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The Battle of GameStop

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Re: The Battle of GameStop

#371

Post by mbg721 »

koheripbal wrote: post #365
TeMPOraL wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody truly believe that this is a good thing? The stock market is detached from reality. It creates its own universe. The efficiency we're talking about here is self-referential - it's not efficiency in producing object-level value, it's efficiency in enriching participants of the stock market. Which depends as much on the company itself as it depends on the hype the funds and the shareholders can make around…

I find people who stand in disbelief of the markets often don't understand how they are working, and/or why they have and societal value. Skepticism is healthy, but in this case, it's closer to ignorance. The ability for corporations to go to the open market to secure capital is contingent upon a high liquidity of buyers and sellers present and actively participating. The market doesn't exist without "primary" buyers…

I guess I'm one of the ignorant; I'm still skeptical about derivatives. I get the need for hedging, but when you can construct something mathematically equivalent to a stock without actually putting money into the company, that seems like it could end very badly.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#373

Post by thinkingemote »

shrikant wrote: post #286
shouldiquitamzn wrote: post #17

I’ve made millions on WSB options plays. I can finally quit my job and stop being a cubicle slave. The visceral reaction from the media on this is disgusting. Major hedge funds got caught on the wrong side of this, and have been making a huge stink about it. CNBC to the rescue, demonizing young middle class Reddit investors. This whole thing has opened my eyes to how even my FAANG compensation is peasant money, it’s…

Since this comment is one of the top threads, I'm just going to re-post my earlier comment from one of the sub-threads: This comment about having made millions leveraging on SPY and QQQ over the course of 100+ trades doesn't check out, given that a few days back, this commenter created this throwaway account to complain about finding it hard to quit their job at Amazon because the pay is so good. https://news.ycombin…

As the article points out, it's about reality being controlled. In this case the user wrote something to change reality for their benefit.

The change they want is for more people to play the wsb game. And for more people to believe that the game has many winners. The mistake is that their message was untruthful, it was an exaggerated attempt to create hype.

Or. It was a user lying to make them get attention on the internet and feel better for a short amount of time, but I like my first idea as it's directly called out in the subject we are discussing. Thanks for unveiling it!

edits - I think its also like if you say something is important enough, it becomes important. So if wall street are still debating if wsb is or isnt actually relevant it means they already are. So the message is twofold. Firstly it's a "play the game, we need the hype" but more like "these comments have importance in itself because we say so". It's similar to meme magic - to say that 4chan memed Trump into office is utterly ridiculous, in reality they didn't. But enough people believed they might have and looked into it and thought maybe they did, that the effect of 4chan became important. A magic trick is about what you think you saw after you leave the theatre.

edit2 - and even my comment reinforces the effectiveness of the strategy just by commenting on it!

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#374

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

glazyrin wrote: post #306
dvt wrote: post #6

> The same emotion that caused us to root for the thieves in Ocean’s 11 is what makes Wall Street Bets so enticing. Put frankly, Millennials are tired of getting fucked by the man. When you’re underemployed with $100,000 in student loan debt, your financial situation feels overwhelming. You really don’t want to take the advice of your parents or CNBC talking heads [5] to invest 10% of your salary for a 4% annual retu…

Lots of these points hit home - but why blame older people for your generation having less sex? Baby boomers didn't make casual sex illegal, nor have they bought up all the sex. Until covid, if young people wanted to have sex with each other they were perfectly free to. Isn't it simply that masturbation and pornography have become relatively more attractive propositions than they were in the past?

Baby boomers didn't have to spend hours in extra curricular activities in HS plus getting 5.0 QPAs to maybe get accepted into a good college so they can have a semi decent chance at a good living.

My dad was able to go to a steel mill and make huge amounts of money plus overtime and insanely good benefits. Housing was extremely affordable. Very low debt from trade school. Women wanted to have kids and settle earlier. Women today care about their careers. People don't want to get into relationships with people saddled with debt and making no money.

While materially there are a lot of benefits to our modern world, no one is really free. To get sex nowadays, you better be attractive. Because on Tinder there are thousands competing with you instead of 20 in that one bar. Most people get very little likes, get depressed, and give up. I don't blame them. It's soul crushing.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#375

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

refurb wrote: post #353
elmomle wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably all started in the mid-to-late 70s when leadership in the US essentially threw in the towel on trying to improve the nation and started dismantling the country for profit. Adam Curtis's Hypernormalization does a very good job of illustrating this overall trend as it was reflected in the zeitgeist.

Or maybe being cynical and disaffected is just a part of being young? Seems pretty common!

It's not just the young that are cynical anymore, though.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#376

Post by WhompingWindows »

shouldiquitamzn wrote: post #17

I’ve made millions on WSB options plays. I can finally quit my job and stop being a cubicle slave. The visceral reaction from the media on this is disgusting. Major hedge funds got caught on the wrong side of this, and have been making a huge stink about it. CNBC to the rescue, demonizing young middle class Reddit investors. This whole thing has opened my eyes to how even my FAANG compensation is peasant money, it’s…

Can you clarify: would you truly consider someone who works at FAANG as "middle class" and making "peasant money"?

HN, let's not lose our perspective. There are millions of "essential" workers, like daycare, teachers, elderly caregivers, laborers, etc. that didn't get a lick of compensation for their risky labor in COVID times. Many of these people had NO choice to stop working and NO choice to work from home. These are truly essential individuals who work for minimum wage or less, while truly making "peasant money" here.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#377

Post by engineer_22 »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #363
blackrock wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s even worse than this. The government feigns that they can’t do anything. And that everything is the result of the market. Meanwhile, they easily pass bills to increase their own pay, or find magic money to pay for their military wars. And then, after screwing up the 2008 crisis, they stopped building homes. And the homes that were foreclosed on, they allowed the rich corporations to buy them up for pennies on th…

Entry level homes in non-trendy areas are much cheaper. My home is about $110k.

I've got a note for $70k for a 3 bedroom. It's not LA, but it's fine for raising a family.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#379

Post by engineer_22 »

edgyquant wrote: post #82
engineer_22 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first rule of Fight Club...

Except everyone knows about that sub and it does little but get the hopes of the working poor up, who then lose what little savings they have on some yolo being pushed by a more well off individual whose just having fun.

Oh, I'm just saying the language surrounding WSB sounds a lot like fight club. Sorry, I could've made the connection more explicit.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#380

Post by mywittyname »

mbg721 wrote: post #126
hinkley wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen to 80’s music for a bit if you think the current decade has a lock on existential dread. Or just the theme song of “Good Times”, a sitcom from the 70’s.

Gen-Xers have also had a notoriously awful employment economy.

My mom was an Xer and lamented that she was part of the first generation to be worse off than their parents. Our saving grace was the fact that welfare programs had not yet been completely gutted and that the 90s ushered in an era of prosperity that lasted long enough to get us kids through school (just in time for the GFC, yay!).
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