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

711–720 of 906 posts

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#711

Post by ummonk »

sanderjd wrote: post #698
ummonk wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, the short ratio is still over 100%, and I guarantee you those aren't retail investors. So plenty of institutional investments to stick it to left.

You don't know when those shorts got in. The price is clearly too high now, so it makes sense that sophisticated investors (probably other hedge funds) would be entering short positions at the recent prices. And those recent entrants will not be squeezed unless the price goes up by another ludicrous amount, which it is less likely to do now that the initial surge of enthusiasm is running its course. So lots of retail…

I don't think the initial surge of enthusiasm has run its course. Most are stuck trying to find another place to buy in due to RobinHood closing off purchases.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#712

Post by allenu »

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…

I know people at work joining Slack conversations about this and asking how to set up an account and how to buy the stock, while fully admitting they don't know anything about stock and have never bought any before. From their comments, it seems like they just want to throw their money at this since it seems like a good bet.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#713

Post by sangnoir »

stonogo wrote: post #648
vegesm wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because Gamestop is a business that is in the process of adapting to changing market conditions, which generally requires capital, and when market analysts go big on shorting in public it depresses stock price, and issuing stock is a major common method by which businesses raise capital. As another example, lots of people assume Elon Musk got mad at short sellers because he took it personally, when in fact they were…

Short-sellers are part of the free market. They are how the equation balances itself when trying to find the "true value" of a concern, or at least an approximation thereof.

Obviously the person who owns stock, or is set to earn billions when the share price reaches a certain level is going to be adversarial to someone whose actions result in the share price being depressed - even if that is the fair value.

> Large funds making public bets against a company have a material impact on that company's liquidity.

There are always bigger fish - and if the public bet is wrong, someone can, and will earn money at the funds' cost.

Edit: shareholders dislike shorts the same way employers dislike employees sharing salary information; it's a losing proposition for them, but a fair one.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#714

Post by tomp »

dkrich wrote: post #591
content_sesh wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conclusi…

> 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. People don’t seem to realize that brokerages do this all the time to limit their risk. If you have less than $25k in a trading account for example, a brokerage…

But why did RH lie about it then? That's the smoke that most people see.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#715

Post by astrange »

prepend wrote: post #665
astrange wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a good example of it, eg anything American doctors would’ve told you about wearing face masks was wrong until it wasn’t (and the CDC director is still telling people not to wear N95s), they still give terrible diet advice like telling diabetics to eat more carbs, and so on. Doctors are quite bad at making reasonable decisions when they don’t have an RCT in front of them.

> CDC director is still telling people not to wear N95s This is an interesting point. The statement I read from her is saying that N95s are hard to wear for long periods of time, so people will wear them improperly. So the overall adherence is higher with cloth coverings and have a net higher benefit. She’s not saying “don’t wear n95s” she’s saying “we don’t recommend it because...” This is an important distinction.…

> Also N95s have to be fit tested to be effective. So randos buying N95s and wearing them will frequently not work.

That was the excuse doctors were giving me in March that they all suddenly dropped. Are N95s without perfect fits worse than cloth masks, which don't have fit tests either? Are they better than no masks? Was Facebook wrong to stock up on N95s for employees during wildfire season?

> So the overall adherence is higher with cloth coverings and have a net higher benefit.

This is one of the worst things public health experts seemed to just be totally wrong about. They were obsessed with "risk compensation", where if you make things safer in the wrong way people will act riskier so it doesn't help. But this doesn't actually seem to happen.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#716

Post by dang »

hatsunearu wrote: post #171
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"…

And then there's another guy writing smug 8-point steps! Truly the pinnacle of hacker news culture.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by making the thread even worse. This is also in the site guidelines, which include a very clear statement of what to do instead:

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#717

Post by heimatau »

numair wrote: post #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 honor…

I find this refreshing actually.

What reason? Because it demystifies the room. It pulls the veil off and we get to see behind the curtain.

Strangely enough, I had a fleeting thought that this is why few firms went under and most got bailed out. I actually had this thought after watching the Big Short or another Wall Street movie about the 2008 crash. I thought that it was strange that Lehman was the odd one out and it struck me as a frat party. Only the cool kids survive.

@numair, you sound very candid and forthright. I appreciate it. I find it's difficult for people to mask their tone and reading this honest tone is refreshing. I wish you success in your endeavors.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#718

Post by astrange »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #574
astrange wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a good example of it, eg anything American doctors would’ve told you about wearing face masks was wrong until it wasn’t (and the CDC director is still telling people not to wear N95s), they still give terrible diet advice like telling diabetics to eat more carbs, and so on. Doctors are quite bad at making reasonable decisions when they don’t have an RCT in front of them.

Yup. Your average PCP/internist is good at one thing: analyzing your symptoms and directing you toward someone who actually can help you. Not saying that a yearly check-up isn't beneficial (it is), just that they shouldn't be prescribing Type 2 diabetes medications on the spot (and getting kickbacks) and instead should tell the patient to stop stuffing their faces so much.

Well, the advice specifically is more like "dear Type 2 diabetics, don't forget that if you eat less than 200g of carbs every day, you'll die of heart attacks from that evil saturated fat".

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#719

Post by nuusr120121 »

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…

I noticed this recent trend of stuff turning annoying political in that sub. There is so much trash being posted now drowning out useful DD. I think at the end of the day, the original WSB crowd cares way less about political statements and solely making money.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#720

Post by tal8d »

dkrich wrote: post #75

There’s a long history of similar occurrences that follow along a common line: whatever appears to support individual investors will be the path taken by politicians and regulatory bodies. 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…

Nope, the narrative has been building for the last two days that this was all perpetrated by fascist white supremacist deplorables... so it is no mystery which side Democrats will pick. Republicans will do the same for more classically stereotypical reasons.
Post reply on HN