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The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

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Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#211

Post by ethbr0 »

mywittyname wrote: post #146
nostromo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment reads like a "they're really playing 4-dimensional chess" moment. There are definitely some smart people on wsb, but I very much doubt the use of silly language (like, say, calling bears "gay bears") is anything other than users being intentionally ridiculous and funny.

The language there is definitely used as a shibboleth, a stenograph, and a ward. Enough of the people there are knowledgeable enough to know 1) the types of automation that go into mining social media, and 2) how to communicate in a manner that maintains plausible deniability in the event of interest from authorities. Everyone else plays along so they can be part of the group.

To me, chan language is linguistic evolution.

Massively increase the mutation rate, provide instant fitness feedback, and run the simulation for a substantial amount of time.

You're essentially selecting for the most mematic strains on the user population.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#212

Post by jeffbee »

cwhiz wrote: post #193
jefe_ wrote: post #192

I've perused WSB for a while, but watching GameStop this morning, I'm worried this recent 'short squeeze initiative' opens the door for various retail trading restrictions. Whether phase-out of commission-free trading, per-trade taxes, restrictions on options trading, tightening of pattern day trading restrictions, it seems something is coming. It's tough to envision a circumstance where retail trading is permitted t…

Short selling is not a fundamental activity. Short selling should be the thing that is illegal. None of this nonsense would exist if it weren’t for the absurd nonsense that is borrowing a stock, selling it, waiting for the price to drop, buying a stock, and giving it back. Short selling is absurd. All options trading should be banned by the SEC.

What you are suggesting is a one-sided market where prices can only go up and there is no restoring force. That's dumb.

What's worth knowing is that immoral conspiracies among short sellers are incredibly rare. I challenge you to find a documented case. By contrast, there have been many, many pump-and-dump sell-side scams, and without the short side there would be many more.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#213

Post by Bedon292 »

roenxi wrote: post #194
Bedon292 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The movement of stocks they are talking about, like GME recently, defy traditional analysis. There is no reason for GME to be where it is, in a traditional analysis sense, other than WSB talking about them. At some point they move the needle just enough for the algorithmic trading, and FOMO of others to take over. But it still started there. Although now there is probably some level of watching WSB to see what their…

> There is no reason for GME to be where it is, in a traditional analysis sense, other than WSB talking about them. It isn't possible to assert that there is no other reason. The world is very large, there are a lot of people in it and strange things happen. Us not being able to think of a reason apart from WSB is different from WSB being a cause of something.

That is why I said 'in a traditional analysis sense.' It defies all traditional stock / economic analysis. There is nothing significantly better about Game Stop's actual business today compared to say Sept 1st.

Sep 1: $7.65 Nov 2: $10.75 Jan 4: $17.25 (125% Gain here already) Jan 25: Intraday high: $159.18 (More than 20x Sep 1), Close $76.79 (Right about 10x Sep 1)

There is nothing in any form of business analysis that justifies that. The best explanation that exists is WSB. Its not just WSB doing the trades, they just are a spark that ignites the fire. After that people (and algorithms) are trying to ride a wave of momentum.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#214

Post by socialist_coder »

baq wrote: post #84
supernova87a wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who's backing those options with the actual stock to the tune of $13B per day?

market makers who write the options but want to hedge the risk by taking a related position in the market itself. they don't want risk, they just want the premium, so they don't care about the price of the underlying most of the time. what they do is continuously adjust the position as the price changes and time to expiration gets shorter. you can imagine the amount needed to hedge gets very nonlinear the closer to e…

isn't this a serious exploit in the whole market maker system?

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#215

Post by vorpalhex »

nabla9 wrote: post #175
vorpalhex wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can make specific philosophical assertions about a very large group based off a hobby. Just like we can't say that all react developers are minimalists, we can't say all WSBer's are nihilists or anything else. I think you have some very fundamental misunderstandings about 4chan, including who it was composed of and what both their stated and achieved goals were. As a hint, remember that 4chan is a c…

> we can't say all WSBer's are nihilists or anything else This type of counterargument seems to be very common in the internet. Can you explain how valid you consider "we can't say all X" argument being in general? How can you make reasonable arguments about group or people so that this argument is not valid.

So usually a setup of "All Xs are Y" is used to setup a straw man. By taking a large and diverse group and simplifying it down to a single viewpoint (that's not a tautology) then you're setting up an out group to be attacked under a single characteristic. An example of this usually goes: "Well, Christians believe the world was created in 7 days, and since we have good evidence the world wasn't created in 7 days, Christians must be insane." You just took 2 billion different people, who are spread across factions with internal debates and arguments, and simplified them into a straw man that at most represents a small percentage of that slice.

Sometimes we do want to make broad statements. "Kids like minecraft!" is kind of wrong, but it's kind of right and isn't necessarily a straw man. It'd be more accurate to say something like "About 70% of kids report playing minecraft"[1], or we can keep to anecdotal evidence: "all my nieces and nephews play minecraft". Those statements are generally correct. We still have some data problems - a kid is generally going to give you the answer they think makes you happier, and they're probably pretty relaxed about half-truths to annoying uncles/aunts asking them about gaming habits.

If our goal is to make truthful (as in, accurately representing reality) statements, then we need to be precise and avoid broad strokes when we describe a group. [2]

[1]: I'm making that stat up as an example

[2]: On the other hand, if our goal is to define an out-group and attack them, then broad strokes and vague insults are really useful and hard to counter

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#216

Post by vorpalhex »

nabla9 wrote: post #169
username90 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A coup can't succeed without support from the military, the police or a majority of the population. A few hundred badly organized crazy people can't perform a coup, they can however perform acts of terrorism which is what they did. Crazy people sometimes kills high level politicians, there are many cases like that in history, doesn't mean it was a coup or it was even near succeeding.

Unsuccessful or incompetent coup attempt is still a coup.

It's an insurrection (non-government/military attacking government property/people). A coup would be if it was another wing of the government or the military doing the attacking.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#217

Post by dcolkitt »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #185
dcolkitt wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education only makes up 2.3% of household expenditures and healthcare 8.2%.[1] You're cherry picking and ignoring strong deflationary pressures increasing the affordability of food (13% of expenditures), clothing (3%), transportation (17%), utilities (6.5%), entertainment (5%), and furniture and appliances (3.3%). As for housing, the cost per square foot, adjusted for inflation, is only 12% higher than it was in 2000…

> You're cherry picking and ignoring strong deflationary pressures increasing the affordability of food (13% of expenditures), clothing (3%), transportation (17%), utilities (6.5%), entertainment (5%), and furniture and appliances (3.3%). I'm not ignoring these at all, and it should be clear where these lie on Maslow's hierarchy versus shelter, healthcare, and earning potential (education) [1]. Mortgage rates being l…

> The average price of a new car just surpassed $40k

In nominal terms, the inflation rate of new cars was in aggregate 3.5%[1] since 1995 (not 3.5% per year, 3.5% total.) Over the same period, household after tax income increased by 111% in nominal terms. Therefore the affordability of a new car, for the average household, doubled over the period.

Moreover the average longevity of a car increased from 8.5[3] years to 11.9 years[4]. That means the amortized cost of one year of car ownership, in terms of household income, has fallen by a factor of three.

[1]https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation/1995-... [2]https://www.bls.gov/cex/1995/aggregate/age.pdf [4]https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33457915/average-age-vehi...

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#218

Post by cwhiz »

jeffbee wrote: post #212
cwhiz wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short selling is not a fundamental activity. Short selling should be the thing that is illegal. None of this nonsense would exist if it weren’t for the absurd nonsense that is borrowing a stock, selling it, waiting for the price to drop, buying a stock, and giving it back. Short selling is absurd. All options trading should be banned by the SEC.

What you are suggesting is a one-sided market where prices can only go up and there is no restoring force. That's dumb. What's worth knowing is that immoral conspiracies among short sellers are incredibly rare. I challenge you to find a documented case. By contrast, there have been many, many pump-and-dump sell-side scams, and without the short side there would be many more.

One sided? You buy, and you sell. The price goes down if there are more sellers than buyers. This is how it worked until the “professionals” invented all of this ridiculous nonsense so they could gamble on the markets.

Buy or sell. And nothing more.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#219

Post by missedthecue »

aaahayatav wrote: post #203
missedthecue wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inflation adjusted cost of buying a house today is actually cheaper per square foot than it was in 1980, and that's before you factor in the 14% mortgage rates of the era.

The 14% mortgage rates came in part from the law of small (big) numbers. 14% of $35,000 is not that much money compared to 3% of 700,000

But your typical home did not cost $35k then, and your typical home does not cost $700k now

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#220

Post by diveanon »

username90 wrote: post #153
diveanon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qanon disagrees. 4chan trolling nearly resulted in a coup, its reached a new level of seriousness.

A coup can't succeed without support from the military, the police or a majority of the population. A few hundred badly organized crazy people can't perform a coup, they can however perform acts of terrorism which is what they did. Crazy people sometimes kills high level politicians, there are many cases like that in history, doesn't mean it was a coup or it was even near succeeding.

The police let the terrorists in and DC authorities were denied National Guard resources by Military authorities.

There are several documented terrorists who are active duty police officers and the terrorist who was killed was an Air Force officer.

Seems like this coup attempt had plenty of support from the Military and Police.

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