WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

This is market manipulation 101. I hope they pay for it, but I doubt any lawmaker is interested in investigating them.

This is just a rant. There's no insight, evidence or analysis to be found in the article.

I have a lot of trouble with this frame. Yes, hedge funds are bad. Yes, it's hilarious watching those shorts get squeezed. No, WSB are not modern Sherwood bandits trading on Robinhood. They are also engaged in what is pretty clearly a criminal conspiracy to commit securities fraud (and yes, a deliberate attempt to trigger a short squeeze is securities fraud), and they're doing it on an open internet forum. This is not going to end well for anyone involved.

Demonizing your enemies and styling yourself a hero of the people does not protect you from prosecution. We just saw that in the capitol not three weeks ago.

As for GME? Yes, that stock is coming down. Yes, the hedge fund can probably arrange financing to hold longer than the bandits can. Yes, it's probably going to be the "little guys" holding the bag at the end of this.

It's criminals all around as far as I can see.

This is literally an event that options / derivatives were made for.

If you're a long GME holder who feels like this price is temporary: you can buy calls or sell puts (bull-trades). Or, you can sell calls or buy puts (bear-trades).

If you own a ton of the underlying and are willing to be "forced to sell" the stock, selling calls would be a marvelous option to benefit from the uncertainty of the situation. Worst case scenario, you end up holding the GME stock (ie: lost the game of musical chairs). But you'll be paid for that risk.

Once again, this insistence on viewing 'Wall Street' as a monolothic entity. The largest asset management firm on Earth holds over 9 million Gamestop stock, none of the big banks that received bailouts in 08 are affected by this, 99.9% of hedge funds are not affected by this, high frequency traders are probably making a bundle. Institutional money was long Gamestop before this story entered the public consciousness. The idea of governments stepping in to bolster hedge funds is ludicrous, the whole point is that the government and SEC is hands off with them.

Ultimately, a few medium-sized hedge funds were caught doing something stupid and the market has rightfully taught them a lesson. It's great that retail investors got in on a high-level play like this and made money.