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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

#151

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…

You don't need short selling for a stock's price to drop. Markets for everything else use the normal mechanism of "if no-one is going to buy this at this price, I need to drop my price if I want to sell it".

For example: you can't go to the bakery, borrow a loaf of bread, sell it to a passing punter, and then pay the baker at 5pm when they drop the price to get rid of their stock before it goes stale.

The rest of the economy manages to find the "correct" price for things without shorts. So could the stock market.

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

#152

It was a weird, fun ride. My writing partner Lutz and I work in tech, but have a real passion for filmmaking. We lost some money on $GME, so we had to tell the story from our point of view. The result is STONKS, a comedy/drama feature screenplay [0], fictional but inspired by the GME events, and a love letter of sorts to WSB. We queried Hollywood producers but were ignored; we shared on WSB itself but we were insta-b…

Jaime Rogozinski is a grifter who repeatedly abused community trust to profit off WSB. This is why he was removed by Reddit admins in January 2020, a full year before the GameStop saga. The only time he ever came to WSB after 2016 was if someone approached him with a way to make money off the community. It's laughable that anyone would buy the rights to his story when he wasn't around at all. If WSJ cared about integ…

Somehow I think a label like that would be prized in that place.

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

#153
post #124

Because of my GameStop stock play, I am finally debt free for the first time in my life (after 35 years of paying). No car loan, no college loans, no mortgage. It actually felt good to pay over $10k in taxes for short term gains.

And others lost their life savings. Some win, some loose. Congrats on paying off all your debts though, that's amazing.

[deleted]

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

#154

Because of my GameStop stock play, I am finally debt free for the first time in my life (after 35 years of paying). No car loan, no college loans, no mortgage. It actually felt good to pay over $10k in taxes for short term gains.

That’s a really interesting mix of questionable prudence with total responsibility. Obviously things didn’t work out so well for the people in the other side of your trades.

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

#155
I play videogames and I haven't been inside a game store in 5 years. Absolutely noone was shocked GameStop business is dying.

Don't get me wrong I'm as nostalgic of browsing walls of videogames as the next 30+ year old gamer but nostalgia rarely makes money.

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

#156

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…

> If anything, selling short needs to be made easier as it represents an essential corrective

I disagree since that would give people decision making capabilities who are the least qualified to do so.

> And this ultimately serves the greater good too

You can believe that but you also don't have to.

We don't have to lie to ourselves. Stocks are highly emotional and investors regularly overpay when they buy into hype. I am not against short selling, it is a trade like any other. But let's keep things honest.

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

#157

Because of my GameStop stock play, I am finally debt free for the first time in my life (after 35 years of paying). No car loan, no college loans, no mortgage. It actually felt good to pay over $10k in taxes for short term gains.

Welcome to gambling.

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

#158
post #62

I have seen so much fuckery with the stock price and ridiculous headlines in het media about GME that can't really believe that we have seen the actual squeeze. Furthermore, the SEC report said that the price run-up was because retail bought in, not because the hedge funds closed their positions. So when did they do this and went from 200% to 20%? Besides all of that, the fundamentals for GME are great. They are hiri…

This reads exactly like the comments on conspiracy theory subreddits like Superstonk.

There are facts out there amongst the near constant stream of BS on reddit. GameStop filed a SEC form [0] about disclosing a partnership with Immutable X, which is in the NFT space for games, not art.

The market for in-game purchases (like every mobile game for crying out loud) is huge. Epic games' Fortnite is 100% free to play but has a store for purchasing cosmetic stuff (and a lawsuit with Apple over this). There was $3.7 Billion dollars of revenue associated with Fortnite in 2019 [1]. Billion with a B. All cosmetic, in-game items.

What is reported as being built would be a marketplace for gamers, and possibly content creators (people that build mods, skins, maps, etc. for games if allowed) to buy/sell/trade these in-game items. Not $10k GIF's of apes or whatever nonsense. Instead of spending $5 or $20 on something and it sits on a gamers account, think of it as they could spend that and later on they could re-sell it or trade on a marketplace.

I don't think any of this requires blockchain or NFT. I think the companies involved are using that because it ticks a lot of requirements boxes for basically Digital Rights Management with sales/resales built in (I think via ETH/smart contracts).

As silly as buying pixels for a game may sound, it already is a large market and a company like GameStop getting into that could capture a reliable subscription-like revenue stream not tied to game console refreshes or used physical games.

What would be sad is if this is a revolutionary type of change to an industry (i.e gamers own the digital sword they bought, maybe take it from one game-world to another like in Ready Player One?) but is squashed by the volume of noise about "hedge funds r bad, boo wall st" every time the company is brought up.

[0] sec filing: https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1326380/0001... [1] fortnite rev: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1238904/fortnite-revenue...

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

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't figure out if this is sarcasm or an actual response.

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

#160
post #118
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily believe in MOASS happening anymore, but I do have a strong believe that introducing an NFT marketplace and what else GME has in store will make sure the long term view for this company is optimistic. Wallstreet might have "won", but it seems that SEC is introducing new bills to prevent some of the stuff that was going on.. Hopefully they will start enforcing it as well.

a company shoehorning in NFT's is not a "long term" plan, it's a dying brand capitalizing on the latest craze that will almost certainly die out alongside it.

Precisely. Many, many retailers have gone out of business in my country in the last ten years and a lot of them died painfully. Trying desperately to turn things around- unsuccessfully.
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