Live data from Hacker News

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

thinkingthrough.substack.com

231–240 of 475 posts

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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I don’t. I think the market makers/internalizers who are normally on the other side of retail trades want no part of the irrationality around these symbols so they pulled their orders. There is no one on the other side of the book so Robinhood can’t execute. It’s standard market dynamics that anyone whose traded before understands. That a bunch of new retail traders are about to learn an expensive lesson on execut…

I am not a WS insider. I just checked $GME its up 6% as the serfs moved on to other trading platforms. Obviously someone is on the otherside of the trade no ?

That price is based on the last trade to go through on a lit exchange independent of how big it is.

I don’t have a full book feed available to see what the book looks like but on my delayed free feed the last few trades were in the 300-700 sized lots. That’s tiny especially if the internalizers have pulled out.

My guess is that the book is actually showing some gigantic spread where the lowest sell price with any size is tens of dollars off the highest buy orders. But that’s speculation on my part.

[edit] later: just saw a 70k lot clear at $375. Guessing that’s some stops getting hit and clearing that level. The price immediately jumped up over $410. All of this lends credence to my belief that the GME book is crazy one sided and hard to execute into.

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

#232
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is categorically false.

Prove it.

Wikipedia to the rescue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_room_(business)

Notably, public forums are not included as part of a boiler room scam.

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

#233
post #12

This is a poor quality submission to this forum. I've been in WSB for ages, and it was, is and will always be about the money.

It is mostly about the money, but it is also very much about memes, chicken tenders and fucking with the establishment.

What these journalists got wrong or are lying about is wsb being mainly an anti-establishment movement.

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

#234
post #63

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.

If you buy stock with the purpose of pushing the price up so that other people will buy it, that’s market manipulation. What WSB crowd is doing is market manipulation. That's illegal. WSB is doing everything openly and even celebrating it. Getting mad when openly breaking the law is not rational response. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/78i Brokers like Robinhood are reacting because they want too keep SEC…

It's not that clear as far as I can tell (and from reading commentary from people far more knowledgeable than me).

Matt Levine's column from 2 days ago, for example, goes over some of those questions to a decent degree: (possible paywall)

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-26/will-w...

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

#235
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying they're even dumber than they appear at first glance? Sorry, but pissing money away (or actually likely giving it to some Wall Street institution) to send some ill-defined "message" really can't be called anything but dumb.

You just said anyone who has ever contributed to a presidential campaign in their life is a moron. I don't see how this can be interpreted any other way, no one pisses away $100 to the Libertarian candidate expecting he's really going to save over $100 in income tax or reduced regulations the next year...

I would say that giving money to a libertarian (or other) candidate is a very clear message that you favor their policies compared to the alternatives. Yes, $100 isn't going to move the needle but neither is your individual vote in the vast majority of cases.

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

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen very little evidence of people investing money in the stock market that is not budgeted as “gambling” (ie disposable income). WSB embraces the idea that memetrading is gambling. This is not a surprise to anyone but a few outsiders.

But it kind of goes against the story that this is “the people” against Wall Street. “The people”, by and large, do not have a ton of spare gambling money sitting around. “Upper middle class folks with spare disposable income vs Wall Street” isn’t quite as persuasive a hook, though.

Certainly. It takes money to make money. That rule hasn’t changed yet.

Many of societies big issues are intertwined so hopefully addressing one partially addresses many. The golden rule is particularly nasty: those with the gold make the rules.

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

#237

Premature gloating. The government can always come in at the last minute with bailouts for wall street and overblown charges against the redditors. I see that you've been HODLing some GME. Sorry bro, have to charge you with economic terrorism. Nothing personal.

When have hedge funds been bailed out by the government? Especially over a single stock? Even if a small hedge fund or two go bankrupt this doesnt affect the economy much and there is no chance the government will bail them out. This isn't all of wallstreet on the line at all.

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

#239

They are blocking buying, and only allowing selling GME, BB and others. How is this not evidence of a corrupted free market system? A CEO of one company can call up his connections in retail trading platform firms, CNBC, and Nasdaq and protect his profits? Why is Reddit the scandal and not that? Reddit is full of rocket emojis and YOLO jokes. But what we see here, especially with the moralizing about gambling, is an…

> They are blocking buying, and only allowing selling GME, BB and others. How is this not evidence of a corrupted free market system? I can almost guarantee you that this decision was made to protect retail clients -- not as part of some conspiracy against them. It's very clear that retail is going to lose their shirts in the end of all of this, and by blocking new buy orders, the brokerage is effectively protecting…

You don't think the shorts are getting a chance out of their positions here?

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

#240

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.…

Sure, but Gabe Plotkin is the uber-wallstreeter. All the rich-but-average Chosen Ones who get internships because of mommy and daddy look at what guys like him accomplish and think, "someday that too can be mine." This is like that scene in 300 where Leonidas makes Xerxes bleed. The point isn't that Wall Street has fallen. It's that, for once, Wall Street is fallible.

While I enjoy the esprit de corp of this particular discussion, the recurring allusions to "David vs Goliath"-esque tales are rather cringe-inducing and really speak to the maturity level of those involved (if that wasn't already clear by their "tendies").
Post reply on HN