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

High Short Interest Stocks

highshortinterest.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 286 posts

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#241

Post by davewritescode »

cbozeman wrote: post #162
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out an online community can stay irrational longer than a hedge can solvent.

This was one scenario were the shorts really did have it wrong. GameStop's financials were and are pretty solid. There was no reason to short the stock so heavily, which is why they're in the trouble that they're in right now. You should watch Roaring Kitty's video from June 2019 I believe (maybe its 2020?) on YouTube about this. He goes into great detail, with something like an hour of analysis on why $GME is a reas…

Someone explained to me (perhaps incorrectly) that GMEs market cap was less than the value of it's real-estate holdings. Now GameStop isn't a great company but it's not bleeding as badly as you would expect and it has a turnaround plan that's it's executing.

It never should've been shorted as much as it was without hedging the other side of the bet. What was Melvin going to do if GameStop found a way to be wildly profitable in e-commerce?

This is fundamentally terrible risk management coming back to bite people in the ass. This time it was a Reddit internet mob but it could've been anything.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#242

Post by tonfa »

cbozeman wrote: post #164
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These situations tend to blow Up both sides, more or less. A few lucky Redditors will get out with profits. Most of the late entries are going to take steep losses. Those losing Redditors will be paying the winning Redditors. The narrative that this is hedge funds losing to Redditors isn’t fully accurate.

Hedge funds are down $70 billion over this, so I'm pretty sure there's some accuracy. And no, its not all GameStop, but $GME is a driver. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-trading-shortbets-...

Isn't that fairly misleading?

> Ortex said the figures are based on the change in trading prices between the start of January to Wednesday’s close, and the number of short positions.

The shorts might be down 70 billions, but won't most hedge funds hedge their position with something more complex than just a short?

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#243

Post by kzrdude »

torben-friis wrote: post #182
cbozeman wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was one scenario were the shorts really did have it wrong. GameStop's financials were and are pretty solid. There was no reason to short the stock so heavily, which is why they're in the trouble that they're in right now. You should watch Roaring Kitty's video from June 2019 I believe (maybe its 2020?) on YouTube about this. He goes into great detail, with something like an hour of analysis on why $GME is a reas…

>This was one scenario were the shorts really did have it wrong. GameStop's financials were and are pretty solid. Honest question: do you really think that rational analysis of the viability of a stock is relevant at this point? It seems to me that gme just happened to end up being the battlefield in which the wsb people acted

The rational analysis was the basis. What's happening the last weeks is just the noise of WSB once it came through. Now it's a lot of noise and a lot of money that's going to be lost by people wanting to get in on this -- far too late.

A rational forum would be everyone marvelling at what was already pulled off, not this free-for-all where everyone's pretending there's a big battle going on right now and pretending there is anything to gain left.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#244

Post by ballenf »

cbozeman wrote: post #162
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out an online community can stay irrational longer than a hedge can solvent.

This was one scenario were the shorts really did have it wrong. GameStop's financials were and are pretty solid. There was no reason to short the stock so heavily, which is why they're in the trouble that they're in right now. You should watch Roaring Kitty's video from June 2019 I believe (maybe its 2020?) on YouTube about this. He goes into great detail, with something like an hour of analysis on why $GME is a reas…

> GameStop's financials were and are pretty solid.

But aren't stock prices almost entirely about future performance? So will GME's business model work tomorrow?

I think the answer is yes. They're the best option for buying used peripherals that I've found. I can get it right away, can exchange easily if a problem and can see the item before I buy (or at least when I pickup).

I've just wasted too much time trying to see through the Amazon reviews gaming, do what feels like national security background checks on eBay sellers or go through the hassle of FB marketplace.

Maybe it's just me, but as a casual gamer and fan of legacy consoles, I like shopping at Gamestop. Whether online with "at the door" pickup or in the store. The locations around me have employees that seem genuinely happy. Maybe they're good at hiding their misery.

If Gamestop would expand into more hobby shop items, it could really take off. Board games, miniatures, etc. And why don't they stock energy drinks (my locations don't anyway)? Post-pandemic add small cafes with rentable game systems. I think people will be desperate for actual human interaction once that's possible again.

Finally, with this ongoing retail apocalypse maybe their leases will get cheaper.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#246

Post by mschuster91 »

worker767424 wrote: post #178
mike00632 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give it a few years. I'm still skeptical that Tesla should be worth more than all the other auto companies combined.

Depends if they can have profit margins a lot higher than other auto companies. They probably can't, but higher profit margins are one way to justify a valuation. Really, it's priced higher because people like the brand, even if it's run by someone easily distracted who used shareholder money to bail out his cousin's solar business who goes around making 420 tweets, and that's when he's not calling people pedophiles.…

> Oh, and their hubris kills people.

Killing people comes with manufacturing automobiles. Takata airbags and other "cost cutting" disasters, selling cars that can go 300+ km/h which can't be legally driven at that speed anywhere except race tracks and German autobahns, making safety features such as seat belts, side mirrors, traction control etc. optional until the government regulators have had enough deaths and mandate it...

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#247

Post by hardwaresofton »

DSingularity wrote: post #207
hardwaresofton wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful not to fall into the narrative the mainstream US media is selling, though it shifted drastically yesterday -- this is not a coordinated attack. WSB is full of people shilling all types of tickers for all types of reasons, but there is a large amount of people there who understand (or at least pretend to) the dynamics of a gamma + short squeeze, and are in it for that reason. The person who posted one of th…

> Here's an example -- a bunch of stocks that were essentially left for dead (heavily shorted) popped yesterday and the rationalization was retail jumping in. Which ones? The AMC, EXPR and so on?

Yeah, AMC, BB, NOK, AAL, EXPR, any stock that had a meteoric rise yesterday was explained as "unsophisticated" retail investors getting in, when I'm very convinced it was shorts getting out.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#248

Post by PartiallyTyped »

totalZero wrote: post #229
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the following, everyone claimed reusing rockets was physically impossible. Well here we are now. Sure 'end of next year' may be impossible, but doing it at some point is not necessarily impossible given certain conditions. Nothing to do with targets, everything to do with values. And a company is more than what it produces, it is also the patents they own and the brains they wield. PS: I do research in ML.

I don't know anyone who claimed that reusing rockets was physically impossible. The Space Shuttle SRBs were reusable. To paraphrase you, "here we were then."

IIRC the boosters were not reusable.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#249

Post by ComputerGuru »

chii wrote: post #103
bluGill wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the big guys are convinced that they are right and have the money to not worry about a margin call. In that case they should be shorting more. If GameStop is really worthless then they win when the company finally files bankruptcy.

but with this high a stock price, they could issue new shares can't they? They can survive by diluting existing shares at this price, and work out a new business model with plenty of runway.

Not without voting rights, no? The people that won’t sell also wouldn’t vote to split.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#250

Post by uxp100 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #36
kortilla wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Papa Elon” isn’t exactly praising the working class. WSB has less of a problem with Billionaires than they do Wall Street.

Yeah, WSB hates bankers, has nothing against founder-owners.

I mean, even hating bankers seems to be basically brand new. The culture of WSB has radically changed very very recently.
Post reply on HN