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Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

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Re: Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

#181
post #109

If only we can weaponize this collective power for shorting shitty companies that have caused irreparable damage to society and the world (O&G, Koch Industries). Right now the power of shorting companies is held by "institutional" investors simply because of how much funds are controlled by a select group of people and thus can buy and manipulate the market. I would die happy if I saw Exxon or BP go to zero.

It is impossible to drive the Exxon share price to zero through shorting regardless of how much capital you have. And even if that somehow worked, Exxon the corporation would still exist.

Re: Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

#182

> On Wednesday Melvin said it had exited its bet against GameStop and repositioned its portfolio. Is this true? Louis Rossmann pointed out they would have a huge incentive to lie about this (to prompt people to sell and drive prices down).

It would be illegal for them to lie about it.

Re: Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

#183
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite part is imagining the editorial debate that occurs at more traditional news media as to whether or not to cite a quote from someone with the user name /u/pm-me-videos-of-u-farting or /u/lickmydogsbutt

WSJ with their exclusive interviews cites Keith Gill as DeepF---ingValue instead of the whole username

It’s sad that as a society we still haven’t moved to the point where you can say “fuck” without a bunch of people getting mad. It’s not racist, not bigoted, not sexist etc.

Is there any logical argument to be had for why these words can’t be said? Kids hear these words from peers at school by like the 3rd grade.

Re: Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

#184
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general assumption on WSB is that Melvin Capital is lying and that they haven't closed their positions. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest they've closed it, and have seen circumstantial evidence suggesting they have not. You don't spend money on ads saying "we no longer have a financial stake in this stock" unless you, you know, have a financial stake in this stock. Considering this is a hedge fund, I just a…

> You don't spend money on ads saying "we no longer have a financial stake in this stock" I don't think they did. The source of this meme seems to be a Twitter ad from CNBC that was teasing an interview with a quote to that effect. That's a CNBC ad selling their show, they don't take paid ads from their guests.

This is not what happened, I don't know why people keep perpetuating it. The entire source of the "Melvin Capital has closed their positions" thing is an anchor on Squawk Box on Wednesday morning saying that he just got a call from Melvin's fund manager who said that Melvin closed. There hasn't been any other comment besides that one, which is why people think it may have been less than honest.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/hedge-fund-targeted-by-reddi...

Re: Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

#185
post #155

> On Wednesday Melvin said it had exited its bet against GameStop and repositioned its portfolio. Is this true? Louis Rossmann pointed out they would have a huge incentive to lie about this (to prompt people to sell and drive prices down).

No, it's not. According to S3 data they've not. They're running a massive smear compaign to convince the public otherwise.

Incorrect. S3 only shows aggregate short interest. That data does not in anyway indicate Melvin's specific position. Almost certainly what happened is that while Melvin was unwinding other hedge funds were opening up new short positions at the current extremely dislocated prices.

And this is exactly why WSB's short squeeze theory is doomed to failure. It's not like once you beat Melvin that all of Wall Street just declares "okay, Gamestop is officially a $30 billion company and we will never bet against it again." The more WSB drives up the price, the more lucrative a short position becomes in the long run. And the more it attracts even more hedge funds into shorting. It's like a video game that has no ending, just the levels get harder and harder.

The difference with any traditional short squeeze is that there's always a catalyst that prevents the shorts from keeping their positions open. In the classic case it's a third party buying up a bunch of shares, then recalling them from the stock borrow market. In the Volkswagen squeeze it was the expiration of derivatives tied to Porsche's attempted acquisition of the company. WSB's original theory was that the gamma squeeze from options expiration would be the catalyst. But as of last Monday, those options were all deep in the money with crazy high implied vols. There's no gamma left to squeeze. WSB no longer even has a thesis, just memes.

With $3 trillion of AUM in the hedge fund industry, the only feasible end game is if WSB makes Gamestop the most valuable company in the world and criples the global financial system. Is it possible? Sure, lots of things are possible... I wouldn't bet on them.

I can virtually guarantee you that there won't be any meaningful short squeeze at current levels. The share price will be well below $100, before the short interest falls below 100%.

Re: Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Considering this is a hedge fund, I just assume they're lying because, you know, it's a fucking hedge fund. If this is your prior for approaching evidence, you're always going to catch big finance lying. But not because you're actually calibrated on evidence. And you won't be able to distinguish between actual fraud and baseless conspiracy.

Well this has been going around on the reddits today. See for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMShFx5rThI > Says Cramer: What's important when you're in that hedgefund mode, is to not do anything remotely truthful, because the truth is so against your view, so its important to CREATE A NEW TRUTH to develop a fiction...the great thing about the market is it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual stocks

[deleted]

Re: Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

#187
post #42

It's really strange. Why would they openly announce that they have closed shorts and that they are sustaining damage so publicly? My theory is that they are not only doubling down but quadrupling down everytime the stock shoots up. Gamestop has no fundamentals going for it, take a look at its other competitors in the industry, they are all gone. Neither do cases for AMC (who themselves acknowledged and WARNED investo…

"My theory is that they are not only doubling down but quadrupling down everytime the stock shoots up. " You can do the same at a casino - double your bets every time you loose. The technique works, 100%. The trouble is, it requires exponential amounts of money. "We have no way of knowing if people posting gains on wsb are doing it on paper accounts or not." That's starting to sound a lot like "moon landing was faked…

That technique doesn't work at the casino. Even if you had a huge amount of capital the house still has a slight edge so if you keep playing long enough you'll eventually lose everything.

Re: Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

#188
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and here's a financial columnist (ie. an expert) writing about it: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-29/reddit... >Market makers stand ready to buy or sell stock from or to customers; they try to buy for a bit less than they sell at, and pocket the spread. If you go out into the market and say “hey I’ll buy anyone’s stock for $10,” and a really smart hedge fund comes to you and sells you stock for…

That's fine if market makers stick to the rules. What do you make of some of what Citadel has done before? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-21/citadel-s... https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2017-11.html

I think if you had started with "sometimes they don't offer as much price improvement as they promised" that'd have been more accurate.

Re: Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems less risky to buy puts, not short directly. I wouldn’t want to be short if this goes up another 10x, even briefly. It will go back down but you might get wiped out first.

The problem with puts is they can expire before this calms down. If you can get a short in and not get a margin call this is the opportunity of a lifetime. Only the biggest players dare risk it though.

This is true, but you can also go broke if you mess up your entry point. What if it happens to triple before it falls back down? Will you have the ability to sustain those losses, psychologically and financially?

I knew a guy that wound up going short on a stock that was going to the moon. He was down almost a years salary at one point. I'd rather go with a longer-term put option to keep the risk under control. It just lets me sleep at night. Everyone is different.

Re: Hedge fund Melvin sustains 53% loss after Reddit onslaught

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call it a conspiracy theory or call this out as an example of Occam's razor. > Collectively they can, and did, cause this.. no need to invent other actors to explain it. The thing is, people imagine this requires a lot of capital to pull off. How did WSB get so many people to invest so much into GME as to hit a hedge fund so hard? Do so many people really have that much money just to throw away? There is a…

As I noted in a similar thread a couple days ago.. When all of this started last fall, the price was bouncing between $5-10. Therefore, with as little as $500 (aka less than a stimulus check), you get 50-100 shares. Even as recently as ~3 weeks ago, it was $20-25/share. It cost more to buy in but still within reach for all but the smallest investors. And that's not considering the options side. As of the 19th (aka 12…

number of shares shouldn't matter much though. especially now that all these brokerages offer fractional shares. I guess it does matter a little more for options since those lots are bigger and fixed.
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