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Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

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Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#731

Post by content_sesh »

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…

> Actually the fact that they were letting people exit trades was a big clue to me that this was risk mitigation while this collusion with citadel narrative was making the rounds.

Ok let's say I'm a retail investor using RH. Why should I need to divine what my brokerage is doing from Twitter posts and Reddit? My should I need to wait hours for their explanation that comes in the form of a handwavey blog post?

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#732

Post by sanderjd »

ummonk wrote: post #711
sanderjd wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We'll see won't we?

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#733

Post by fractionalhare »

triangleman wrote: post #501
throwaway-571 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of depressing when you look at these crazy success stories of lottery winners. You realize even a small bet at the right time could be life-changing. Let's say instead of buying a Latte every working days at starbucks over the last five years you had invested it in tesla stocks. Or maybe for every starbucks latte you drank, you invested the same amount in ETF and in Tesla (pay 3 latte, drink one). Where wou…

The best analysis is always against the company itself: - SBUX instead of buying Starbucks - MO instead of buying cigarettes (see The Millionaire Next Door for this analysis) - LVMH instead of buying LV, M, or H - NVDA instead of buying video cards and AAA games - CVS instead of shopping at convenience stores

This doesn't seem to be saying anything about those companies though. It's just that you will do better financially if you invest money instead of spending it.

Well...yeah.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#734

Post by VectorLock »

mobjack wrote: post #572
uh_uh wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that the whole situation came about because outsiders (Reddit users) caught the "experts" (hedge funds) with their pants down.

Market experts have been caught with their pants down many times before because of the actions of uninformed investors. In 1999, the rational move would be to short tech stocks as they were over valued, but those who tried it lost lots of money because they didn't factor in how crazy investors were at driving up the price. You can technically be right but still end up losing everything.

This harkens back to the extremely worn threadbare quote "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#735

Post by beagle3 »

esoterica wrote: post #666
zamalek wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorting more than 100% of the stock is excessive and irresponsible. That figure is not a conspiracy theory: it is public information that the SEC releases monthly. Whether hedge fund managers did make a call to their buddies is not the only thing in question here (although the SEC will surely determine the truth). Shorting a stock drives the price down and, while this is no less legal than buying a stock, the questi…

The parent commenter claimed that brokerages were colluding to drive the price of GME down to benefits the shorts. That is QAnon-level evidence-free conspiracy theorizing. The clearing houses were demanding more collateral and brokerages couldn't afford or didn't want to put it up. > whether shorting 136% of the stock counts as outright manipulation I refer you to the snarky top comment about how all the Dunning-Krug…

IB claimed to have hiked margin to 100% which is a reasonable response. However, I have heard from many sources that they in fact rejected buy orders even with cash - which, if true, and I have every reason to believe so, makes any explanation about margins and technical reasons seem ridiculous.

There is surely some deeper non public reason that every single retail broker - but no single institutional broker - stopped accepting GME buys but kept honoring sells. It might or might not be a call from hedge fund buddies, but it is still likely illegal.

When I was working at a hedge fund, I once executed a few hundred mil notional on a supposedly anonymous exchange, taking advantage of an obvious counterparty mistake.

Within 10 minutes, I got a call from said counterparty, telling me that next time I do that, they’ll make sure I’m kicked off the exchange.

Anonymous my ass. Legal my ass. And yet, it happened - I’m sure I wasn’t the first or the last - the other side kept making those mistakes. I stopped taking advantage of them. This kind of behavior is rampant in Wall Street. Only difference is it has been done now in the open, very visibly, and with thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - identifiable victims.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#736

Post by newt_slowly »

DanBC wrote: post #263
xapata wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a real doctor, nurse practitioner, and the CDC Sadly, many doctors and nurses are statistically illiterate. I know, because I (try to) teach them statistics. Remember, the Surgeon General of the CDC said that, "[masks] are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus," perhaps in some misguided belief that avoiding panicked mask-buying was more important than a mask-wearing public. [Sorry f…

Can you link to the papers that were available in March 2020 that showed that masks are effective? Use any definition of "mask" and "effective" you want, but preferably effective should include some concept of "prevents spread of respiratory disease". Covid is a serious illness. Far too many people have been told, and believe, that they can continue their normal day to day life so long as they put mask on. This is un…

This comment from early March links to several.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fdf5fq/we_are_...

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#737

Post by josephorjoe »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #697
josephorjoe wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever else happens, Robinhood should not survive this. They clearly violated their customers' trust, so their customers should leave them. And I will be completely unsurprised if when the dust settles it turns out they acted illegally. Also, they suck at lying.

I don't agree. I think they provide a valuable service they should stay whole IF they can fix their capital issue and make their customers whole. You didn't forsee what was happening and neither did I because it was unprecedented. If not let them sink, someone will provide a similar service and learn from it. The SEC shouldn't be in the market of shutting down companies because a new phenomenon happened, let the mark…

I don't think the SEC should shut them down.

I think they should go bankrupt because their customers leave them for one of their many more reliable and trustworthy competitors.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#738

Post by VectorLock »

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.

I don't think this is true. No box of 3M N95 masks I've ever bought has said anywhere "failure to fit test this mask renders it ineffective." 3M Aura masks have an instruction video on how to maximize the fit, but thats just a bit on how best to adjust the little metal bit that clamps around the nose.

An ill-fit N95 that might not be perfectly adjusted to conform is still way better than a cloth mask which isn't intended to seal at all.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#739

Post by dang »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #384
xster wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a strawman. The OP isn't arguing against outsider/non-expert discussion. He's just satirizing HN's specific tendencies to spin off of a headline/article first glance into a let-me-teach-you-something fan fiction vs fan fiction argument.

> The OP isn't arguing against outsider/non-expert discussion. Yeah, he's just strawmanning and shaming a hypothetical group for the applauses of a circlejerk.

Please don't respond to bad comments by making the thread even worse. That's taking this place in exactly the wrong direction.

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

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#740

Post by DSingularity »

dang wrote: post #704
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"…

" Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. " " Be kind. Don't be snarky. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you know more than others, that's wonderful. Please share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. None of what you wrote here helps anyone learn—it just puts others down, makes you sound supercilious, and makes the community worse. A comment like this stuck at th…

Dang, I like you dang.
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