Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thinkingthrough.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 475 posts

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

#261

Post by [deleted] »

codetrotter wrote: post #185
kjakm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all reminds me of the crypto ICO's a few years back. Build a tonne of hype around something, get a vast number of people who don't really know what they're doing to put in their money, and then the big investors get out, tanking the price for everyone else. In all the talk of conspiracy around this I'm surprised nobody is discussing the possibility that larger investors are likely manipulating/hyping the WSB com…

Exactly this. I went over to r/WSB earlier today to see what the fuzz was all about, and all of the posts there remind me exactly of the content that was being posted in cryptocurrency subreddits a few years ago. Posts about having bought high and intending to hold. To me when I see this I think, how many of these posts are people that are trying to hype up others to put money in, so that the people that are hyping t…

[deleted]

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

#262

Post by luxuryballs »

fireeyed wrote: post #76
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #8

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.

Don't you think the honchos at Robinhood got the call from the man last night ? Its a coordinated ban of serfs from buying up AMC GME BB. Its got too hot for them.

Yep, though the man could just be their lawyer saying hey this was our target market so let’s do our own meta risk mitigation here.

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

#263

Post by pjc50 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #79
mancerayder wrote: post #55

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…

Robinhood is a free service. The customers don’t pay anything. If the order internalizers decide to stop paying them for their order flow, then they have to route to the exchanges. which charge fees. Trading is still ongoing at the exchanges. It’s just the free platforms, where it’s shut down. If someone wanted guaranteed access to the exchange, then they shouldn’t have used a free broker. Are you saying that Robinho…

Allowing trading in only one direction is clearly market manipulation and should be slammed by the SEC.

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

#264

Post by chias »

nlitened wrote: post #202
dreamcompiler wrote: post #163

The endgame here is fascinating to me. The people who got in early will suffer least when GSE finally crashes and burns. But the poor suckers who bought it at $150 are going to be in big trouble. They're all trying to stay strong and hold long because that's the way to make the hedge funds suffer, but the smarter ones will figure out that their only chance to not lose their shirts is to be in the earliest 5% of scabs…

> Meanwhile a couple of hedge funds go under Which means that the money the hedge funds lost is redistributed among all who held the stock. It's not that the money vanishes. That's why people hold until the hedge funds go under.

That's not really how the stock market works. The money does indeed "vanish" insofar as it was ever there to begin with.

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

#265

Post by pureliquidhw »

lkramer wrote: post #109
mancerayder wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying they should be sued. So, yes, I am saying that. If you buy securities you can't sell, you're pinned and that's not right, is it. I'm not sure if Robinhood traders signed up to that. Free doesn't matter.

They still allow selling, just not buying.

But who's buying if you can't buy? Limiting the audience that can buy reduces demand, and thus the price will be negatively impacted.

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

#266

Post by snowwrestler »

willis936 wrote: post #70
ghaff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they're going to show Wall Street who's boss by gambling away their grocery money? (Some will make out but I suspect the vast majority will lose big--money at least some can't really afford to lose.) I have trouble conjuring up a lot of sympathy but that's almost certainly uncharitable as I'm sure there will be stories of serious individual loss.

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.

This is not just a WSB thing anymore, it was front-page news on every news service yesterday.

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

#267

Post by sgpl »

dcolkitt wrote: post #217
sgpl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just robinhood, platforms that charge commission such as IBRK [1] have halted the trade of options (which is different from not allowing buying) but it definitely suggests some behind the scenes coordination for all these online brokers to all decide this today. [1] https://www.axios.com/robinhood-gamestop-restrictions-370adf...

Options are different than equities. The possibility of losses far exceeding the initial position is easily possible. If the customer loses all their money, the broker is in the hook. IB clearly is concerned about the credit risk, when the stock could literally rise or fall by a factor of ten in a day. They’re still allowing trading in the underlying stock.

Correct me if I'm wrong but if I'm buying a call, my downside is limited to the price that I pay for the option no?

Obviously if people are selling options / etc. downside can be uncapped.

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

#268

Post by jrumbut »

totalZero wrote: post #125
bidirectional wrote: post #19

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.

I would have imagined you could read the business category of any major news outlet on any given day and see the fallibility, but I think you're right that that may be a common interpretation of this event.

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

#269

Post by antoniuschan99 »

duxup wrote: post #159
dx87 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that any different to taking a day off work to go to a protest? Both situations have you losing money in order to bring issues to light. Same with union workers going on strike.

Except if I were to protest it is focused on that one employer / hits them. Meanwhile this financial system is hardly just a monolithic monster and plenty of big institutions will make money too. I think the populist ideas / results around this are all weirdly misguided.

Citron mainly is one focus for sure. I'm sure someone knows why Melvin Capital is targeted.

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

#270

Post by fairity »

GVIrish wrote: post #227
fairity wrote: post #183

I'm really confused why the general public is enraged at the brokerages' decision to stop new buy orders for GME. It's very clear that retail is going to lose their shirts in the end of all of this. By blocking new buy orders, the brokerage is effectively protecting its naive clientele. This isn't some government conspiracy. This is a firm trying its best to operate in the best interest of its clients.

The brokerage (Robinhood) is absolutely not protecting their clientele. If they were, they would've explained what they were doing when they did it or shortly thereafter. The silence is an indictment.

My guess is they are staying silent to avoid legal liability in the case that the run-up continues onwards in a significant manner.
Post reply on HN