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Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

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Re: Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

#131
post #119
post #17

$GME was always going to be a "Revolution That Wasn’t." Almost everyone playing knew it. IMO, it was kind of an exemplifier of postmodernism, used colloquially. All the "beat down hedgies" stuff was just part of the game, just like "fuck the fundamentals" was part of the game. IMO it has had an influence. A neurotic, dramatic lens through which we can look at financial institutions, more abstract economics. What is c…

WSB started as a canard to get more drunk tourists to the small stakes poker tables, in this analogy the poker table is low volume options where you can get a handful of robinhood investors to move the price and make a quick thousand bucks. It’s still that today, but larger players with more money figured out that they could do that too, and potentially on a larger scale. That’s what this has always been about. There…

> WSB started as a canard to get more drunk tourists to the small stakes poker tables

1. WSB was created before Robinhood was released.

2. WSB started as a place for people to discuss more risky strategies than what was being discussed on r/investing

3. Yes. There is no movement. WSB is not your personal army.

Re: Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most discussion around $GME takes place on r/Superstonk these days anyways. Can't remember why it was banned from WSB. Something to do with the new mods I believe.

I followed WSB for a couple of years before the GME thing kicked off. When it did, it was great fun for about a week, then I unsubscribed. It got very repetitive and boring.

You should check it out again. We recently restricted memes to Friday afternoon to Sunday morning and the context is almost all text now.

Re: Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

#133
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you love it when the once in a lifetime opportunity for generational wealth is also a great fundamental investment? In case the biggest short squeeze the market would have ever seen, with the potential to crash the US economy, somehow doesn't happen (damn hedgies!). With all of that that, it doesn't matter that physical sales of video games are dying and that the company is bleeding out money with a loss of $10…

I think the Q4 earnings report will show massive improvements, furthermore, them moving away from just being a brick-and-mortar store will help valuation in the long run. MOASS is unlikely to happen, but I think in the long term the valuation of GME will keep increasing considering their new plans and their new following/customers. They definitely gained in brand-name in the last year. This whole saga seems to at lea…

The only benefit of gamestop is selling back old games. If gamestop is a digital retailer they will die.

Re: Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

#134
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most discussion around $GME takes place on r/Superstonk these days anyways. Can't remember why it was banned from WSB. Something to do with the new mods I believe.

Because it took over the entire subreddit for months on end and dominated all conversation. You can only read "Reporting in from Kazakhstan with 2 shares, stay strong apes HODL" so many times....

Honestly it didnt just take over the sub it ruined the whole sub and community. Im not going to say WSB was civilized pre-pandemic but it was much smaller with a range of interesting takes on things plus funny memes. And also degenerate gamblers who at least knew what they were fucking with.

The quality of poster is much much worse now.

Re: Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

#135
post #75

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> people can look for battered companies and severely profit from their accelerated demise Gamestop is one of those companies where the demise has been severely delayed IMO; they could've seen the future years ago but chose to stay with their legacy business of selling games in physical stores. Online game stores do what they do but with much lower costs and a much better business model. There are two ways forward fo…

GameStop has pivoted to some extent. It's incredibly rare that I go into one of their stores, but the last time I did it was less of a games store and more of a gaming merchandise store. Their acquisition of ThinkGeek and subsequent selling of those products in stores is satisfying a niche that nobody else (apart from maybe the mom & pop comic book store) seems interested in.

>it was less of a games store and more of a gaming merchandise store. Their acquisition of ThinkGeek and subsequent selling of those products in stores is satisfying a niche that nobody else (apart from maybe the mom & pop comic book store) seems interested in.

Maybe it's just my personal preferences, but I can't imagine myself or anyone I know buying enough "gaming merchandise" in significant numbers. If I need a game, it's either digital, or physical through amazon with same day delivery. It's the same with other gaming-related merchandise. I go for whatever's cheaper/on sale, which is usually bestbuy or amazon.

Re: Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should started a discussion about some excesses of the stock market. Rich people can look for battered companies and severely profit from their accelerated demise which some people wanted to fight against for once. Out of their own motives for profit or just for fun to be able to at least once stick it to speculators looking for easy profit. That trading was halted and "corrected" proved they had an impact…

The purpose of stock markets is to find the "correct" price for a stock. To that end, it needs to be possible to express both bullish and bearish views. However, doing the latter is already more difficult because in order to short the stock, you need to borrow it first, and you need to pay for those borrowed shares for as long as you keep holding them. Furthermore, those borrows can be pulled at any time, forcing you…

>> The purpose of stock markets is to find the "correct" price for a stock.

Is it? Who's purpose?

The main purpose of an IPO is (was?) financing. IE, raising money for the company operations... like a bank loan, VC investment, etc. In practice, many of today's IPOs are companies that don't need to raise money (anymore). For those companies, their main purpose when doing an IPO is usually liquidity. IE, letting founders, investors and such cash their shares... or continue owning them with the added benefit of market prices to validate the value of their wealth.

Your argument is quite mainstream, but I can't see how anyone would make it except to justify short selling. It seems to me there's a lot of "you sure about that?" in the whole thing.

Are you sure "finding the correct price" is an actual need? Who needs this, and why? Are you sure short selling makes for better prices?

Liquidity is a similar argument made in favour of derivative HFT and such. I also think its (probably/usually) quite bogus. Do stock markets even have liquidity problems? Stocks are insanely liquid. That's what they're for.

Re: Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

#137
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how it got banned on Reddit, you got the full Reddit experience.

Well yes, users do get banned for blatant self promotion. WSB is not, and has never been, the place to promote your art, especially when you're explicitly trying to raise awareness so you can sell it. OP did the same thing with a gamedev book a year prior. Easy ban.

Thanks for explaining the ban - I messaged you (I suppose) on Reddit asking why, but never received an explanation. I would have imagined a screenplay like this would be of interest to the community, and I couldn't really figure out what rule I had broken, but apologies for breaking the rules nonetheless.

I did in fact announce my (freely available) CG book [0] on Reddit, where it was very well received - 1300 upvotes in gamedev [1], 2500 in programming [2], tons of awards. Turns out Redditors respond positively to original quality content shared for free :)

[0] https://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch/i...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/lbmbdf/computer_gr...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lbmda2/compute...

Re: Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rich people can look for battered companies and severely profit from their accelerated demise which some people wanted to fight against for once You’re describing accelerating creative destruction. It’s painful but good. Prevent it entirely and you cause stagnation. We can make the human impact more compassionate. But trying to stop it is folly.

You propose certainty where there is none and I am not talking about preventing it outright. I also do believe that it a profitable endeavour with very little general advantages as it is right now. That is more parasitic than constructive, so in that regard it fails to justify itself and regulation is required. Little would stagnate if modern fintech would be scraped almost entirely. Human impact should be secondary…

>I also do believe that it a profitable endeavour with very little general advantages as it is right now.

the "advantage" here is that the true value of the company is reflected in the market, so that capital is allocated to the best companies rather than the most hyped ones.

>That is more parasitic than constructive

Can you explain how it's "parasitic"?

>Additionally creative destruction can also mean that I destroy the wealth of those that currently do profit from canceling companies prematurely

Isn't that what happens if someone thinks a stock will go down, shorts it, and gets it wrong?

Re: Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

#139
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. Always check if something changed about the company itself. And when trading derivatives, even dips caused by the market (rather than fundamentals), can lose you lots of real money. Because even if it will eventually recover, it might dip deeper and longer than you can afford. I lost a ton of money on Tesla that way. (I would have been rich now if I'd been able to keep that.)

Did something change about the company itself in the dips and bumps you just described buying and selling Gamestop at above?

Both Gamestop and Tesla were just the market freaking out. The market often does that. Much of the stock market is more about what other investors will do than what the companies themselves will do. It's a bunch of noise on top of the actual value of the companies themselves.

Of course sometimes it is the companies themselves, and then you need to pay attention. And because you rarely know in advance whether a dip is the company or the market, you always need to pay attention. But the Gamestop thing was a clear case of the market freaking out.

Re: Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why will an NFT marketplace do any of those things?

Valve essentially stopped making games because selling virtual items is so insanely profitable. Being able to sell digital rights to items and then take a sellers fee no matter what platform that item is resold on later could be a huge deal, if that's what they're building.

I wouldn't agree with that, but even accepting that premise as true, why would gamestop be in any position to benefit from this? If you're, say, activision, why would you possibly sell your digital content on gamestop's platform where you owe gamestop a cut rather than on your own platform where you get the cut? Why would you put it on a blockchain at all? Just use your own boring db.
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