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The Battle of GameStop

paranoidenough.com

411–420 of 583 posts

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that we’re working to keep a roof over our heads now because we YOLOed through college. And while that doesn’t describe me, I had a lot of peers who partied through college, skipped classes, hardly worked, majored in women’s studies / art history / literature / etc and still managed to live in the dorms, buy daily lattes, have the latest iPhones, etc.

> I had a lot of peers who partied through college, skipped classes, hardly worked, majored in women’s studies / art history / literature / etc and still managed to live in the dorms, buy daily lattes, have the latest iPhones, etc. Did you go to a 4 year private school (possibly a non-Ivy)? I feel like you are describing a class of Americans who are oblivious to their privilege, but are mistakenly labeled as the work…

Quite the opposite. I'm from a lower middle class family and that because my parents worked overtime in their blue collar jobs. I went to a public 4 year university. I was successful in college precisely because I didn't have a privileged background. While I also had no idea how to manage that much money, I erred on the side of caution. While my contemporaries lived in dorms, I spent half and rented a house with several other people some miles from campus. I didn't have daily Starbucks. I didn't party or skip classes. I worked 20+ hours while I was in school.

> I assure you your classmates who went to private 4 year school on dad’s dime do not reflect the majority of working class millennials.

I wasn't talking about working class millennials, but millennials in general.

> For many millennials they are more worried about being wiped out by a trip to the hospital that would cost the price of 3 lifetimes of lattes

Yeah, we have private health insurance and that really sucks for those who don't have access to decent insurance. But that doesn't justify living it up in school. Note also that I'm not even blaming millennials per se; our society failed to teach us personal responsibility, and it went even farther by creating a loan program and dumping us into a predatory university system with the vague guidance that we should follow our dreams, have a good time, and everything will just work itself out. Of course the majority of us took the bait and lived it up. Worse still, we graduated into an economy that was worse than what our parents dealt with. Excuses abound, but nevertheless, our generation YOLOed pretty hard even though the YOLOing wasn't evenly distributed.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#412

Where is the evidence that most of the volume came from wsb users? Genuinely curious because I don't know the details. Is it possible that a third party saw the situation and joined in?

Robinhood is the app of choice for WSB users. Robinhood also leans heavily towards the younger crowd. Robinhood released numbers recently on how many people have tsla, gme, pltr and other stocks in their portfolio. Google it.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really, truly bad take. Option prices move every day. There do exist, in fact, some people who are very skilled at making money trading options. Some people do it for a living with rich people's money, and many of them have the same skillset/education as the general HN audience. If this guy actually made millions over the course of dozens of trades, it makes more sense to let him talk than to downvote him a…

I don’t have enough karma to downvote, dude. It’s also not a bad take. Institutional investors do indeed make a killing and you can do fine using i.e. the wheel strategy. But if you’re YOLOing on WSB and you aren’t an institutional investor it is almost certainly luck to turn thousands into millions.

I'm with you. I think the thing is that a YOLO play has better odds than winning the lotto or playing roulette. Some people make millions playing poker too.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#414
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…

> It's a never-ending shit-show.

Exactly. Interests rates at 0%, wages stagnating and the system has been setup so that I'm essentially forced to participate in the market (otherwise I miss out on salary). AND these hedge fund idiots are feted as geniuses for their stupid plays.

I am basically at 110% cynicism regarding my 401k and would lose but an hour of sleep if it disappeared tomorrow. Fuck it, I'm all in!

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people don't know just how hard it is to compound gains -- congrats. Personal note: I really don't know why you would bring attention to yourself over this

It’s a throwaway account and I just quit my job, I read for years that you can’t beat the market.

Nobody ever said you can't beat the market. They said you can't _consistently_ beat the market. Doing it once or twice happens all the time.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#416
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…

[deleted]

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#417
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry if my comment came off as critical - probably could have been worded better.

Derivatives are critical even to primary market participants. Farmers looking to secure their pay for future crop deliveries. Banks looking to remove interest rate risk on mortgages they've issued. Shipping companies looking to remove the risk of fuel fluctuations on their future transport costs.

Fluctuations of cost inputs and uncertainty of future revenues can be a company death sentence as they cause cash flow shocks. They have real value to the economy.

Often, they are only possible if there is a liquid market of people willing to take the other side of these transactions. Narrowing the spread between buy/sell prices on these derivative contracts allows more companies to be able to afford them, and that makes many low margin businesses able to exist at all.

Despite all the hate on social media, these markets have material value. ...even if there are these anomalies like this Gamestop incident.

I imagine the SEC is going to shut down that Reddit sub because these types if activities actually destroy liquidity but discouraging short sellers.

Regulation plays an important role in keeping markets running smoothly.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant agree with this more, I think though once the mindset takes over than a nomad lifestyle is also something that can be extremely fulfilling and changing peoples ideals of that 50's relic is key. We will probably be hampered by the extreme inequality of wealth for generations to come but I think our generation is losing patience and finding new ways to live happy. VERY Slowly but surely.

So now the new proposal is for people to live in RVs, and wander from town to town? No security. No firm ground to call home. This is a life worse than the medieval ages.

No nesccesarily, the options are more broad than just an RV for sure, if you can earn an income remotely you have far better options. For example in germany a huge percentage of the population rent rather than buy : http://www.rentalcal.eu/the-german-rental-market There are good regulations around it there, but there is not the drive to own. Again though it's different folks different strokes.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#419

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…

Here's my account, that might be survivorship bias. I also traded tech stocks and cryptos and was able to significantly beat the market on the former and quit (also from Amazon) a few years ago. I invested in NVidia after recognizing GPU shortages due to ML continuing hype. I switched to AMD after recognizing their Zen CPUs are slowly beating Intel. I switched to TSMC after realizing their accomplishments are signifi…

Trading firms do not focus on fundamentals. They have teams of industry experts doing the exact same kind of research you were doing.
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