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Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

economist.com

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

#211

Post by paulhodge »

d--b wrote: post #15

Well in these zero-sum games there is always someone who wins. And clearly many small investors got out with insane returns for a day of trading. But more importantly I think that for many small investors the point was not making money. The point was the story. It was worth losing some cash so that they can be a part of these things. Luckily winning is not always defined by money…

Small nitpick but this is a pet peeve of mine :) . The stock market is not zero sum. It grows over time, and there are many situations where people all succeed together. GME specifically is now hanging out at $100 compared to a very flat $5 two years ago.

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

#212

Post by SilasX »

WJW wrote: post #189
SilasX wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent's point was that it does matter if it was sold by someone who had never secured a share of their own to sell in the first place, which puts artificial pressure on prices. (And before someone jumps in to give me the speech about how the future of civilization depends on market makers being able to fabricate shares long enough to cover: Yes, I know about the exception that permits this . The purpose of my co…

It does put (a little) pressure on prices, sure. Borrowing money to buy stocks puts a little extra upward pressure on prices. But neither is illegal, neither brings guaranteed profits (naked shorting is regulated so much exactly because of the risks to unrelated market participants if the stock goes up) and neither has the capability to directly harm the underlying company.

Again, the parent was talking about fabricating non-existent shares, not borrowing existing ones.

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

#213

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #158
a254613e wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Please don't park any money behind this narrative unless it's literally money you'd burn in a campfire for just as much amusement.

There is zero chance of GME of all places becoming some sort of market for NTF game cosmetics. None of that blather matters if you don't have a user base, and there's no way GME is going to get one.

Why would Epic, Valve, etc go along with GME's scheme? If they want to offer unique to a single player items they can do so essentially trivially with their existing platform. They don't need to partner with anyone, just put a dev team or two on it for a short bit. They certainly don't need to partner with anyone like GME, let alone a bunch of shady cryptocoin operations running out of tax havens.

Basically no one cares about this utopia you're imagining to start with, and even if they did, there's no pathway to create it in the form of GME.

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

#214

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

andris9 wrote: post #82

On the last day of the spike I saw in the pre-market the GME price to go over $500. Figured that this is good enough for me and as everything related to order processing was very slow I set a limit sell order for $490, figuring that it probably hits $500, but wanted to be sure it goes through. Once the price spiked at 483 and started rapidly dropping I was f-ed. Cancelling the sell-order took like an hour (couldn’t a…

Thanks for sharing an honest story about your loss. If more people did this people would have a more balanced understanding of how risky these bets truly are.

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

#215

Post by wolverine876 »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #165
wolverine876 wrote: post #81

How do we recognize such madness in the future, before we get caught up in it? After it's metastasized?

Our society does not learn from the past. And the nature of man doesn't change.

> Our society does not learn from the past. And the nature of man doesn't change.

Now that is current madness, IMHO, as insane as Gamestop. Look how society and humanity have changed over history, over the last 10 years, over the last century. The changes are dramatic! And the nature of humans includes those changes; it includes the good as well as the bad, the bad as well as the good (people act like they just discovered the bad part a few years ago!). You and I and all the rest each have the free will to choose between them, decide what we are going to do and what we will make our society.

We got here by people choosing good, choosing optimism, almost always in much worse situations than we are. Shame on us if, standing on their shoulders, living on their accomplishments, we choose to quit and throw it all away.

(Also, what a miserable way to live, drowning yourself in despair!)

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

#216

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

daenz wrote: post #164
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #116

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.

Do you think it's important to acknowledge that you got lucky with a gamble? If you have kids, would you advise them to make a similar move as you did, in the hopes that they also get lucky and win big? If not, advertising only the benefits of your choice just lures desperate people who will statistically lose their investments.

It wasn't luck, it was a well researched and well played short squeeze with a gamma squeeze before that. I made my money on the gamma.

I used to be a trader (series 7 and 63) and knew what I was doing.

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

#217

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

throwthere wrote: post #154
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #116

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.

Shorting as a retail investor is mostly a suckers bet that will bankrupt you. I feel nothing for institutional investors as the entire system is heavily tilted in their favor.

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

#218

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

stouset wrote: post #180
fastball wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can only hope that the counter-party was Melvin Capital.

There were at least two counterparties (one selling the shares, one eventually buying them), one of which was exceedingly unlikely to be Melvin.

Melvin and 2 other institutional investors held almost all of the shorted contracts. They were extremely over-promised and got caught out doing it. That's why the squeeze worked in the first place. They could have exited early, taken the initial loss and walked away. The WSB crowd would have picked up a small profit and it would have been done. Instead, the smaller institutional shorts tried to hold and got crushed.

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

#219

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

knodi wrote: post #157
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #116

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.

I very very rarely go for a risky investment. I am what is referred to as a grinder.

I am averaging about 16% YTY return for the last 20 years (and much better than that the last 5, obviously).

The trick... undervalued or momentum stocks that suddenly have big interest. Spot the trend and go with it (swimming in the big fishes wake).

It's OK to exit AFTER the movement breaks... never be greedy. Never cry about the profits you never got.

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

#220

Post by wsb_mod2 »

anyfactor wrote: post #186
galcerte wrote: post #11

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 will be your WSB historian. Two folds to the story - WSB Side WSB mods alleged the sub was suffocating with the GME and subsequent squeeze stock posts and shitty memes. I made couple memes myself but after the weeks to come WSB was inundated with all the memes centered around this one topic. WSB is a general investment subreddit that took a turn towards GME everything. Another problem was GME's foundational investm…

> The GME centered group left WSB because there was a new mod who didn't fit the WSB philosophy. There were some personal hypothesis about her(?). They even alleged I believe that mod made their adolescent child a mod of WSB who were also removing content left and right.

You are confused. This has nothing to do with WSB.

What you are describing happened solely on r/SuperStonk or the other GME subreddits.

WSB has never had a child moderator.

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