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The Battle of GameStop

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Re: The Battle of GameStop

#391

Post by Zarel »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #291
katbyte wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you gambled and got lucky. Good for you that’s great, but please recognize it for what it is. You played the market and won, just like people play the lotto, and some of them win too.

Do you attribute YCombinator's success to lucky gambling?

In options trading, every dollar you earn is a dollar someone else lost while trading options, and had to give to you. It's zero-sum. If you include fees, people lose slightly more money than they gain in options trading, on average.

This is pretty different from YCombinator's startup investment. No one has to lose for YC to win. The money ultimately comes from customers of YC-funded startups, who are in theory engaging in positive-sum trade (getting more in value than the money they paid for it). On average, people are earning lots of money investing in startups.

To be clear, options trading does have value in terms of letting people buy insurance and providing a price signal in terms of how many people believe prices will go up or down, but this is comparatively marginal and doesn't affect the options traders themselves.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#392

Post by sct202 »

shrikant wrote: post #286
shouldiquitamzn wrote: post #17

I’ve made millions on WSB options plays. I can finally quit my job and stop being a cubicle slave. The visceral reaction from the media on this is disgusting. Major hedge funds got caught on the wrong side of this, and have been making a huge stink about it. CNBC to the rescue, demonizing young middle class Reddit investors. This whole thing has opened my eyes to how even my FAANG compensation is peasant money, it’s…

Since this comment is one of the top threads, I'm just going to re-post my earlier comment from one of the sub-threads: This comment about having made millions leveraging on SPY and QQQ over the course of 100+ trades doesn't check out, given that a few days back, this commenter created this throwaway account to complain about finding it hard to quit their job at Amazon because the pay is so good. https://news.ycombin…

It could be that they made and lost millions and their net wasn't too impressive until the yesterday. A lot of people only mention their wins.

Edit: Saw he worked at FAANG and is 30, so there's a pretty good chance he also started with investing million(s).

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#393

Post by the_drunkard »

gruez wrote: post #14
dvt wrote: post #6

> The same emotion that caused us to root for the thieves in Ocean’s 11 is what makes Wall Street Bets so enticing. Put frankly, Millennials are tired of getting fucked by the man. When you’re underemployed with $100,000 in student loan debt, your financial situation feels overwhelming. You really don’t want to take the advice of your parents or CNBC talking heads [5] to invest 10% of your salary for a 4% annual retu…

>It's a never-ending shit-show. At least some of us are getting rich in /r/wallstreetbets. This is sad because most of what you've said can be applied to lotteries as well, which historically has been criticized as being a "tax" on the poor. The end result is the same: people putting themselves in a worse place financially (on average), just so they can cope with their bleak existence.

> This is sad because most of what you've said can be applied to lotteries as well, which historically has been criticized as being a "tax" on the poor. The end result is the same: people putting themselves in a worse place financially (on average), just so they can cope with their bleak existence.

Damn. I've never considered the psychological effects of the lottery system, but in a way I think you hit the nail on the head.

Anyways, in the GME scenario it appears that most retail investors are actually in a better place financially because of it.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#394

Post by swiley »

dvt wrote: post #6

> The same emotion that caused us to root for the thieves in Ocean’s 11 is what makes Wall Street Bets so enticing. Put frankly, Millennials are tired of getting fucked by the man. When you’re underemployed with $100,000 in student loan debt, your financial situation feels overwhelming. You really don’t want to take the advice of your parents or CNBC talking heads [5] to invest 10% of your salary for a 4% annual retu…

It's really simple economics: the low interest rates means they're dumping new money into corporations. If you're not getting loans and buying stocks you're missing out and just coping with your savings being devalued.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#395

Post by necrotic_comp »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #314
necrotic_comp wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this statement. I had two majors: Religion (history/study of, not theology) and Computer Science. My Religion degree, esp. when we got to things like post-modern criticism and Hegel, were leap-years more difficult than anything we had to study in computer science. So, yeah, I take umbrage to people saying that the humanities are easy. (The Religion degree was incredibly interesting, too, though ultimatel…

To be clear the argument wasn’t that the degrees weren’t difficult but that they aren’t valuable to employers and one shouldn’t expect to easily pay down their debts without a more valuable degree. Majoring in Religion alone would be imprudent for most people.

That's fair. Tbh, at the school that I went to (top 5 liberal arts school), studying any sort of humanity more or less set you up to pursue either a professional humanities degree (e.g. JD/MBA) or an academic degree (e.g. PhD).

To your point, though, studying just for interest is probably not prudent, and it's also probably not prudent to study humanities if you're not prepared to attain a subsequent degree/go on the academic track.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#396

Post by willis936 »

gruez wrote: post #389
willis936 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an indicator of larger issues. I took a position that I am qualified for, not overqualified for.

So to confirm, you took the job because there are no higher paying jobs available? I think GP was assuming that you had higher paying job options (given that EE jobs are high paying and generally in demand), but you chose to forgo that in favor of a research/academic position.

In my area of expertise and location, there are slim pickings. I moved to stay with my SO while they pursue a PhD. "There's always a choice" is a weak argument. I could move to a tech hub and get an easy cushy job in an ethically bankrupt field. I won't. I am not making life choices that maximize profit. I am also not acting irresponsibly, "living beyond my means", or making bad financial decisions.

You don't see a problem with a motivated, hardworking, educated individual meeting the market at a price that keeps them below what previous generations consider middle class? That is not indicative of an issue to you?

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#397

Post by tootie »

wp381640 wrote: post #232
in3d wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rich through a greater fool theory and creating a bubble in a small stock is not something I’d be proud of. You’re sticking it to the least knowledge Johnny-come-latelies who will be left holding the bag. Thinking that you’re screwing Goldman Sachs is delusional.

When Icahn does it he's a genius. When the street is challenged by a new distributed and crowd sourced hedge fund coordinated on an online forum they're fools. I personally don't care if more people maintain this belief - but more and more funds are definitely starting to pay attention. You could do this once a month - pick a heavily shorted low/mid-cap company and squeeze the crap out of it and reap what PE firms an…

Hedge funds earned their name by their ability to hedge. Professional risk takers can balance their portfolio by placing multiple bets where they can afford a few of them coming up empty because they only need one to hit big. A keyboard commando betting their 401k on one stock is running a much bigger risk.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#398

Post by pas »

gruez wrote: post #14
dvt wrote: post #6

> The same emotion that caused us to root for the thieves in Ocean’s 11 is what makes Wall Street Bets so enticing. Put frankly, Millennials are tired of getting fucked by the man. When you’re underemployed with $100,000 in student loan debt, your financial situation feels overwhelming. You really don’t want to take the advice of your parents or CNBC talking heads [5] to invest 10% of your salary for a 4% annual retu…

>It's a never-ending shit-show. At least some of us are getting rich in /r/wallstreetbets. This is sad because most of what you've said can be applied to lotteries as well, which historically has been criticized as being a "tax" on the poor. The end result is the same: people putting themselves in a worse place financially (on average), just so they can cope with their bleak existence.

Central banks are printing money. IPOs are hotter than hot. The odds are in favor of WSB for now.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#399

Post by jeffbee »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #390
jeffbee wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think they need to close their position? They need to meet margin requirements, which they can do by raising cash. Closing their position is the worst of their options and I don’t see why they would take it. Everyone who is short has to pay the vig every day, so that hasn’t changed.

It costs nothing to hold. They have to choose between a hail Mary and closing.

This is not right. There is a daily fee to borrow any stock. It varies by issue and it changes over time.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#400

Post by bluefirebrand »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #332
nemothekid wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had a lot of peers who partied through college, skipped classes, hardly worked, majored in women’s studies / art history / literature / etc and still managed to live in the dorms, buy daily lattes, have the latest iPhones, etc. Did you go to a 4 year private school (possibly a non-Ivy)? I feel like you are describing a class of Americans who are oblivious to their privilege, but are mistakenly labeled as the work…

I went to a four year state school in a state mostly free from major metropolitan areas full of stupid money that tend to mint a lot of those types of people. Yet there were still a lot of those people on campus. I wouldn't say a majority but they were there.

FWIW, I also went to a smaller university in a blue collar city where that kind of rich people money was largely absent.

I still saw this behaviour a ton, and it wasn't people living large off of daddy's money, it was people living large off of way too much student loan money.

People would take the maximum loan they could get even if they were living at home with no expenses, just so they could afford a party lifestyle

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