231–240 of 313 posts
To the surprise of no one--the established, well-prepared and well-funded players out-compete Joe and Jane retailer investor. Everyone loves the David defeating Goliath at his own game narrative. I only worry that we are going to forget all of the times that David gets slain.
I expect a lot of Redditors will be very disappointed when they realize just how much money hedge funds made, on average, out of this episode. The WSB moderators really did everyone a disservice by letting obvious misinformation flood the subreddit. It’s hard to view the later stages of the GameStop phenomenon as anything other than a Reddit-fueled pump and dump scheme.
Not at all. The past few days they've shared not only the largest long holders of these stocks, but also the pension funds that were boosted as well. A few teacher pension funds got a good uptick and they were sharing that around. The cats at wsb might be self proclaimed retards, but they're not that stupid. They know lots of other folks are going to make money off of them. You know, if you actually visit the sub, yo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So much this. /r/wallstreetbets is going to struggle to recover. It's absolutely Eternal September. I've been subbed to WSB for about 5 years, ever since someone at work (prop trading) mentioned it as basically being a bunch of 25-30 yo finance people hanging out and doing dumb shit in their personal accounts for fun. I'll admit, I did some dumb stuff myself, trying to time UVXY/TVIX plays. (Basically netted 0 of cou…
I struggle to see the political claim that these people are being flooded with Trumpers. This event was and has been pretty bipartisan. From what I’ve seen thus far is the media trying to use the Q / Trumper angle against this community to tarnish its public perception and recent novelty. I am happy to be proven wrong though, I just don’t see it.
They push a lot of very strong and completely unsubstantiated conspiracy claims in particular, and they'll quickly accuse anybody dissenting of being a shill or having an ulterior purpose.
Here's a good example I think: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l93d18/gme_...
This is good OG WSB content, written by one of the users that was in on the play from the very start.
But there's the problem: since he knew what he was doing, he managed to sell at the right moment and make huge benefits. That doesn't fit the narrative nu-WSB wants to push. So this very good old-school WSB post can't even get half a thousand upvotes.
Meanwhile post some vaguely conspirationist anti-wall street article and skyrocket to the top of the frontpage.
So yeah, it's not The_Donald, but there's definitely this strong anti-system, populist, "everybody is out to get me" conspirationist, fact-adverse mindset that you find in these types of communities.
Note in particular that, somewhat ironically, WSB calls itself "4chan with a bloomberg terminal", so it seems fitting that it's following a similar trajectory of ironic edgyness turning genuine as new people get in and take it at face value.
For people not reading the article and thinking this hedge fund was short these stocks: > In December, AMC signed a commitment letter with Mudrick Capital that called for the hedge fund to buy $100 million of new secured bonds that pay 15% cash or 17% deferred interest. In exchange, Mudrick received a commitment fee equal to about 8 million AMC shares. ie, this firm indirectly bet on an AMC recovery, investing in the…
They also sold out-of-the-money calls in Gamestop, meaning they made money if the price didn't increase.
There’s a lot of anger against the financial system but unfortunately not much financial education to understand why it is working so poorly for average investors. That anger makes people lash out to try to change the status quo, which in this case caused Redditors to buy GME in spite of its ridiculously high valuation. But because they don’t actually understand the mechanics of the market the hedge funds will easily…
> That anger makes people lash out to try to change the status quo, which in this case caused Redditors to buy GME in spite of its ridiculously high valuation Is it anger motivating people to buy? I get mixing anger in with the greed and hysteria. Were I to play blackjack with the house being, I don't know, the Sackler family, I'd certainly get a high out of it and I'd certainly bet more. But I wouldn't be at the tab…
I expect a lot of Redditors will be very disappointed when they realize just how much money hedge funds made, on average, out of this episode. The WSB moderators really did everyone a disservice by letting obvious misinformation flood the subreddit. It’s hard to view the later stages of the GameStop phenomenon as anything other than a Reddit-fueled pump and dump scheme.
> pump and dump scheme I don't see why everyone is against pump and dump schemes yet the system is literally designed for them to happen. It's an inevitable fact that they will happen when you set up a free market and a bunch of (stupid) humans from the general public, as also clearly demonstrated in the crypto scene. If people don't want them to occur, the short-term incentives, market, and exchanges themselves need…
Markets exist to solve problems of valuation and capital allocation. Pump-and-dump schemes distort valuations in very extreme ways and work against the purpose of equity markets. That is a basic reason why they should be banned. Another reason is that scams introduce unnecessary risk to someone making an investment decision; ideally investors should only focus on risks related to a company's business, not the risk that the information they were given about that company is false. The extra risk will drive away investors and the result will be less capital available to otherwise promising ventures, which again works against the goals of capital markets.
It is not really possible to restructure markets in a way that would avoid pump-and-dump schemes, because the problem with a pump-and-dump scheme is not actually related to the rules governing the market. The problem is that the pump-and-dump scheme involves deliberately spreading false information; yet it is equally possible that investors hear true information and rush to buy, and the market should allow for that situation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I struggle to see the political claim that these people are being flooded with Trumpers. This event was and has been pretty bipartisan. From what I’ve seen thus far is the media trying to use the Q / Trumper angle against this community to tarnish its public perception and recent novelty. I am happy to be proven wrong though, I just don’t see it.
I'm necessarily saying it's "Trumpers", just that lots of the rhetoric, especially stuff that gets to the front page of r/all, seems to be the kind of all-caps, hyper-reductionist, chest-beating "SO MUCH WINNING" kind of rhetoric we saw in 2016. I do think this is bipartisan, in that there's no one side of the political spectrum that's flooding in here, but I think we're seeing the kind of hype devices that were used…
Even if the userbase is bipartisan these extreme, emotional takes are guaranteed to take over by sheer volume unless the moderation steps in hard. I can't really blame the mods for failing to do that at the moment though, if I were them I'd probably have closed the sub temporarily...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So much this. /r/wallstreetbets is going to struggle to recover. It's absolutely Eternal September. I've been subbed to WSB for about 5 years, ever since someone at work (prop trading) mentioned it as basically being a bunch of 25-30 yo finance people hanging out and doing dumb shit in their personal accounts for fun. I'll admit, I did some dumb stuff myself, trying to time UVXY/TVIX plays. (Basically netted 0 of cou…
I struggle to see the political claim that these people are being flooded with Trumpers. This event was and has been pretty bipartisan. From what I’ve seen thus far is the media trying to use the Q / Trumper angle against this community to tarnish its public perception and recent novelty. I am happy to be proven wrong though, I just don’t see it.
I'm seeing it implied fairly regularly here and on Reddit that journalists are somehow anti-WSB, but I just don't see it, and I don't know why it would ever be the case.
Maybe people are mixing up market analysts (who work for financial institutions) with finance journalists (who work for news organisations)?
Maybe people think journalists are afraid of losing valuable sources in big banks if they don't denigrate the day traders (even though all those big firms also made a fortune in this mess)?
What am I missing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's kind of the GP's point - they are advocating for not being lured by the (scant) potential for enormous gains, and instead taking the easy route to moderate gains (which will amount to large gains over time, as long as you reinvest). > it probably makes more sense to put 90% in index funds but expose yourself to a bigger upside with stock picking. Does it though? Unless you are an experienced profession…
If you think that your chances are higher at roulette, good for you. Other people take other chances. A few more thoughts: - Maybe you don’t have to be THAT smart to beat the index. - Maybe you don’t have to be consistently good or right or lucky, but only once or twice, because money has a nonlinear utility. If you strike it big in your early thirties, you have a different life than if you consistently save up till…
Watching HN get caught up in this Gamestop bubble over the past week has been eye-opening to me about the community. The kind of information being spread around WSB was fully ridiculous. Wild conspiracy theories, financial advice with no basis in reality, astroturfing, and mob behavior. There has been an incredible amount of bleed-over between the garbage I've seen posted on WSB and the things posted in these HN thre…
Conspiracies happen so frequently on Wall St that “conspiracy theories” should be closer to a priori assumption than irrational fringe ideas. Were people skeptical of Moodys A+ ratings of subprime mortgages conspiracy theorists? And that’s far from the only example of financial fraud . There’s a lot of money at stake. Citadel is most of Robinhoods revenue, they put money on the opposite side of the trade via Melvin,…
Conspiracies happen everywhere, all the time, but you need to avoid applying a bias because of political implications. I highly doubt there are more conspiracies happening anywhere in the private sector than in most large governments.