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Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

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Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#561

Post by egwor »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #417
beaconstudios wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree that merit of arguments should be earned by the argument, but on HN there's an awful lot of bad arguments posited in terms of "I think it probably works THIS way based on how I imagined up the entire industry in my head" that then go on to try to make a "hoho those stupid industry insiders, they didn't see solution X" point on said completely imaginary model. IE, not very rigorous models being used ov…

The arguments posited in terms of " I think it probably works THIS way ..." are arguably the best ones - they qualify someone's lack of expertise and save the reader from assigning undue confidence to claims :). That said, Internet discussions are run on Cunningham's Law - you say what you think you know, and others will call your errors out, or challenge your assumptions. As long as people don't read any single comm…

I think that there's a real problem with people using 'Cunningham's Law' as a way to learn. It might be fine for that person (because they know their limits), but then anyone reading it could incorrectly quote that person as being right (because it wasn't corrected). These ideas are then duplicated and we get into a real mess where we can't differentiate widely held views vs the experts/most agreed upon view by experts.

In general, this can't be a way to move forward as a society if people just make stuff up.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#562

Post by mjburgess »

scythe wrote: post #432
hrktb wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in principle. Then in real life example you will have real doctors and nurses giving conflicting advices and having wildly different viewpoints on the details. The easy to point to example is how a lot of doctors viewed masks at the beginning of the pandemic. Or how trickle down economics is also endorsed by experts. Or experts opinions on mental health drugs. And so many other subjects where it won’t be hard…

>Or how trickle down economics is also endorsed by experts. Trickle-down economics is not explicitly endorsed by anyone , because it's a pejorative. That's like saying "totalitarianism is popular in some countries"; you might think those countries are totalitarian, but they don't.

Indeed. Even then, as a term, it refers to a specific regan-era tax policy.

What many on the left assume it means, is a sincere description of growth "raising the tide"; and how ridiculous an idea that is.

Of course the tide has risen to an unprecedented degree in human history both since the term "trickle down" was invented; and moreso, over the last 40 years.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#563

Post by cvwright »

mcguire wrote: post #489
cogman10 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> [1] As the saying goes.

It's from Arthur C. Clarke.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/155962-when-a-distinguished...

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#564

Post by ditonal »

TameAntelope wrote: post #206
Miner49er wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now it appears that the public wants to be able to trade on their terms because there is this narrative that the little guy is finally sticking it to the big bad hedge funds. In reality there is probably very little truth to this. The fact that buying was limited yesterday is evidence that the little guy is actually winning here. Trading was stopped to save the hedge funds, because if they go under or lose to…

I cannot stress this strongly enough -- the fact that buying was limited yesterday is not evidence that the little guy is actually winning. As has been explained in multiple other places, the limitations were as a result of Robinhood et. al. being unable to cover the risks involved in providing instant trading capabilities for a stock as volatile as the ones that got restricted. That has nothing to do with "the littl…

Your "facts" are basically corporate PR statements from corporations that have a huge entrenched reason to distort the truth and have changed stories multiple times. I'd say your eagerness to accept RH's version of the truth as 100% credible is far more actively dangerous than what you responded to.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#565

Post by esoterica »

nvarsj wrote: post #205
sidlls wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is pretty accurate even for many software and tech related discussions here (it’s a big field with lots of specialties).

Yes, it's a reductionist argument that can apply to literally anything. Let's just delete all user discussions on the internet, and only allow PhD granted experts to discuss things on panels where they must provide primary sources for everything. Or you could simply point out when someone is wrong, and explain why, assuming you are an expert. Then we all learn.

We shouldn't make fun of people for not knowing things, but it's perfectly okay to make fun of people for being narcissistic enough to think they are experts on a topic and arguing fervently based on their shallow and distorted understanding of the topic and hand when they are clearly not.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#566

Post by snarf21 »

sanderjd wrote: post #368
NoOneNew wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's what oh-so-many people are missing: the gigantic volume in these stocks is no longer coming from the WSB YOLO bros who know they'll lose money but think that's worth it to stick it to hedge funds. That may well be who was getting into the stock on Monday and Tuesday. But now it is people who saw the story on Good Morning America, having never previously heard of WSB or Robinhood, who don't care about hedge fun…

And what about all the people who watch MSNBC and CNBC and Cramer, do they need to stop pushing stops as good or bad too? They tell lots of people "who don't care about hedge funds or any of that, but just got the impression from the news that hey this stock is going way up and that must mean it is a way to make a quick buck" too.

None of this could have happened if they weren't shorting GME at 143%+ of float. They were greedy, this is the consequence. In 2006-2008, they ALL were greedy and so the government had to bail them out. No lessons were learned. If the SEC wants to do something, remove these instruments that allow infinite leverage and collapses.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#568

Post by NoOneNew »

vegesm wrote: post #488
NoOneNew wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hi, let me google "how short sellers hurt companies" for you.

First link of one practice: short and distort https://www.investopedia.com/articles/analyst/030102.asp

You can google more yourself.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#569

Post by pgAdmin4 »

I am naive here, can someone explain what is the economic utility of a stock market ?

For example, its easy to understand utility of food, cloths, car, house, money. But I am not able to find a reason about stock market existence for day-to-day trading, where secondary stocks are traded daily after IPO. It seems none of the day-to-day trading money/profit ever goes back to business to help them to improve that business.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#570

Post by astrange »

mcguire wrote: post #528
hrktb wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in principle. Then in real life example you will have real doctors and nurses giving conflicting advices and having wildly different viewpoints on the details. The easy to point to example is how a lot of doctors viewed masks at the beginning of the pandemic. Or how trickle down economics is also endorsed by experts. Or experts opinions on mental health drugs. And so many other subjects where it won’t be hard…

" how a lot of doctors viewed masks at the beginning of the pandemic " Ok, so I've looked into the history of this a little, and most of the mask mythology seems misunderstood. Prior to 2020, most medical professionals believed most viruses, and corona viruses particularly, could not be transported as aerosols. This was a subject of research where the data had not come in. About late March, it began to appear that th…

> Prior to 2020, most medical professionals believed most viruses, and corona viruses particularly, could not be transported as aerosols.

That’s most American medical professionals. And they mostly seemed to believe you would get yourself sick faster by touching your eyes after taking the mask off wrong, or that masks provided 0% protection unless you wore an N95 with a fit test, or that if they didn’t lie about them being useless people would steal them from hospitals. They certainly didn’t believe they were truly useless, since they were all wearing them for procedures.

Actually, wasn’t the excuse for suddenly being like “face masks are good actually” that they didn’t know COVID had asymptomatic spread before then? That’s even worse than not knowing it spread through aerosols.

> This was a subject of research where the data had not come in.

By using the technique of “not assuming all of Asia is primitive and superstitious”, it was easy to figure out what to do without an RCT. Note there isn’t evidence that surgical masks help during surgery either.

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