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Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

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Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#721

Post by Spooky23 »

snarf21 wrote: post #566
sanderjd wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I haven’t watched Cramer regularly in a long time, but unless he changed, this isn’t what he does.

He has an entertainment component, but fundamentally encourages people to educate themselves and manage a portfolio of stocks who choose to do so.

The mob bullshit we’re seeing now is just the new normal - brigades of internet idiots, motivated by profit or ignorance to run around like a drunken monkey. It’s no different than the political drama we’ve seen fomented by irresponsible social media like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#722

Post by mcguire »

cactus2093 wrote: post #647
mcguire wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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…

Do you have sources for your claims? I've also looked into it a little and come to the opposite conclusion. Here is one study from Singapore in 2014 that showed surgical and n95 have about a 68% and 95% efficacy respectively at preventing SARS transmission https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4293989/ Masks have also been shown to provide protection against the common cold (many strains of which are also coro…

Here's my previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25738200

https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128... [2019]

"In summary, despite the various mechanistic arguments about which organisms can be potentially airborne and therefore aerosol-transmissible, ultimately, the main deciding factor appears to be how many studies using various differing approaches: empirical (clinical, epidemiological), and/or experimental (e.g. using animal models), and/or mechanistic (using airflow tracers and air-sampling) methods, reach the same consensus opinion. Over time, the scientific community will eventually form an impression of the predominant transmission route for that specific agent, even if the conclusion is one of mixed transmission routes, with different routes predominating depending on the specific situations. This is the case for influenza viruses, and is likely the most realistic."

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#723

Post by vkou »

mgleason_3 wrote: post #670
dudeinjapan wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not apples-to-apples, but... I worked on Lehman's Tokyo electronic trading desk in 2008. When we went bankrupt, it wasn't our clients, or even the exchanges which stopped our trading. It was our clearing banks. Interestingly, we weren't cutoff uniformly in all markets. NY desk was trading about 75% of regular volume for 4 days into the bankruptcy before someone (SEC?) told them to knock it off. There's a lot go…

“I’m as pissed as anyone that they shut off trading,” Robinhood did not halt trading or shut off trading. Robinhood prevented _buying_ Gamestop and only allowed selling. That’s entirely different. It can only do one thing - drive the price down which is market manipulation. It’s supposed to be illegal.

Robinhood's collateral requirements increase when their users buy stock, and decrease when their users sell stock.

If they hit their collateral limits, they have two options.

1. Stop all trading for a few days, as the trades settle, the funds clear, and the collateral requirements drop. Cue millions of pissed users who want to close their positions, but can't.

2. Only stop trades that increase their collateral requirements - buys.

There's also option 3 which is 'immediately get kicked off the settlement networks and go into bankruptcy, because they are trading past their collateral requirements.'

Which of these three options would manipulate the stock price less, and screw over fewer people, in your estimate?

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#724

Post by chosen1111 »

astrange wrote: post #553
chosen1111 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does medical advice fall into this consensus trap? If so...relative to today?

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.

thank you for your candid and informative reply

i always find it fascinating to hear people's take on science and medicine

especially when conclusions that have weight reach politically hazardous territory

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#725

Post by einpoklum »

> extreme stock price volatility has the potential to expose investors to rapid and severe losses

Isn't that the definition of extreme stock volatility? Extreme height volatility has the potential to expose you to severe falls.

> extreme stock price volatility has the potential to ... undermine market confidence.

Confidence in what, exactly?

> As always, the Commission will work to protect investors, to maintain fair ... markets,

I don't see what's fair about the stock market.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#726

Post by Aunche »

snarf21 wrote: post #566
sanderjd wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

We let big players partake in risky things like shorting GME above 100% float because we don't care if they lose. It's the same reason we allow them to invest in companies like Theranos. They know the risks they were getting into and will still be fine without a extra 0 in their bank account. Regular followers of WSB are aware of the risks as well, so I'm fine with them attempting a short squeeze. The problem is that they're encouraging regular people to join their crusade against hedge funds who are most likely going to time the market incorrectly. What's worse is that most of the world, including politicians are cheering them on.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#727

Post by einpoklum »

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…

> What's funny is how the HN community tries to defend the firms they've whined about for years.

Aren't you over-generalizing just slightly? Even in a post with many comments, only a small number of community members (if this is a community at all) post anything. And not a huge number vote, either.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#728

Post by Nasrudith »

glitchc wrote: post #526
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"…

I don’t know where this perspective comes from. Reading the SEC note suggests that they are actively investigating or looking to actively investigate to see if there was market manipulation. No conclusions made as of yet. When the market wildly diverges from steady state operations, this is an entirely reasonable thing for the SEC to do. An unstable market hurts the average person far more than a stable one.

Yeah it is essentially just a boilerplate post that just says "We heard and are looking into it" essentially. It will probably be months to years after the event for them to conclude who if anyone rose to the level of illicit market manipulation or other offenses and who would be responsible. Robinhood was at risk of being fined by the SEC for their infamous infamous leverage glitch as opposed to the users. (Not sure if it ended in a real fine as the media lost interest post patch.)

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#729

Post by einpoklum »

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…

> But now it is people who saw the story on Good Morning America

Most of those people don't own stock and don't know how to buy stock.

And I would guess most of them tune out stories about stocks going up or down like they tune out commercial breaks or the business segment of news shows.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#730

Post by kortilla »

heimatau wrote: post #717
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 i…

Wall Street 2 effectively has an enactment of the scene where they all throw the one firm under the bus.
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