Live data from Hacker News

WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

thinkingthrough.substack.com

81–90 of 475 posts

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#81

Once again, this insistence on viewing 'Wall Street' as a monolothic entity. The largest asset management firm on Earth holds over 9 million Gamestop stock, none of the big banks that received bailouts in 08 are affected by this, 99.9% of hedge funds are not affected by this, high frequency traders are probably making a bundle. Institutional money was long Gamestop before this story entered the public consciousness.…

Ah the good old "it's just some bad apples", the system is great, trust it.

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#82
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6omry/an_o... I'm not so sure

Populist anger found a new weapon: money. Plus good old social media manipulation.

And perhaps money found a new weapon in populist anger.

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#83
post #10

I don't know- there must be institutional players on the long side by now right? Either way, _eventually_ someone will be left holding the bag when the stock comes back down to earth.

Retail traders are literally locked out of buying new shares... they were a scapegoat the whole time. $GME is up 11% as of the writing of this post. Who is buying it? This is actually making me angry to watch. -edit- I had like one share - Robinhood just sold my shares without me ordering it. Dunno what happened there.

> $GME is up 11% as of the writing of this post. Who is buying it?

Robinhood isn't the only investment platform that allows trades on NYSE obviously. Evidently though, it had the highest volume when it comes to GME it seems.

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#84
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occupy Wall Street was just 10 years ago. It was the longest demonstration in a lifetime. Nothing changed. How did nothing change? What message does this send?

The reason nothing changed with OWS is because they couldn't voice a clear message. Everyone knows they're being defrauded but the fraud is complex and difficult to communicate so instead you have this disorganized protest that amounts to very little change.

Tax the rich. Distribute the wealth that was stolen from the backs of the workers. It wasn’t said clearly because we were living in a post 9/11 era where uttering words like “socialism” was still unpopular.

Enough is enough. The only thing keeping the guillotines from coming out is a thriving middle class. Oh wait, that’s been stolen. It badly needs fixing and fast.

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#85

As someone who is not very educated in finance, I'm curious how to interpret today's events. Is nasdaq/robinhood/everyone else transparently manipulating the market on behalf of hedge funds? Or are these standard mechanisms in place for preventing the stock market from swinging wildly out of control? I don't know if it's standard to completely block trading on one or more stocks.

WSB has basically recreated a "boiler room", which is an ages old scam where a small group of insiders would encourage people to buy stock, drive them value up, and then the insiders dump the stock. The key insight here is that for every person selling the stock and making millions, somoene has to be buying. There's a narrative about short squeezes forcing a small number of hedge funds to buy stock, but in practice m…

That's not true, WSB are not insiders. The information that they are trading on was public.

Basically hedge funds promised to buy 140% of available GME stock which is impossible.

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#86
post #9

People have had enough, it's not just WSB anymore. The community of retail investors in GME is far beyond WSB. It's people that are frustrated with the 1% getting bailed out time and time again and them not seeing a dime at their tax dollar expense.

Occupy Wall Street was just 10 years ago. It was the longest demonstration in a lifetime. Nothing changed. How did nothing change? What message does this send?

> How did nothing change? What message does this send?

nothing changed because camping out in a park for a few months without making any actionable, specific demands as a group is not a good tactic for effecting change. BLM was a bit more specific with their demands and have already received a few (if token) concessions.

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occupy Wall Street was just 10 years ago. It was the longest demonstration in a lifetime. Nothing changed. How did nothing change? What message does this send?

That sitting around playing drums and smoking doesn’t accomplish anything productive.

That’s called being civil. Would you prefer they instead break the law to have their voices heard? Do you want wall street suits to fear for their life?

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#88

What's interesting to me is that there is a populist narrative at play, but wouldn't WSB overshort a stock too if they thought they could?

Nobody would be complaining if they lost a ton of money on a stupid trade. In fact they would be posting loss porn on the front page of the subreddit and laughing about it. In fact, some WSBers did short GME and lost a bunch of money.

But when the hedge funders get caught then for some reason it's bad and Reddit or Robinhood or the government needs to step in and fix the situation. Instead, we should all be laughing over Melvin Capital's loss porn.

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#89
It's never more about money than when "It's not about the money anymore".

I think that with a stock whose worth at this point is the result of pure dutch-tulip-like speculation, the question is where is the tipping point where money just becomes too good to ignore and when people start collectively selling, making the stock inevitably plummet.

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain how this is market manipulation?

Not letting people buy forces everyone to either hold or sell, bringing down the prices. Moving to a new broker takes time for approval, transfer.

To your transfer point, Robinhood inappropriately rejected my ACATS transfer that I initiated yesterday, which I started anticipating the collapse of their technical infrastructure. I was, of course, borne out correct and now I’m forced to liquidate with an app that barely works. So they’re even locking the transfer door. I’m talking to a lawyer this morning about options. help@ is silent.

Canceling orders doesn’t work, market orders on non-memes are up to 20min to execute, my profile page has been a fastfail 500 for four days, but because I held some of these famous securities their “we want you be informed during these uncertain times” (please) notifications work just fine.

If you still use Robinhood it’s time to go. Get out while it’s partially working. As an SRE I’m not sure that’s going to last, and that’s even before dissecting the business model.

Post reply on HN