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

Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 906 posts

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#481

Post by ants_a »

remolacha wrote: post #410
robntheh00d wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

End all speculative finance. That’s where we ended up after 1929, until the current billionaire class removed all the guard rails. Nobody deep on SV stocks and unicorn chasing wants to admit they’re in the bubble too. Why does society owe floating a coder bros data science project? Anything not science is a meme. That billionaires should exist is a meme. This is social philosophy, not truth. And it’s gamed. America i…

Bad take. We need capital markets to effectively value and fund different business efforts (unless you want to do things Soviet-style). And no matter how much fundamental analysis you do, some things remain unknown; all finance is in some way speculative. There are rough patches, but you need to take the bad to get the good.

A serious outsider question - are shorts an essential part of capital markets? Or do they at least provide some valuable service to the markets?

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#482

Post by whimsicalism »

numair wrote: post #274
fallingknife wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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. Says Dick Fuld. I doubt that's true, though, because at the time Lehman was going under, they didn't know that all the other banks were going with them. Remember, the bailouts didn't come until a f…

The unforeseen side effects of what was meant to be a very orderly and master-planned wind-down of one bank for the benefit of all the others — that speaks to the exact point I was making about the ridiculous notion that these are mature, all-knowing, all-wise adults. As far as good and bad people, well... The senior $LARGE_CONSUMER_BANK Vice-President who told me how much he loved the profit he was making off the ov…

> mature, all-knowing, all-wise adults.

The market is incredibly complex. If you thought that executives can foresee the downstream effects of a given market event because they are "all-knowing, all-wise", then of course you are an idiot.

But nobody you were arguing with even remotely thinks this. Of course, there is uncertainty. There was never going to be a "very orderly" draw-down, but the issues from the moral hazard of propping up Lehman were (and remain) a big consideration when considering bailouts.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#483

Post by jeffbee »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #458
jeffbee wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To raise cash? Shorting a company in terminal decline, but that will never die and will live on the pink sheets forever, is a great way to take a gain without ever having to pay the taxes.

And you just described a form of market manipulation. Except that we can't know Melvin's true motives because for some weird reason, hedge funds don't have to make their methodologies public. So why are you getting mad that retail investors are engaging in the same practices that hedge funds can do with impunity?

No? Your folk definition of "manipulation" isn't furthering this discussion.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#484

Post by content_sesh »

dkrich wrote: post #356
dalbasal wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: Subtleties. I disagree. I think a big part of why this whole thing is fascinating is the depth. Yesterday morning, financial press were blathering generalities pinning WSB as market manipulators and calling for regulation to stop them. That is, stop retail investors trading at a scale that moves markets. IE, the stuff that insiders get away with regularly. Between yesterday afternoon and now, millions of people h…

Yesterday premarket when Robinhood announced the cessation of trading in these ultra volatile stocks, was there a deep analysis of what led them to that decision? A measured consideration of why they might do that? Of course not. Immediately a false narrative was created that citadel forced them to do it under threat that they would stop their order flow. Had any politician or public figure merely suggested we let th…

Maybe if Robinhood had done literally anything to not appear like they were colluding with their customer Citadel people wouldn't have constructed "false narratives". Its some impressive mental gymnastics to see a broker lock out all of their retail investors (remember, you were completely free to liquidate your position) and offer almost no explanation, and blame the investors for being hasty and jumping to conclusions.

And for that matter, calling these narratives false seems premature. As far as I know there hasn't been any actual investigation by regulators into the reason Robinhood took those steps (although multiple politicians from across the spectrum have called for one). It seems many public figures would love to give Robinhood the opportunity to explain themselves

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#485

Post by Chris2048 »

jancsika wrote: post #121

A Moment in the Life of an HN Genius: 1. Reads a technical document outside their domain. 2. Feels dumb because they don't have a grasp on any of the concepts. 3. Too busy to use the very internet which some of them probably helped build to magically render learning materials to the screen in front of them at zero marginal cost. 4. Sees the word "manipulation" 5. Substitutes the laymen's definition of "manipulation"…

> Builds a fantasy World of Wall Street from first principles

or what experts call "a model"

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#486

Post by remolacha »

robntheh00d wrote: post #460
remolacha wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad take. We need capital markets to effectively value and fund different business efforts (unless you want to do things Soviet-style). And no matter how much fundamental analysis you do, some things remain unknown; all finance is in some way speculative. There are rough patches, but you need to take the bad to get the good.

No, we don’t. We need to let people build their communities without tethering agency to outsiders who control the flow of imaginary capital. Pretending a value in a database is real ownership of something is insane and continues to lead humanity towards fascism to protect the oligopoly at the top of the meme pyramid. You’re selling an appeal to authority that is a complete mirage, only existing in your head because o…

People can seek capital from whomever they want. But it’s also true that outside capital is useful. If my community has lots of resources and no ideas about how to use them, then the world is better off if I take my resources and find an under-resourced entrepreneur in a less wealthy part of the world to invest in. That’s what capital represents.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#487

Post by adriancr »

floor2 wrote: post #467
adriancr wrote: post #139

A few rants that i tried answering to someone before him removing post. Free speech is allowed. Prosecuting people for free speech is impossible. A bunch of imbeciles posting on forums is similar to a bunch of imbeciles on CNBC arguing that price is too high. A hedge fund with 12 billion dollars shorting 140% of a stock and then using media to drive price to 0 is illegal. Also more then idiotic since they caused the…

Essentially none of what is written in your "rants" is factually accurate, unless by calling it out you meant to make clear that these were emotional ramblings unrelated to reality. Neutral analysts on CNBC providing commentary is pretty different than someone with a financial stake trying to pump up a stock they own to maximize their profit. There is no evidence that any of the major funds involved in shorting have…

> Neutral analysts on CNBC

This is amusing, check out interview with Chamath then everything else covered. It's even more amusing when Cramer of all people was the voice of reason.

> There is no evidence that any of the major funds involved in shorting have done anything illegal.

We will see through class action lawsuit against robinhood and SEC investigations.

> There's nothing illegal about a wash sale,

Used the wrong term, I meant the massive sell order (while people were not allowed to buy) trading halt, sell order again, trading halt, a few times to trigger stop losses then price magically goes back up where it was and the sell orders evaporated...

> it doesn't need to be more than that.

Disagree, some investigations are warranted as to how this was allowed to happen. (I'm assuming investors in hedge fund arent happy either at 3 billion loss that we know of) As well as general practices and the dirty tactics employed recently

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#488

Post by vegesm »

NoOneNew wrote: post #300
dleslie wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FOMO is palpable. There's a hurried rush of small investors hoping to turn their meagre savings into a big win, backed by the anxiety that if they don't try then they'll forever regret missing their one and only chance at a comfortable life. This sort of event would be less likely if America's wealth disparity weren't so grotesquely skewed.

Everything on WSB states this is a bad investment plan and is more to bankrupt Melvin because they tried to bankrupt Gamestop. Short sellers have been using the down turned economy to collapse struggling companies that hire everyday people. What's funny is how the HN community tries to defend the firms they've whined about for years. Is what's going on irrational? Yup. But it pulls back the curtain of what the financ…

Why would shorting Gamestop mean making it to go bankrupt? The falling stock price of a company doesn't cause a company to go bankrupt, the causality is in the other direction. Putting downward pressure on price is useful only if you want to do a hostile takeover.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#489

Post by mcguire »

cogman10 wrote: post #455
wolf550e wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-consensus outsiders who make progress have done the reading. They know what the consensus is, they know all the concepts and the jargon, and they disagree about something. Your post can be interpreted to mean "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge". That's anti-vax thinking and argument. That is not a way to make progress.

Pretty well captured by that old comedy sketch "The expert" [1] I dare say that most people here on HN have been hit by upper management telling them to do something stupid or impossible. I'd even wager that most have had them get defensive when you try to explain why doing X isn't a good idea. That's effectively what I see when someone criticizes "experts" broadly and generally. I've long accepted that there are man…

If an old, grey haired scientist tells you something is possible, he's probably right. If he tells you something is impossible, he's probably wrong.[1] But if a hundred scientists tell you something, they might be wrong but it's still the way you want to put your money.

[1] As the saying goes.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#490

Post by triangleman »

snowwrestler wrote: post #445
oramit wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Facebook feed is filled with people talking about this. These are friends I have know for years who have never mentioned stocks before but now are talking about "holding the line". It is FOMO for sure, but the real emotions I get from talking with people are outrage and revenge. Everyone feels like the system (economic and political) is rigged against the public. The dopamine hit from sticking it to the man is pal…

I see it too and I think the idea of making money is mixed up in the concept of revenge, like “finally I’m going to trick Wall Street out of some money instead of the other way around.” But it’s not going to happen that way for most people. I see the idea parroted a lot that if everyone holds the line, the shorts will have to buy every outstanding share of GME stock at whatever inflated price it’s at. They won’t, tho…

Even if it was true, much of the anti-Wall Street sentiment is a scapegoat for their avarice.
Post reply on HN