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The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

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Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#121

Post by chasebank »

jsonne wrote: post #21
29athrowaway wrote: post #9

Imagine a subreddit called "roulettebets". Someone posts: 36x gain!!!1 And then someone posts: I lost everything. Should that be a motivation to spend all your money playing roulette?

If you don't have enough money to pay your rent but winning means getting a Ferrari then yes. Losing means nothing and winning is everything. At least that's the point I was trying to make.

You're literally describing gambling. I watch people drop entire paychecks on scratchers at the local liquor store every week in hopes of a new mustang. If I head up north to the Chumash Casino, I'll find hundreds playing Keno with their entire lifesavings trying to win it big. WSB's is no different. Hell, it's even in the name of the sub!

Also, although WSB has had some affect on the GME squeeze, it was originally identified by no other than Michael Burry, the guy from the movie the Big Short. He's been in the GME game long before the reddit army joined in.

[1]https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190819005633/en/

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#122

Post by roenxi »

brodouevencode wrote: post #44
jsonne wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The former is how they view themselves in a tongue and cheek fashion. The latter has more to do with how much the community has grown and how many people this community apparently resonates with.

> Degenerate gamblers Well, they apparently do move markets. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen and there's no telling what sort of action the SEC will take to curtail this. IMO all it will take is one bad day to have something happen. But wsb does understand one thing: the barriers to entry are artificially there - it doesn't take a quant with an MIT education to make and lose money.

> Well, they apparently do move markets.

Seems unlikely. More likely that wsb is a sampling of common knowledge among people who invest in markets, and markets also move based on common knowledge.

What is the evidence for this?

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#123

Post by weird-eye-issue »

bmitc wrote: post #54
curiousllama wrote: post #30

WSB is hilarious. It’s also such a place of sadness. Taking credit card advances to YOLO into short-dated OTM call options is drug-addict level desperation. People joke about YOLOing their inheritance - and I suspect there’s some reality to it. Their parents’ entire life’s wealth can’t dig them out of whatever hole their in. The CNBC guys freaking out is incredible. Their Cramer feud is gold. But... this trend is dif…

I like going to /r/wallstreetbets. I'm not even sure if those YOLO posts are real. Maybe some are. But it seems a lot of people are there just to have fun. I want to think that someone who posts about YOLOing on GME is really someone just invested in ETFs. Every now and then, there's actually really good advice on /r/wallstreetbets. It's one of the rare subreddits where you can just let loose joining in on the fun an…

I posted a quarter million GME YOLO on WSB over a week ago and it was real (ended up making around $300k and I only have 1000 shares left, so even if it went to $0 right now I'd still have a nice profit)

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#124

Post by Bedon292 »

davidw wrote: post #8

I don't know anything about WSB, but how does: > It’s a bunch of autistic losers that live in their mom’s basement who are gambling what little money they have to try and become rich to live lifestyles of hedonism square with "These people were involved in very meaningfully moving a stock price around" ?

I try to avoid going there, but from what I have seen its somewhat of a snowball effect. You have someone post about some crazy YOLO move they made and see massive gains on. The next time someone posts something a little crazy more people do it. And a few get real rich again. And eventually you seem to have a lot of folks who have enough money to move the needle. And once it starts moving, the FOMO piles on and it gets out of control.

Add on top of that algorithmic / momentum trading following trends.

You have stuff like this person, top 3 post of all time on there from Friday (2 days ago): https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l2x7he/gme_... Based on the way things went today, they had to be up over $10M maybe even $15M for a minute there. People see that and get jealous. Say they cashed out. Now they have at least 10x the money as before and can move the needle even more. Also worth noting initial price of what they have now is almost $800k. So while the description is about gambling little money, high stakes gambling pays off for some. Going back in history, this person seems to have started piling in to GMU in June of 2019, and kept going since. But no real indication of how much they had to start with, or anything like that. Did they have some other bet that they played before this? No idea.

Edit: Also, forgot to mention if you move the needle enough short sellers end up getting margin calls driving the price further up as they get liquidated. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/gamestop-sto...

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#125

Post by 29athrowaway »

jsonne wrote: post #21
29athrowaway wrote: post #9

Imagine a subreddit called "roulettebets". Someone posts: 36x gain!!!1 And then someone posts: I lost everything. Should that be a motivation to spend all your money playing roulette?

If you don't have enough money to pay your rent but winning means getting a Ferrari then yes. Losing means nothing and winning is everything. At least that's the point I was trying to make.

That is not the case in WSB. Many of them gamble with amounts well beyond their bankroll, which is not possible with most casino games.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#126

Post by fspeech »

vorpalhex wrote: post #36

This post is a great tutorial in why we shouldn't derive meaning from expressed language. Imagine if you sat in a room of software engineers and tried to make conclusions about their life views based on their jargon: "I think what they're saying is you just need to form a single value store and react to it, dividing life into small composable micro components that are DRY. We can really comprehend how this minimalism…

I don't get how this hurts the elites or whoever else apathetic to the WSB crowds. Margin loans are collateralized. Wall street firms are making record trade profits (or at least much better than main street banks). Like lottery this can only hurt those who actually play the game.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#127

Post by pyrrhotech »

This post is so wrong on so many levels. WSB celebrates wealth inequality. Their two heroes are papa Musk and Bezos. They frequently clash with socialists cult subs like r/latestagecapitalism. This is classic example over-analysis, trying to find some deeper liberal societal problem, when really, this is just a group of immature gamblers who want to get rich quick without working too hard.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#128

Post by weird-eye-issue »

throwaway2a02 wrote: post #115
abrowne2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Member of WSB here, no expert The narrative of GME has been building for weeks before any news coverage happened. This isn't the first stock to blow up from WSB, but there are a few others in past weeks (none that have reached GME levels) such as BB, PLTR, and previously ABNB (whatever new stock that has IPO'd). There are a handful of users that have $1M positions (some smaller ones, like a user that reported $250k i…

> but these social communities are having an impact What that means is that people controlling those communities (including mods) have an immense advantage.

Of note they recently banned SPACs which directly means there will be less retail interest in SPACs since you can't even discuss them

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#129

Post by leetcrew »

ralph84 wrote: post #43

With interest rates at 0% and a quarter of all US dollars in existence having been created in the last year, there is no other choice besides speculation to have any hope of getting ahead. Policymakers have made quite clear that "work hard, save money" is a suckers bet.

have they? my meme positions have barely broken even this year, while the S&P 500 is up ~19% over the same time period. working hard and investing the bulk of my savings in broad market ETFs is working quite well for me so far.

Re: The nihilism of r/wallstreetbets

#130

Post by acjohnson55 »

ZitchDog wrote: post #105
supernova87a wrote: post #33

It just doesn't add up to me. If you take Gamestop (GME) today's hot item, it's trading 170M shares back and forth, at say, $70. That's $11B sloshing back and forth. You're telling me 10,000 (if even?) guys sitting at home doing retail trading have $1M each in positions driving this? 100,000 people with $100,000 each, during the day? I think it's quant and algorithmic trading. I would love to hear from an expert thou…

They definitely do move markets. What you need to know is that they are buying short-dated call options. These options expire in less than 2 weeks, and are usually far out of the money. They require "dealer hedging" as the market makers providing these options do not want to be exposed to the massive amount of risk implied with the movement of price. The market makers are then required to buy massive amounts of the s…

IIRC, a huge part of the discount brokerage business model is lending shares out of peoples' portfolios to meet this temporary demand. Is that right?
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