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GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

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Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#161
post #117
post #68

I am loving every minute of this. The "professionals" gamble on the market all the time, front run, high frequency trade, and relentless tactics to get rich at the expense of the "retail" investors. Now they are upset that apps like Robinhood has provided unprecedented access to the markets. Their exclusive access to insane gambling nonsense is being torn down in real time. If Wall St can gamble and cause a global fi…

Yes, but retail is going to get destroyed in the end. The power elite always get what they want. Right now there appear to be curbs on GME and AMC buy orders for TD Ameritrade and Schwab customers. If you have to pull strings with your drinking buddy from Dartmouth to blow up a bunch of propertyless zoomers in order to prevent a margin call on the account you've leveraged to buy your house in the Hamptons, then that'…

> Right now there appear to be curbs on GME and AMC buy orders for TD Ameritrade and Schwab customers.

Yes indeed. Ameritrade won't even let me exercise the calls I already own. It's ridiculous.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#162
post #68

I am loving every minute of this. The "professionals" gamble on the market all the time, front run, high frequency trade, and relentless tactics to get rich at the expense of the "retail" investors. Now they are upset that apps like Robinhood has provided unprecedented access to the markets. Their exclusive access to insane gambling nonsense is being torn down in real time. If Wall St can gamble and cause a global fi…

Front Running is illegal, and companies get busted and fined for doing that. High Frequency trading is actually GOOD for retail investors because it reduces spreads and increases liquidity.

No post body was provided.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#163
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just retail that is going to get destroyed -- the option-sellers may not have enough capital to hedge effectively. A lot of parties are going to be harmed by this; it is an expensive tuition payment to the school of hard knocks. The most interesting technical thing about this fracas is the fact that WSB has managed to play the options-sellers off against the shorts to set this off. The kids have temporarily…

And (no one seems to be talking about this) but there's definitely a systemic cost. Going forward, how do you effectively manage the risk of one of your positions becoming a meme? This happening once is an interesting situation and I've certainly enjoyed watching it play out. If it happens repeatedly it will definitely start to undermine the investing public & market participant confidence in the market. That's certa…

Meh. It's about time this rotten house of cards started coming down.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#164
post #68

I am loving every minute of this. The "professionals" gamble on the market all the time, front run, high frequency trade, and relentless tactics to get rich at the expense of the "retail" investors. Now they are upset that apps like Robinhood has provided unprecedented access to the markets. Their exclusive access to insane gambling nonsense is being torn down in real time. If Wall St can gamble and cause a global fi…

Front Running is illegal, and companies get busted and fined for doing that. High Frequency trading is actually GOOD for retail investors because it reduces spreads and increases liquidity.

No it isn't. You know why front running isn't illegal? Because it keeps happening and companies keep getting fined for it.

A "law" that allows you a merely pay a fine isn't a law, its a revenue-generating procedure.

Murder is illegal. You can't pay $500,000 to the authorities and then go on about your business.

For a law to have any weight, you have to be inconvenienced regardless of your financial status.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#165
post #68

I am loving every minute of this. The "professionals" gamble on the market all the time, front run, high frequency trade, and relentless tactics to get rich at the expense of the "retail" investors. Now they are upset that apps like Robinhood has provided unprecedented access to the markets. Their exclusive access to insane gambling nonsense is being torn down in real time. If Wall St can gamble and cause a global fi…

I believe you are far off the mark here. Retail investors are well within their rights to drive up a stock to what could be above fair market value....some may well lose money in doing so. The whole narrative around retail vs. hedge funds/wall street is naive to say the least...people in financial services are worried that retail investors may lose a lot of money here which may dent confidence in the market. The iron…

value of a stock is what the market dictates is the value of the stock, not what an analyst wants the price to be. It is laughable to say that Hedges were using purely "fundamentals" for the past 10 years.

Were people in the financial services worried about retail investors when Melvin was shorting GME into the ground at $5 a share? Intentional manipulation to quickly bankrupt a company. How about with the 2000s derivatives bubble?

The only thing they are worried about is that they are getting the shitty other side of the game they made for the first time.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#166
post #23

It's really not. Because eventually retail is going to get destroyed. Yes, some hedge funds have lost their shirts, but those are the first ones who were in the short before the squeeze. The hedge funds and more importantly day trading shops making money right now are the ones who saw the activity and are goosing the stock price right now. I don't know if people realize that there are thousands of day trading shops w…

I don't think you understand what's happening here. There's only so much volume available as a result of the short positions. WSB et al are putting in money on a long hold. As a result that drives up the price. Yeah gamma's are in for sure making money. There are some people who have made multiple millions. One individual sitting at $31M currently on a $50k investment. Some retail will lose, but wall street instituti…

> One individual sitting at $31M currently on a $50k investment.

What happens when one tries to cash out this kind of position? Does he or she actually walk away with $31M?

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#167

There's a mantra among these people of "I just wanted to play video games, why couldn't you leave me alone?" The culture of a lot of redditors and internet trolls in general seems to be that they feel like they are the eternal punching bag of society. They were the punching bag in high school, they didn't get into a good school (or go to college at all), and now they're the punching bag of society as "incels" or "whi…

The real punching bag in our country is probably poor, minority single mothers.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#168
But let's not kid ourselves here - a lot of WSB users are trading under the pretense that this is some great class war against the "elite".

Here's what's going to happen, in the end (my predictions):

- Some institutional investors will make an absolute killing

- Some retail investors will make a killing

- A bunch will make fast'n easy gains

- A good share of retail investors will stand holding the bag.

Sure, some short sellers / funds will lose their shirts, if they can't come up with the funds - but it's not the end for those managers. They'll continue to get work, and continue to short companies they think are on the way down.

In the end, the "evil" hedge funds will walk out as the winners.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very likely is that the SEC is making phone calls to the big trading firms. Firms don't restrict transactions like this much voluntarily. They are going to call the Reddit CEO and have wsb shut down under the threat of SEC enforcement actions. Looks like the wsb discord is down.

Same stuff goes down on 4chan and several other sites. Not to mention the fact that the SEC has neglected to investigate insider trading for years now. IMHO why the fuck is shorting legal to begin with. Short insurance should be mandatory for short trading.

> the fact that the SEC has neglected to investigate insider trading for years now.

Obviously false: https://secsearch.sec.gov/search/docs?utf8=%E2%9C%93&affilia...

> 4chan and several other sites...

Scale dictates enforcement priorities, obviously. Like a lot of people, they don't deal with issues until they are large and impact the market. They are ABSOLUTELY going to intervene here. First with some immediate action, and later they'll craft a new rule to guide social media on stock advice being not allowed on their platforms (IMO).

> why the f** is shorting legal

Short selling rewards investors who believe that certain stocks are overvalued or that the company is covering up fraud. They helped bring Lehman Brothers down, as well as Enron, Wirecard, etc... In those instances, the shorts were instrumental in reverting stocks down to correct (sometimes zero) prices. Without them, bubbles would rise higher and poop much bigger. That sort of volatility destroys liquidity and confidence in the market.

> Short insurance should be mandatory for short trading.

There are naked short limits already, but yeah, this issue with GameStop should have those rules re-evaluated, because they obviously didn't work in this case.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#170
What I don't understand is all of the chatter in various places about how the short positions will be the only ones to lose. Even with more shorts than shares driving up the price, eventually when all shorts are covered, there will still be folks holding the original shares, and the demand will vanish. So not only will the short positions lose a lot of money, but everyone left holding shares will lose a ton of money as well. And if the float is 140% (or whatever) then isn't that like 2/5 of the total shares which is about to crash hard? So if you are holding $GME and get out randomly, you have a 2/5 chance of losing it all (by getting out after the shorts close)?
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