Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility • Hacker News Board

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#831

Post by cactus2093 » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

grahamburger wrote: post #754

cactus2093 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But by far the likeliest explanation in my mind is that these institutions knowingly lied to the public in an attempt to manipulate people into not buying masks, As I remember it, the advice wasn't "don't wear masks," the advice was "stay home." If they said "go buy masks," that would mean leaving your house to get a mask, which would directly contradict the more important advice of staying home. Also if they said…

Yeah, no. People could have worn masks they already had, ordered masks online if any were available, the market for home-made masks would have emerged like it ended up doing later. And even if people did go out to buy masks, people were already going out on essential trips like the grocery store, pharmacy, and continuing to go to work for many people. Making one trip to buy a mask and then wearing that mask on all other essential trips for the next few weeks would have been a big net win even if you did have to go into a store to buy that mask.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#832

Post by lazyasciiart » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:03 AM UTC

kypro wrote: post #828

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to blame the regulators but imho any system that relies solely regulators is going to be fragile. The regulators always have a chance of being captured by the industry or just plain incompetent. We have a culture of people not feeling the negative repercussions of "bad actions". Buying multiple homes was irresponsible, mortgage brokers immediately selling every loan is a moral hazard and Wall street levering…

> All of them deserve blame BUT the hedge funds and mortgage brokers got bailouts and the home buyers didnt. That smells like BS to me and anger at the people that allowed that to happen, hedge funds and bankers included, looks justified to me What bail outs are you referring to? Are you talking about the TARP program? Because didn't most of that go to banks (not hedge funds) and wasn't that actually a net benefit to…

> To blame the hedge funds for this you would first have to assume they planned to take down the global economy

No, you absolutely don't. Consider criminal charges - they differentiate between intentional harm, reckless harm and negligent harm, but they all blame the guy being charged.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#833

Post by stevespang » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:07 AM UTC

HOLLYWOOD COULD SHOOT AN EPIC AMAZING MOVIE OUT OF THIS STORY

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#834

Post by lazyasciiart » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

caffeine wrote: post #788

Ghostt8117 wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge everyone with market manipulation the same way that everyone who caused the 2008 recession was charged? Sincere question, because if they decide to charge individual investors who commented on a Reddit thread with market manipulation after my generation witnessed the downfall of the economy due to sheer lies and blatant manipulation by banks, with no major charges against anyone of importance, I, at least, wil…

I am not against charging certain actors in the 2008 crisis with fraud and manipulation either. The 2008 recession is not really a comparable event to the current GME short squeeze. It was rather a broad series of events, most of which were unfortunately legal, some of which were probably not. In that case I would be in favour of charging the ratings agencies with fraud, and possibly the financial regulators with gro…

Do you think that something like "Elon Musk tweets the word 'bitcoin'" can/should actually be charged as market manipulation? What about people selling their newsletter of stock tips? What about printing an article in Bloomberg suggesting that XYZ is undervalued/overvalued for $reasons? What about some nobody on reddit posting to wsb to say let's go to $321! What about being paid to tell clients what you think they should invest in? What about telling other users on reddit for free what you think they should invest in?

I'm not sure I see a clear line in there to call any of it illegal.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#835

Post by robntheh00d » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:15 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #769

robntheh00d wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone’s brain is a time series database of experience, with a variety of heuristic shorthand’s built in. Presuming they should all consume and process information the same way is arrogant. Perhaps take some of your own advice; one comment in this thread has not damaged HN. Consider; for me OP did not leave as painful an impression as the helicopter parenting and scolding that followed. Trigger the Streisand Effect…

I don't think I disagree with any of that. But if you're implicitly arguing that more of the GP would be just fine for HN, then I do have to disagree. Moderation comments are an unfortunate evil. To some extent they do the very things we're scolding others for. I don't feel very good about that and I'd love to find a better way—especially because they're even more tedious to write than they are to read. https://hn.al…

I’m not the only one that lives here that visits HN. It seems the house internet is blocked from signing up. I use my phone in privacy mode. Internet points don’t mean much.

Honestly though, Reddit/HN without a comment section would be great. Let messenger systems handle propagation.

irc.ycombinator.com would probably be much easier to moderate and be a lot healthier for everyone too.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#836

Post by qes » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:20 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #713

stonogo wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

> Short-sellers are part of the free market

Not when they get to simply turn off the half of the market moving against them they aren't.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#837

Post by seabird » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #813

seabird wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naked shorts are not impossible, especially if you're talking about naked call options. They're comparatively rare (being illegal just means you get fined if you get caught, it's really "not that serious" for a big player), and small timers aren't allowed to participate, but they're not impossible. An even bigger point than that is that the short doesn't necessarily have to be naked in the legal sense for you to fail…

But halting trading is not entirely uncommon. It's what happens when weird stuff is going on. I've never heard of preventing opening new positions while allowing positions to be closed.

Halting trading temporarily is extremely common. A halt for hours or days at a time is not.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#838

Post by Aachen » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:23 AM UTC

malwarebytess wrote: post #119

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #3

"The Commission will closely review actions taken by regulated entities that may disadvantage investors or otherwise unduly inhibit their ability to trade certain securities. In addition, we will act to protect retail investors when the facts demonstrate abusive or manipulative trading activity that is prohibited by the federal securities laws. Market participants should be careful to avoid such activity." This shoul…

Robinhood says that they basically couldn't fulfil the buy orders because they ran out of money, or couldn't fulfil the orders without breaking the rest of the platform. I imagine whatever the reason there's going to be lawsuits.

I'm somewhat out of the loop. If RH is low on money due to lending it out, then they have to stop lending. But the decision was to stop allowing buy orders on GME if I read and remember that correctly. What's the issue? Don't investors deposit money into their RH accounts and then purchase the stock from that money, giving RH a commission? That should be good for RH, so I'm not getting this. I probably just miss some info, hope I'm not asking a stupid question.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#839

Post by snowwrestler » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

arnavs wrote: post #823

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…

Bear Stearns declined to participate in the Fed-organized bailout of LTCM. Ten years later, the Fed declined to participate in any bailout of Bear Stearns.

The Fed had no legal authority to bail out Bear Stearns because Bear Stearns was an i-bank.

The only two i-banks that got help from the Fed were Morgan and Goldman, and they only got it by converting to commercial bank holding companies first. So really, no i-banks got help from the Fed.

Re: Statement of SEC Regarding Recent Market Volatility

#840

Post by lazyasciiart » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

fnimick wrote: post #794

caffeine wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "wild new phenomenon" is just boring old market manipulation. The only thing new about it is that the perpetrator is a subreddit instead of a licensed broker/dealer or other regulated entity. The appropriate thing to do is for the SEC to subpoena Reddit and RobinHood, correlate trades with posts to prove intent to manipulate the price (which IS illegal), and charge every individual with market manipulation. Just…

100% this. Price manipulation to trigger a short squeeze is explicitly illegal. https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/regsho.htm section 7. Anyone who told others to buy and hold with promises of short covering and higher prices is party to market manipulation, and it is absolutely, definitely illegal. Whether they'll be able to unmask and charge people behind the anonymity of WSB is another question though.

Anyone who promised to provide someone anything in return for buying may have done something illegal, but anyone who shared their genuinely held beliefs on what would happen in the future did not do anything illegal unless they are a market broker etc.

And, anyone who bought shares or told someone to buy shares with the intent of driving up the price also did something illegal - but it's something that is done constantly and considered a fundamental part of the market, either as an attack on a company in the classic hedge fund short->bankruptcy or, more benignly, like buying up shares of a takeover target slowly so people don't notice you are interested and buy it, which would raise the price.