The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets • Hacker News Board

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#221

Post by aynyc » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

cwhiz wrote: post #218

jeffbee wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In that case, you would need to get rid of derivative markets and perhaps leveraging mechanism such as margins.

I do believe banning certain instruments from the market can have a positive effect, but I'm not sure if short-sell is one of them.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#222

Post by s1artibartfast » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:47 AM UTC

YarickR2 wrote: post #207

bathtub365 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re engaging in blatant market manipulation. I’d say that harms people outside their group.

Well, not that anyone is forced to participate in the market, especially knowing about intentionally irrational players.

Unless you consider the lack of other viable investment options. Still not violet forever tho

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#223

Post by jeffbee » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:55 AM UTC

cwhiz wrote: post #218

jeffbee wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Short selling came in the seventeenth century with the rest of stock markets. You can’t really have a functional market without it.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#224

Post by koolk3ychain » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

roland35 wrote: post #17

koolk3ychain wrote: post #3

I don't understand why people think /r/wallstreetbets is really that interesting or provides insight into actual wall street? Anyone who knows anything about actual options trading / building strategies knows these people are idiots. Sure, there's a lot of money flowing around - but most people don't realize that to many $60k is pocket change.

There is always an alure of outsmarting everyone and getting rich quick.

Albeit, it's incredibly entertaining - however anyone who things any of it is "real information" who doesn't have pre-existing professional experience is a moron. Unless you're already a professional I highly doubt anyone can cut through the noise to signal ratio.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#225

Post by ac29 » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 3:07 AM UTC

kyawzazaw wrote: post #179

ac29 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 92% chance of bankruptcy (to use your example) seems like a poor idea. Its not about the outcomes of winning vs losing, the smart move is to not play. A college graduate hopefully will not be making $30k/yr for too long, and being almost completely cut off from credit for a decade is really going to sting when they do want to finance a car or other large purchase.

> A college graduate hopefully will not be making $30k/yr for too long I think you might be in a well paying profession

For what its worth, I made less than $30k/yr (with zero benefits) for a few years after graduating college about 10 years ago, despite working full time. I make more now, but probably less than you'd think based on the group here - I dont work in tech.

The average salary for people with a college degree is about $50k: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/pay-salary/average-sala...

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#226

Post by roenxi » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 3:09 AM UTC

Bedon292 wrote: post #213

roenxi wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

> There is nothing in any form of business analysis that justifies that.

You haven't consulted all the business analysts in the world before saying that though. There might be something.

I get that you're convinced - but you aren't presenting an actual line of thinking that links the two things. You've just noticed that WSB is talking about something and the thing goes up - this is the famous correlation and causation problem.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#227

Post by leetcrew » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

filoleg wrote: post #188

leetcrew wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have they? my meme positions have barely broken even this year, while the S&P 500 is up ~19% over the same time period. working hard and investing the bulk of my savings in broad market ETFs is working quite well for me so far.

This is just your own sample not representative of the overall picture (not claiming that mine is representative either). Out of my group of friends that I talk to almost every day and bet on "meme positions" (all fairly similar to each other in terms of which positions we pick), it is all over the place. Just for this year alone: One person in a significant negative this year. One with a small negative. One with 45%…

> It is less about which specific "meme positions" you enter, but when you enter them and when you exit them.

this is a good point. I mostly entered my positions after the symbols had gotten a day or two of buzz on wsb, which is usually too late to realize significant gains. my buddy had more of a yolo strategy: "buy anything sufficiently ridiculous the first time you see it on wsb". he did a lot better than I did. I do it for fun mostly. I realized early on I don't have the stomach to put large amounts of my money into memes, and the amount of time I've spend watching tickers for 2-4% of my portfolio value simply isn't worth it on a $/hr basis.

my main point is just that this was a great year for frugal people with good jobs who invested their savings somewhat conservatively. the (unrealized) gains from my s&p etfs this year exceeded my actual salary by quite a bit. I don't feel like a chump for not going all in on short-dated options.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#228

Post by cbozeman » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 3:18 AM UTC

bathtub365 wrote: post #190

buryat wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSB is more about laughing at themselves rather than trying to amuse or offend someone. WSB doesn’t care much about so called “normies”, they have never attacked anyone outside of wsb and labels don’t spread outside of wsb either. WSB never had nihilistic worldview, there’s plenty of people supporting each other, there’s regular donations to charities, and etc. WSB is just a tongue-in-cheek ridicule of the finance wo…

They’re engaging in blatant market manipulation. I’d say that harms people outside their group.

No post body was provided.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#229

Post by cbozeman » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 3:22 AM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #94

vorpalhex wrote: post #36

This post is a great tutorial in why we shouldn't derive meaning from expressed language. Imagine if you sat in a room of software engineers and tried to make conclusions about their life views based on their jargon: "I think what they're saying is you just need to form a single value store and react to it, dividing life into small composable micro components that are DRY. We can really comprehend how this minimalism…

>Language like WSB uses is meant to frustrate outsiders and limit posers. This is true, but WSB is also fundamentally nihilistic. 4Chan started as teenage boys from middle class families saying bad things for and fun trolling for fun. "haha lol normies take it seriously" Typical teenage nihilism that is normally not very harmful. Then it gradually escalated into really hurting people and crazy people joining. https:/…

If you think "Kill All Normies" as a statement used on 4chan is serious, then you better call the FBI and start reporting all the #KillAllMen for Twitter users.

You are a textbook example of someone who simply just "does not get it".

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#230

Post by cbozeman » Tue, Jan 26, 2021, 3:30 AM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #166

baq wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if this is the only alternative you can come up with, then you unfortunately suffer from a lack of imagination. another solution would be to make that $30k enough for a comfortable life so the bet doesn't seem that attractive in the first place.

I think you may have replied to the wrong comment?

No, they didn't.

If you're so daft that you think its okay to give literally trillions of aid to companies in the form of tax breaks, bailouts, subsidies, and other horseshit, but letting people write off mere millions in bankruptcy proceedings because they know at a fundamental level that the system is - if not broken, definitely malfunctioning - then brother, you are part of the problem here.