AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains • Hacker News Board

Re: AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains

#141

Post by bargl » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #85

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…

There has been some solid advice from people over there, you have to filter the mania, but there are some gems over there.

This morning there were two opposing top posts. 1) summarized as gamble your apes, 2) summarized as manage your risk and don't buy stocks with debt.

There was also a post by a legit investor claiming they covered their losses by selling at peak and everyone should have done this explaining the benefits.

Single stock trading is always a gamble, you should spread your risk and manage your losses in such a way that you win in the end (by selling losses to cover taxes on gains etc).

If you want good financial advice you can find it on WSB, but in general (imo) you should go there to make yourself feel good about your index fund or bad about your index fund. Either way, don't get caught up in the fervor.

Re: AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains

#142

Post by ASalazarMX » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #85

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…

> I think HN likes to believe it is evidence based and rational instead of emotional and greedy.

Rational and evidence driven? Did HN became a scientific forum while I wasn't looking? This is a social network, which makes it opinion driven. Rationality and evidence are important, but they come second.

Hell, some of us don't even read articles before opining.

Re: AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains

#143

Post by FabHK » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

WA wrote: post #101

dcolkitt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple lesson. Buy and hold a low-fee index fund. Stop trying to pick stocks. And for God's sake stop trying to day trade stocks. Deviating from buy-and-hold indexing is mathematically a zero-sum game. Winning this game is also one of the most monetarily rewarding games on Earth. It's extremely unlikely that you're anywhere near good enough to win this game. If you don't know who the fool at the table is, i…

Not as simple. With buy and hold of index funds, you limit your upside. There is close to zero chance to make 1,000% within a year. Stock picking has potentially a bigger downside, but also more upside. This being a zero-sum game doesn’t matter, if you have either an edge or are simply lucky. So instead of saying it’s all bullshit, it probably makes more sense to put 90% in index funds but expose yourself to a bigger…

True. Just like in the casino, if you want to make real money, you must put all you have on one lucky number. Betting small amounts on red or black limits your upside severely.

Re: AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains

#144

Post by toolz » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #85

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…

I find that most people don't realize they are always betting. Keeping your wealth tucked under your mattress in USD is still a bet. Everything is a bet and everything has different risk profiles.

If someone sees that shorts in GME are over leveraged, well in hindsight they were absolutely right to buy in to this "gambling".

I find the most irrational actors with regards to investing are the people who only do "safe" bets and feel like that carries zero risk profile.

Re: AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains

#145

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

paulgb wrote: post #46

EugeneG wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any uptick a pension fund would have had was lost once GME reverted back. Pension funds are buy and hold, so they could care less about short term fluctuations in 0.05% of their portfolio.

Just because a fund’s normal MO is to buy and hold doesn’t mean they’re asleep at the wheel and won’t react if their value hypothesis is (more than) realized overnight. (Ontario Teacher’s Pension Fund sold almost 25M shares, for example https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-29/reddit-fe... )

[deleted]

Re: AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains

#146

Post by npsimons » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #85

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…

> A more enlightened and civilized corner of the internet.

Oh, HN is more enlightened and civilized. It's just the bar is incredibly low.

In seriousness, I've received a lot of wisdom on HN, it's just I have to approach it (as I do with any data) with a jaundiced eye, and keep in mind the community: a lot of very experienced software types, from all over the industry. On software topics, I can usually trust HN. Diet/nutrition, philosophy and finance discussions on HN, I take a much more careful view of.

Re: AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains

#147

Post by kortilla » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #85

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…

> Here is a truism for you all: In any casino

Wall Street is not a casino in this regard. There is no “house edge”.

Re: AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains

#148

Post by WSB_Mod » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #134

WSB_Mod wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WSB moderators were (and still are) actively suppressing posts that don’t toe the line. We remove far more pro-"meme stock" content than anti-"meme stock". Your anecdote is just that, a single data point. All you need to do is pull the data yourself and you would see that, but instead you are taking personal offence to your content being removed. At this point, almost all content that is removed, is done automatica…

How do you keep a day job and also moderate?

Prior to January it was quite easy. It just takes an hour or two each day to improve the bots and handle the manual stuff.

The past two weeks were very difficult but the entire moderator team has stepped up to the challenge, in particular u/zjz.

Unfortunately, the stress of moderation continues even away from reddit. Even during social events at work, WSB comes up frequently. Personally, I took a few days off.

Re: AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains

#149

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #33

NoOneNew wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> A few teacher pension funds got a good uptick and they were sharing that around. The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, who was holding GME, is one of the largest hedge funds in existence, worth over 200 billion dollars. For comparison, Maverick Capital is worth only $15 billion. That is not a case of some little guy teachers making out well, it is the rich (if not the richest ) hedge funds getting richer.

[deleted]

Re: AMC, GameStop Give Hedge Fund Mudrick Capital $200M in Gains

#150

Post by ChrisLomont » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #66

Gunax wrote: post #31

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.

There's a simple lesson. Buy and hold a low-fee index fund. Stop trying to pick stocks. And for God's sake stop trying to day trade stocks. Deviating from buy-and-hold indexing is mathematically a zero-sum game. Winning this game is also one of the most monetarily rewarding games on Earth. It's extremely unlikely that you're anywhere near good enough to win this game. If you don't know who the fool at the table is, i…

>Deviating from buy-and-hold indexing is mathematically a zero-sum game.

If buy and hold indexing is not mathematically zero (which I agree it is not), then plenty of deviations from it are also not zero sum (which is empirically true).

Any stock gives partial ownership of a (hopefully) productive asset. Larger collections of them (like index funds) provide some reduction in volatility, but index funds are by no means the only way to structure risk/volatility tradeoffs.