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Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

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Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#101
post #85
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is one take, certainly. But the problem is once you say that this is a market manipulation event you run into other issues. Is going on CNBC and talking about the strength of a company that you invested in market manipulation? Before this blew up you certainly had more reach. Is posting "research" or holding a conference call and telling people a company is garbage while you have the company shorted market mani…

If wallstreetbets was a hedge fund and they bought all of GME to cause a short squeeze then that is market manipulation - this has been settled [0]. [0] - https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2013-159 Edit: litigated to settled

If WSB was a hedge fund they just have to buy some of GME - not all or even too much. Other hedge funds could buy some too.

Just have a "dinner conversation" about it.

Just like you and a few hedge funds can get together and collectively short GameStop and other companies... as they are doing now.

There's no rule that I know of that says only one entity can make a specific investment.

-edit-

Don't forget that hedge funds ARE on the other side of this trade. WSB and retail do not have the ability to move this solely on their own. I wonder how long until they're on CNBC/Bloomberg "we saw a great opportunity in the market and executed our position well". If it's market manipulation - was it market manipulation to even have heard about WSB and entered the trade? WSB is a nice scapegoat for the real money that caught these hedge funds in a bad position. Didn't take long before WSB became alt-right, white supremacist, market manipulators... etc.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#102
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not it is market manipulation, who do you think the SEC could realistically go after here?

Maybe one or two specific individuals, but you're right in general. That's the part that frightens me the most here. The tactics that are being used are equivalent to the ones used by sideshow street racers and political riots: if we get thousands of individuals to break the law at the same time and place then law enforcement will be ineffective.

It certainly _feels_ like an organized riot, but I'm not 100% sure that it is. In a riot, there are organizers and instigators, and then there is a mob who follows them. Here, I'm not really sure that the organizers exist: the closest thing I can see is the Reddit user DeepFuckingValue, and all they do is post screenshots of their position in GME without futher comment. And have been doing so for the best part of a year.

The mob seems to have largely formed itself.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Abusive or manipulative trading activity that is prohibited by the federal securities laws." Is that aimed at "professional hedge funds" or self-proclaimed "autists" in an internet forum?

It’s aimed at both, presumably. It’s not like hedge funds have never gotten in trouble for abusive trading practices.

The problem is that when hedge funds get in trouble they do not go to jail, are not prohibited from doing business and the penalties (fines) are ineffectively weak.

Given the track record of holding the powerful accountable is terrible, I don’t think this is directed at hedge funds but is a warning to the little people.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#104
post #11

What are the odds of a flash crash in the next week as a result of this activity? The system of banks and market makers and clearing houses is a always way more coupled than the the owners let on... history shows they don't know how to risk manage these sorts of situations.

>What are the odds of a flash crash

Barely more than zero because there are market circuit breakers now and broker dealers are supposed to be limiting order flow so that HFTs can't be submitting huge numbers of orders that are massively far away from what the security is trading at. Of course some broker dealers play much faster and looser than others but if shit really hits the fan the circuit breaker catches it.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#105

"The Commission will closely review actions taken by regulated entities that may disadvantage investors or otherwise unduly inhibit their ability to trade certain securities. In addition, we will act to protect retail investors when the facts demonstrate abusive or manipulative trading activity that is prohibited by the federal securities laws. Market participants should be careful to avoid such activity." This shoul…

"Abusive or manipulative trading activity that is prohibited by the federal securities laws." Is that aimed at "professional hedge funds" or self-proclaimed "autists" in an internet forum?

> actions taken by regulated entities

That's clearly not about random people commenting on an internet forum.

It may still be about specific people commenting on an internet forum, but those people would know it's about them.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#106
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s aimed at both, presumably. It’s not like hedge funds have never gotten in trouble for abusive trading practices.

This. It's clear that everyone should be lawyering up depending on what positions they had when they started pumping this idea to the masses. That said, I'm a big believer in "a fool and his money". If there are hedge funds or retail investors out there who, perhaps, didn't understand all the risks of what they were doing, protecting them from their folly only causes more problems in the future. As horrible as this s…

It's also not as if hedge funds are employing thousands of welders or craftsmen. These are high risk financial strategies by people who qualify as professional traders - "I didn't know" isn't an excuse anymore. If they lose the game, they get to eat their losses.

We will probably see a few retail traders get burned, and I suspect anyone wanting to do trading in the future is going to have to fill out more disclaimers.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#107
Okay kids, story time.

After the crash of 2008, I spent some time working with Dick Fuld. Yes, the former head of Lehman Brothers. Yes, the one people describe as “disgraced,” among other terms. Here’s the irony, though — Dick was one of the only people I encountered at that level of business/finance who wasn’t a scumbag. Unlike so many virtue-signaling Silicon Valley darlings, the guy behind the curtain was an honorable dude. And again, that’s a direct account from someone who has no vested interest or a book to sell or anything of that sort.

Dick and I worked closely together, one on one. After enough time, after he trusted me, I finally got to ask him about what the hell actually happened. The man had a ton of PTSD — and probably still does — but eventually it became clear that the real story was completely, utterly, unbelievably stupid.

Yes, Lehman was doing a bunch of stupid stuff, and the management under Dick were behaving like cowboys. But at the end of the day, that was the entire market at that time. What sunk Lehman was, in the end, a decision by all of the other big banks and the regulators that they’d let Lehman die because of something that might be best summarized as “lol idk sorry Dick but we’re just gonna let you go and let the Fed bail the rest of us out sorry bro lol.” Like really. That’s how it went behind those closed doors in the lairs of the lizards that control the universe. Lehman had already suffered near-death in 1994 — the world has now forgotten that Dick was the hero that saved the firm back then — and now it was to be made a sacrificial lamb for everyone else’s benefit.

Why am I telling you this story? What is the point? Well, what I am trying to say is that these supposed “adults in the room” who are so much smarter and better than the the “retail investors” are pretty much the same sort of immature, self-centered children as the other side. The difference is, they’ve got the regulators and the politicians in their pockets. So when they say “lol oops” and literally blow up the global economy to save face, nothing happens to them. But for some reason when it’s the retail guys, a moral panic ensues.

In my eyes, the Internet-connected retail investor is learning the power of what I call “massively multiplayer liquidity.” Yes, there’s some growing pains, but let’s not kill this wild new phenomenon before we learn what it can do. Because, from what I’ve seen from the other side of things, I doubt these self-styled “retards” will ever end up as depraved and corrupt as the people they’re disrupting.

Play ball, kids. And as Dick always used to say, “don’t get left with nothing other than a ham sandwich.”

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#108
post #89
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last giant crash was triggered by a single party (Bear Stearns) running out of credit. Do not underestimate the events that could follow if this volatility destabilizes a large market participant.

> The last giant crash was triggered by a single party (Bear Stearns) running out of credit. It was waaaaaay more complex than that, the Bear Stearns thing was one of many worldwide symptoms (not cause) of a widespread problem. There is nothing to compare between this GME event and 2008 crisis (even though there are plenty of other issues that could lead to one) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–…

That was the point of my original post. Not that current events are comparable to historical events as far as the mechanism of crisis is concerned... but that stresses like the ones today have a way of uncovering new and interesting failure modes which people collectively wrote off as unlikely.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#109

Apparently when retail investors win it's "Manipulative trading activity"... I'm so glad Bitcoin and DeFi was invented in my lifetime and I can be protected by maths and computer science instead of a three letter agency.

Yeah that’s nice, so at least you can be involved in something where there is no doubt of large scale unfettered manipulation. I guess that certainty is a plus for some.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#110
post #32

There's been some speculation that what WSB are doing could be market manipulation or otherwise illegal. The fact that this statement only mention retail investors in the context of protecting them makes me suspect that the SEC's not going for it.

Could be? It's an open, publicly-documented market manipulation event. How can there be any question about it? You might decide that this kind of manipulation is OK due to it's stated goals, but that doesn't make it not manipulation.

Persuading people that they should invest in X company for Y reason is not market manipulation. People who take a short position frequently announce their short publicly, with the express aim of achieving their goals.
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