Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 1001 posts

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#411

Post by reissbaker »

nightowl_games wrote: post #124
boringg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand what's happening here. There's only so much volume available as a result of the short positions. WSB et al are putting in money on a long hold. As a result that drives up the price. Yeah gamma's are in for sure making money. There are some people who have made multiple millions. One individual sitting at $31M currently on a $50k investment. Some retail will lose, but wall street instituti…

> For them to win this they need to keep putting more money into the fire which pulls in bigger and bigger fish. This isn't true. The institutions with Short Exposure are connected to the institutions who buy Robinhood data and perform high frequency trading on those orders. Citadel and Melvin can BUY GME themselves to mitigate the risks. It is likely that a substantial amount of GME is being held by the institutions…

"Melvin and Citadel can BUY GME themselves to mitigate the risk."

Melvin buying GME is not "mitigating," it's closing the short position. If you close your short position high, you got screwed and you lost money. They did close it recently... At a massive loss.

"I firmly believe that the hedge funds that held GME short positions have bought into GME to mitigate their exposure. They likely bought in algorithmically using robinhood data and are making money off of retail right now."

How... Would "making money off of retail" in a pernicious sense be possible right now? If a retail trader on WSB bought in at $20, and sold at $200, they got 1000% ROI on their trades. Do you think that a bank secretly snuck in greater than 1000% ROI? The WSB trader got 1000% ROI, but the bank got 2000% ROI on the set of trades? The stock would have to be trading at $600 and the bank secretly pocketed $400 for that to happen.

Sure, the HFT front-run orders. But they are constantly buying and selling the shares they trade, they're not just buying. They don't get the buy-and-hold wins that the slow retail traders got off of a rally like this. HFT make money by providing liquidity, not by buying and holding GME.

Also, just as a technicality, Melvin is not a high frequency trader. They are not the same people front-running Robinhood orders. Melvin lost big time.

"My message to the people here: ... you are still losing"

My message to the people here: if you got >1000% ROI, you won. Don't let randos on HN make you feel bad.

(Close your position though.)

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#412

Post by onion2k »

blhack wrote: post #57

Okay a serious question: at what point does it make sense for these hedge fund guys to just purchase reddit and shut it down? To be clear: I don't think that would work, but I think we're at the point where stuff like that is going to be tried. These guys are losing BILLIONS of dollars. Billions. Can they spend $1B to prevent the loss of $2B? (Is reddit worth more than $1B?) Other stuff I won't be surprised if we see…

It would be much cheaper just to pay some kids to make nice looking but ultimately loss making bets on there. If WSB looks like a place where people go to lose money then it's popularity will drop.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#413

Post by vincentmarle »

admax88q wrote: post #315
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #20

> These points doubtless make me appear to be a complacent shill for the financial industry, talking down to the rubes. For the record, I’m still angry about the way workers were ripped off in Britain more than three decades ago, and about the way the little guy ended up bearing the brunt for the financial implosions of 2000 and 2008. But it looks horribly to me as though the same thing is going to happen again — and…

> The "little guy" refers to the Reddit traders that are making a killing right now, with the expectation that eventually the stock price will crash again. The reddit traders are only making a killing if they're selling these inflated positions. At some point somebody will be left holding the bag, odds are it will be a bunch of people from wallstreetbets and other retail investors that are late to the party. There's…

> At some point somebody will be left holding the bag

The same applies to Bitcoin, though, for the past 10 years. Someone's holding the bag at $30K as we speak...

Gamestop can (theoretically) go the same way.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#414

Post by andoriyu »

criddell wrote: post #278
elliekelly wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plenty of WSB posts with multi million positions. This is interesting. I wonder what percent of outstanding shares of $GME WSB commenters collectively own and whether the SEC could make the case they're operating as a "group" for disclosure purposes.

What is there to disclose when the group is entirely open for anybody to see?

It's all complicated and up to interpretation to be honest.

Basically, doing any effort to raise stock price beyond it's "proper" price in a coordinating way is a violation. Proving it is an entire another thing. I doubt this is what happening right now. I would like to see anyone trying to prove that ":rocket::rocket::rocket: GME to 1000" counts as such.

However, liability like that is why AMC is forbidden to mention in r/WSB by its name. It's easy to pump and dump that ticket.

This is why many "Let's take over this company with small market cap" threads were removed back in a day.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#415

Post by JanSt »

supercanuck wrote: post #388
hntrader wrote: post #382

I'd like to know whether these retail investors see Gamestop as artwork or as speculation/investment. Artwork - they buy it not because of any intrinsic value or expectation of a dividend/capital gain, but because of reasons pertaining to subjective utility - childhood nostalgia, a desire to get symbolic revenge at hedge funds, entertainment value, or a desire to access gambling services in a country where online gam…

it started with this.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWdWCtLMoU0

For those downvoting: that‘s u/DeepFuckingValue. He got laughed off by WSB for a year and is now making millions every day. Turned 50k to 48 million as of today.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#416

Post by elliekelly »

criddell wrote: post #278
elliekelly wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plenty of WSB posts with multi million positions. This is interesting. I wonder what percent of outstanding shares of $GME WSB commenters collectively own and whether the SEC could make the case they're operating as a "group" for disclosure purposes.

What is there to disclose when the group is entirely open for anybody to see?

The % of outstanding shares controlled by a group acting in unison.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#417

Post by davedx »

hntrader wrote: post #382

I'd like to know whether these retail investors see Gamestop as artwork or as speculation/investment. Artwork - they buy it not because of any intrinsic value or expectation of a dividend/capital gain, but because of reasons pertaining to subjective utility - childhood nostalgia, a desire to get symbolic revenge at hedge funds, entertainment value, or a desire to access gambling services in a country where online gam…

For me it was an opportunistic trade. I support wall street bets though!

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#418

Post by TeMPOraL »

hntrader wrote: post #382

I'd like to know whether these retail investors see Gamestop as artwork or as speculation/investment. Artwork - they buy it not because of any intrinsic value or expectation of a dividend/capital gain, but because of reasons pertaining to subjective utility - childhood nostalgia, a desire to get symbolic revenge at hedge funds, entertainment value, or a desire to access gambling services in a country where online gam…

Observing from the sidelines, I think by this point it's option #3: doing it for teh lulz.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#419

Post by lend000 »

ping_pong wrote: post #4

It's really not. Because eventually retail is going to get destroyed. Yes, some hedge funds have lost their shirts, but those are the first ones who were in the short before the squeeze. The hedge funds and more importantly day trading shops making money right now are the ones who saw the activity and are goosing the stock price right now. I don't know if people realize that there are thousands of day trading shops w…

There is simply a supply shortage of GameStop stock at the moment. There are no massive hedge funds that took huge positions before the price started rocketing up. Maybe some smaller prop shops with sentiment based strats, but this is mostly retail volume, now being reigned in by market makers. Obviously the smart, patient, and principled retail traders will do better than the uninformed and emotional when all is said and done and the price stabilizes near realistic levels. That is just how markets work. They are not perfect, but allow us to asymptotically approach pricing perfection to the degree that available information is perfect, in the long term. Such phenomenons are much less volatile on larger market cap components of the economy where the big funds can aid in price discovery.

Re: GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

#420

Post by silexia »

solaxun wrote: post #407
silexia wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold a GME call option with a strike price of $320 and expiration in July today for $200. A pump and dump by novices is easy money if you know how to play it. Everyone knows this is going to crash, the question is when?

You got balls, yes the IVOL is insane and that's a nice premium, but if for some reason you have a repeat of today, you're out $20K plus. This thing will crater, yeah, but shorting it is insane and option volatility is ridiculous right now.

I agree with you... There is a (small) risk the stock goes to $1,000 or $5,000. My portfolio won't face any margin calls even with those numbers though... And eventually the price will come back down.

I think it was Ben Graham who said the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Post reply on HN