
@Kidsandliz
I mentioned a hunch, I believe.
And there are other logical probs w your responses. I’m sure you can work those probs out, if you wish. Whatever.
I mentioned I wasn’t going to get into citations, this ain’t an academic debate.
That’s right. I’m not defending my statement further. Make of that what you will, esp given your customary habits and approach.
I seriously doubt a majority of well-respected well-credentialed, currently practicing economists would consider your remarks in this instance and setting to be more credible than mine.
We’re both just BS-ing about our opinions off what we’ve read. (Don’t remember where at the moment.)
And I have read stuff re this issue. And we both know well how fucking impossible it is to predict with authority the kinks of economic performance out to a decade or two in the future.
And am pretty certain those economists would not consider you to be particularly more authoritative or credible in your approach to this setting than the rest of us.
(I do know some serious academics who work in various rigorous fields of study. Those people tend to understand the practical interpersonal performance uses of casual discussion and social forums, you see.)
But whatever. You have your pov, I have mine.
If you want an extensively cited formal academic debate that aims toward formal provability, such as it is; there are many reputable places for those conversations. Hmmmm?
@f00l No problem. I wasn’t making personal attacks like you are either. I realize you don’t like me and that is reflected in your comments. I was responding to ideas, not to the people who presented them. Clearly we don’t agree. I do think that when one is making major claims then sources matter though. Certainly the recent 4+ years of politics highlights the dangers of not doing that.
@Kidsandliz
Expected some response of this nature
it’s cool - the tone and content are what is the norm here. It’s all good
Mashable’s quick list of some Robinhood alternatives. They don’t review in detail how each behaved this week, so check them out before settling on one.
https://mashable.com/article/best-stock-trading-apps/
Also, for @narfcake and @sammydog01 and others who have followed WallStreetBets:
How to kinda “catch up to the gist and start reading from now” without first going thru 10 billion or so previous posts? Suggestions?
@f00l
KuoH
@f00l Besides ITSS, I’ll try to find some good discussions on this later tonight.
@f00l Sort by hot, skim the titles, and read what looks interesting. Just the first few comments are enough.
@sammydog01
Good thoughts. Thx!
@f00l These posts have been helpful to me for some more background analysis, so perhaps they can be helpful to you too:
The Big Short is free on Crackle. I’m watching it tonight.
@sammydog01
@f00l That’s where I got the idea but it’s not discounted in the US. BUT FREE IS BETTER, RIGHT?
@sammydog01
Already own it on Amazon : )
Crackle is ok sometimes, depending on my patience. I’m glad that service exists tho.
@sammydog01
By the way the Michael Lewis book that was the source of the film is a fine book and fun and well worth the reading.
Lewis is well worth the reading in general
@f00l @sammydog01 Sure, but the book doesn’t feature Margo Robbie in a bubble bath explaining the finer points of investing.
@macromeh @sammydog01
Some value add there.
There’s more coming too:
For those who are still wondering what’s really going on with GME, here’s a good explanation:
Also, a reminder that there are risks involved:
@narfcake
For those of you who are buying and selling stock for the first time, the NYT has a short primer on taxes for your capital gains (or losses).
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/your-money/gamestop-profits-capital-gains-taxes.html
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/north-texas-investor-uses-gamestop-gains-help-sick-children/2537134/
And just as a reminder as to why it’s Wall Street Bets:
Found a way to get 160x leverage from Charles Schwab. Borrowed 14k with 85 dollars to purchase GME calls
For perspective, the previous WSB “hero” leveraged much less than that.
@narfcake ControlTheNarrative is why I started following WSB. He had a few compatriots doing the same thing. They claimed to have come to an agreement with Robinhood to just pay part of what they owed. The loophole is closed now.
@narfcake @sammydog01
That WallStreetBets member story is fucking hilarious.
I bet the guy is still as insane as he can manage with investment $.
@f00l There are several more videos on the same channel of WSB heroes and “heroes”:
#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7
@narfcake
Yeah I thought I might check that channel out.
In between history audiobooks I’m binging on. : ).
For anyone with some extra time, here’s an older article (2014) and video (2006) about how the hedge funds can play dirty games all for the goal of tanking a company for their own gains.
Anatomy of a short attack
Jim Cramer reveals dirty tricks short sellers use to manipulate stock prices down.
On the upside:
@narfcake
Short attacks, OPMs, leveraged buyouts, falsely rated investment products, so much more; a few more of those wall street predator types ought to be sampling federal prison accomodations.
@f00l There’s discussion now about the possible existence of “counterfeit shares”:
@f00l @narfcake That’s crazy. I’m getting my popcorn ready. There’s a description of a short ladder attack for dummies- that’s what they say is happening now. That’s what I like about those guys- they dumb things down for me.
@f00l @sammydog01 Some more reading material:
http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html
ETA more reads here:
@narfcake I read somewhere or other that around 140% of the actual amount stock was traded. If that is actually correct… Hmmm… A problem…
@Kidsandliz The stock shares can be sold more than once. Volume is more of a velocity indicator, not a limit. That 140% means every share outstanding changed hands about 1 1/2 times. That’s assuming 100% of all shares are in circulation, which they’re not. If 35% are in circulation, it means every share in circulation (i.e. a brokerage has custody) changed hands 4 times. The board probably has at least 20% locked up.
@Kidsandliz @mike808 140% is the early estimate and from the talking points at WSB, a number has been fulfilled, but they still need a lot more (actual) stock to fulfill the remaining shorted ones. As this still exceeds the actual outstanding shares, the HF would have to buy those back after fulfilling those orders, then fulfill the remainder, exacerbating their losses.
There was already a sizable number of “failed to delivers” a few weeks ago. This has most likely increased due to the desire not to pay $$$ for a stock they anticipated to pay $ for – and if they cannot secure it, the HF’s broker is the one that’s on the hook.
Other talking points:
@narfcake your interpretation of the 140% was what I was thinking, not how @mike808 said it based on the context of what I read (eg “oversold” - yes I know not quite the correct terminology - vs turnover). You just said it better than I did.
Popeye’s Chicken is in on some action.
@narfcake
Yum!
Looks like there are spambots on Reddit promoting silver to distract people from Gamestop. And the press has picked up on it.
@sammydog01 Saw on another board that one or more of the hedge funds that might either back the troubled ones or might be predatory on them bought up some silver recently so this driving the price up is in part to cover their potential/impending losses or costs.
If silver gets up high enough maybe I’ll consider selling my junk dimes and quarters…
@duodec @sammydog01 I’m guessing the press just took in some falsified PR and ran with it because it’s easy “news”.
@duodec @narfcake The SEC investigation when the dust settles is going to be interesting.
@duodec @narfcake @sammydog01
There’s nothing to investigate. No insider knowledge. Just the Invisible Hand, Laissez-faire, free markets, and all that.
Investors know risks come with rewards. Also, hedge funds are required to only accept “qualified investors” which means you have to be rich enough from fucking over other people that you can’t pretend you’re a naive victim when you get fucked yourself.
BUY THE DIP.
(No, seriously, don’t buy the dip.)
A reminder post for anyone new to investing from a couple days ago:
@narfcake Okay maybe buy the dip.
YOU KNOW THE BUBBLE IS GOING TO BURST!
SHORT GME NOW! SHORT LADDER HAS PEAKED.
(Seriously, don’t do stupid shit with money you need for anything else. Just get popcorn and enjoy the carnage in the financial gladiator pits.)
@sammydog01 Maybe, but a disclaimer: this is not financial advice!
Those who have or are buying into this, just know it’s not going to be a quick ride. With billions at stake, the HFs are willing to play “kick the bucket” on deliverables and other “games” so they can
winnot lose as badly.Reddit user imreallynotatoaster set up a GoFundMe to produce a Wall Streets Bets commercial for the SuperBowl to counter the one Robinhood is airing. The actor who played Stanley on The Office is on board.
You bet I donated.
@sammydog01 It’s not too late? Superb Owl Sunday is in <4 days.
I do enjoy the billboards that some redditors bought.
/image $GME billboard
Some more discussion points last night:
@narfcake @sammydog01 I was sort of wondering about deadlines and actual air time left available for that too. Of course a marathon session could probably be used to create something as short as that in time if people worked their butts off around the clock.
@narfcake So far they’re raised almost $30,000 out of the $6M they need to get started. So it’s definitely going to happen!
@narfcake And they cancelled it and are returning the not quite $30,000 to donors. And they banned u/imreallynotatoaster.
Boo.
@sammydog01 Oof!
(Given the doom and gloom that WSB was today, it seems to be turning into a “maybe not such a sure thing” now.)
I wonder if any of these redditors followed through:
/image GME WSB tattoo
@narfcake @sammydog01
@narfcake @sammydog01
Why did they cancel the SB ad? Not enough time or other reasons?
And why did they ban u/imreallynotatoaster?
Did they think the donation scheme for the ad was a scam?
@f00l @sammydog01 Time is a big reason, but there’s a whole lot of redditdrama that I am not caring to get into also.
Updated commercial plans, BTW:
@f00l @narfcake The thread with the go fund me had a lot of negative comments on it- I didn’t understand why.
Here’s the update GoFundMe sent me:
@narfcake @sammydog01
I think I need a daily (or hourly) r/wallstreetbets soap opera summary.
I’m guessing this might veer sharply between interesting opportunities, vainglorious bs, good analysis, and total chest-thumping, shitposting warfare.
Which makes it way better than *General Hospital" ever was.
@f00l That sums up many of the popular subreddits.
@narfcake @sammydog01
Btw what is the name of the new subreddit?
@f00l @narfcake adfutura
@f00l @narfcake @sammydog01
I thought the new modjackers called their new subreddit
@f00l @mike808 @sammydog01
More discussion on $GME (but not financial advice):
@f00l @narfcake More drama.
@heartny
https://bendblockbuster.com/
/image the last blockbuster
@heartny
Read elsewhere that the subreddit got “Mod-jacked”, that the official ‘over’ moderators who had been absent have suddenly jumped in and started making changes and muting people. Also some of the proponents on the board think that when the wallstreeters/Citadel/etc successfully throttled or shut down retail sales for several days, that that broke the back of the movement. It became too hard for people to actually buy a share or ten if they wanted to, and at least Robinhood was actually selling ‘positions’ that people had put up without consent, and usually when the price was at a low point.
So looks like the battle is probably lost, but they’re hoping the lawsuits against robinhood et al will bring out all the shady shit that went on.
Maybe.
@duodec I don’t think Robinhood sold anyone’s shares without their consent unless they were on margin. And those would have been sold at the low because they’re allowed to do that if the negative balance gets too high. Which the low would have triggered.
@duodec Here is a summary of various lawsuits against Robinhood over all of this (probably not complete list since what is going on is fluid).
https://www.classaction.org/blog/no-legitimate-reason-robinhood-hit-with-class-action-over-halt-on-gamestop-stock-trading
@duodec @sammydog01 Don’t know anything about Robinhood’s User Agreement, but with brokerage I used in the (distant) past, they were also allowed to liquidate (sell) shares/assets to help alleviate negative balance when it reached a certain level, but only after notifying customer and allowing them opportunity for redress, meaning adding cash/assets to bring balance under ‘trigger’ point.
As alleged, automatically selling assets without ‘prior’ consent is likely where they get in big trouble.
Also, limiting trading activity is allowed (tho it gets everybody’s attention), but partially limiting (selling only, no buying; or allowing ONLY certain customers to trade) is also likely to be a legal liability.
@compunaut @sammydog01 @Kidsandliz
I’m going on what I read; they said Robinhood sold ‘positions’; I don’t know if that means stocks or not. Wall street lingo isn’t my strong point though I’ve read up on some of it since this started. But I don’t have skin in this game; my wife was insistent and also even if we had she would not have had diamond hands and would have sold at a profit.
The general consensus at a couple of other sites is that Robinhood will be the sacrifice made to keep Citadel (apparently their primary backer) and other large firms from facing consequences but that they almost certainly had avoided the squeeze that would have potentially taken one or more of them out.
It would be interesting to follow up on press collusion with the big firms; there were a lot of articles and stories that seemed to be intended to drive out the retail investors or sidetrack them onto silver, or other actions that would free up stock to help the overextended companies And there were stats posted a couple days ago that showed nominal ownership of considerably more shares of Gamestop than actually exist.
Not that I expect we’ll get the truth out of the press or the feds… definitely too much intertwining going on there, as well as relief that the new admin dodged a potential liquidity crisis (again going from what I read, that would be bad).
@compunaut @duodec I learned everything I know about stocks from WallStreetBets. I’m probably wrong.
@duodec I found a post about the mod drama you mention. Stuff’s getting crazy.
@duodec @sammydog01 The non-megalomaniac mods are back in control of the channel.
@duodec @narfcake @sammydog01
Too bad there isn’t some kind of technology that can detect and prevent someone from selling the same thing twice. Maybe call it a “double spend” problem. Maybe put transactions on some kind of, I don’t know, call it a “public ledger”. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
If only such a thing existed.
Hmm …
Well the wall street types are taking what the folks on reddit are up to more seriously. I just read an article, I forget where since I just skimmed a bunch from the digests of all three - Bloomberg? NY Times? Washington Post? that said they were tracking what folks there were up to so the could plan around that.
@Kidsandliz And I understand there are now plans to throw chaff out there with deliberately released fake info, probably with a core of trusted people who actually know the plans and targets.
Kind of like those random search bots you can run on your machine to throw chaos into Google and ISP and others attempts to completely map out your interests and such.
@duodec @Kidsandliz There are services popping up now catering to this:
@duodec Who is planning to mislead - reddit, et. al. folks or the professionals? I am presuming you meant the professionals?
@duodec @Kidsandliz Both. Free markets and free speech.
/image Austin Powers Yeah, baby!
Hedge Funds are pumping stocks they hold with CTs on short interest to get WSB to go along (that’s what happened with silver. Then there’s a faction in WSB to pick something the hedge funds are short on to get them to start covering in a repeat of GME, AMC, etc., but not really, just to wag the dog as a juke while setting another target.
So it’s a giant misinformation-fest. In other words, normal Reddit with low SNR. The analytics companies are just using WSB as a data source for ML algos to pick “the next big thing”. Everyone loves to frontrun a winner and predict the future, right?
@Kidsandliz The collusion between the media (at least the financial media) and the wall streeters was pretty obvious during this event. The pileup of stories trying to get the WSB’ers to sell early, the effective diversion of interest to silver and SLV. I have no doubt (but also not going to spend time looking for ‘proof’) that the feds had their hands in this jumble too, more likely on the wall street side.
I was more referring to the WSB side, and also on apparently (and finally!) increasing interest in protecting privacy for individuals. I am gutting my ‘social media’ presence (not too hard since I never joined faceplant or most others) and pulling services back in house instead of cloud (like email).
I’ve been hearing that some companies (and some .gov agencies) are starting to view the lack of a social media presence and online history as a negative factor when searching for employment. Good thing I’m retiring soon.
Such times we live in.
@mike808
some of that is happening now and will in the future but Gamestop was a real event caused by hedge fund overreach. And the powers that be pulled out all stops to prevent taking a major hit, which included the media stories, multiple vendors/brokers crippling and blocking retail purchase of the stock, forced sales of some of the stock in investors accounts without pre-approval, etc.
Robinhood should die from this and Citadel should get hit hard and maybe even have some folks in jail. Probably 90% of the people I know with Robinhood accounts are in the process of pulling their money, transferring stock, and closing the accounts.
A lot of dirty laundry was displayed for all to see if they cared to look. Now we’ll see if .gov is going to actually do anything useful or if all the people who violated the rules, broke at least some laws, etc are going to face real consequences or just maybe some slap on the wrist penalties because you know they’re all major campaign contributors or members of the right groups, or friends of the right people.
If WSB had ‘won’ the wall streeters probably would have been bailed out by the fed anyway, and the SEC would be going after individuals who said too much or made too much on the deal.
Meh.
@duodec @Kidsandliz @mike808
During the hot trading peaks, lip service was paid by the big financial media to twitter activity from Mark Cuban and Elon Musk. Aside from that, I didn’t see a single small investor or wall street renegade getting a talking head slot on any financial broadcast.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/reddit-ran-a-5-second-super-bowl-ad-inspired-by-wallstreetbets-you-probably-missed/ar-BB1dtYOT
Ok now this subreddit will be even more full of deliverate misfirmation and random BS than before. I’ll be interested to see if they can make genuine news again.
@f00l It will never be the same. They’re trying to form a new subreddit quietly.
@sammydog01
I would like to know, if they accomplish that.
What about private subreddits (tho those might be vulnerable to insider trading violations: and also, without a large membership, they can’t move the market, but with a large membership, any info will travel.
@f00l The subreddit wasn’t designed to move the market. That was just a weird thing that happened. It’s just people that like to talk about stocks in a profanity filled way and show loss porn.
@sammydog01
I know nothing, John Snow : )
Still in need of an hourly subreddit activity summary I’ll try to skim a little of it maybe next weekend.
@f00l A lot of people have moved over to r/smallstreetbets. Fewer memes and less profanity but still interesting. “Like 4chan found $5.”
@sammydog01
That sounds like a good fit for me.
Hedge fund job listing wants Reddit traders. Starting salary is $200,000 and the position requires being a member of r/WallStreetBets.
https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/hedge-fund-job-listing-wants-reddit-traders/
Keith Gill (aka u/DeepFuckingValue, aka Roaring Kitty) in the House Financial Services Committee’s hearing today:
@narfcake And I like the stock.
Short bets have dropped substantially since GameStop phenomenon
https://www.axios.com/gamestop-short-bets-decline-102dbb9e-5700-4a43-b221-0a13d8f2cee2.html
Finally I’ve recouped my losses from the hedge fund shenanigans the first time around. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson and cashed out when I broke even, but nope
@lichme I have a bridge I can sell you in Brooklyn… (grin).
@lichme Are you doing as well as DeepFuckingValue? Here’s his position on March 8.
@lichme
HOLD!
*not financial advice
@Ignorant @lichme So sell to the break even point amount and keep the rest in. That way when it eventually tanks you won’t loose what you started with.
@Kidsandliz @lichme the whole point is to not sell back (until moon) so they can’t buy to cover their shorts.
@Ignorant @lichme I was more thinking so you didn’t lose any money trying to screw over the short sellers since, fundamentally, the stock is incredibly overpriced for the company’s lack of value. So eventually it will slide back to something closer to where it started before this little entertainment action.
@Kidsandliz yes and if everyone sold to cover their investment the hedge funds would buy them up to cover their short eliminating any chance for a short squeeze.
@Ignorant
@sammydog01 @Ignorant @Kidsandliz By today’s events, somebody somewhere has a lot to lose - I got absolutely crushed again. With GME on SSR tomorrow, it’s definitely going to be interesting. Today feels a lot like it did in January.
The problem is, people everywhere encourage holding, while a lot of them take profits. It’s hard to tell where the top is, and where a short attack is. Time it wrong, and you lose not only what you gain, but what you initially invested. If I was in @$20 or $40 it would be a lot less dangerous
@Ignorant @Kidsandliz @lichme
u/UsedButtplugsForSale explains what drove the market today. Take it for what it’s worth.
@Ignorant @lichme @sammydog01 It isn’t possible to time the market or know where the top is. Studies show that with computer programs when there is any new information the market has already taken advantage of that within, if I recall correctly, 20 seconds. Since people are still trying to manipulate this stock the odds are likely against you to begin with. I’d suggest again what I suggested before if you can’t afford to lose everything you have invested.