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u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

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Re: u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

#411

Post by tartoran »

Alupis wrote: post #278
runarberg wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in my ideal situation, the stock markets have already crashed and burned. My argument above is not that savings accounts are optimal for me personally, but that they are an alternative to the stock market. Better yet, an alternative which is far more worker friendly as they don’t rely on taking the profits from the workers and putting giving them to the shareholders.

You might be missing the issue here. A savings account will cost you money in the long term - ie. your purchase power will decrease every year because the interest paid on savings accounts does not even keep up with inflation. The longer and more money you have in a savings account, the less purchase power you actually have. Think of this like putting $100 into the account but only being able to spend $90 of it. Mult…

I think the parent is talking about an ideal situation in which saving accounts do actually pay off a nice interest that beats the inflation and sprinkle some extra profit on top. Not a lot but it is risk free. Isn’t the idea that banks make the money flow by circulating it around a good one? A saver who doesn’t need it now can park it in a bank and when their time to retire comes they get their actualized money plus some profit. And since the interest compounds, with a nice rate it could be both safe and profitable.

I agree that this is not feasible now but that is only becaus of the low interest. That dynamic would change if the interest is dialed up.

Re: u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

#412

Post by jjeaff »

adolph wrote: post #396
UncleMeat wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Amazon dominates a market and is making outrageous revenue and income. Tesla doesn't compare.

Which market? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_retail_compa...

Check the operational format column. Notice that amazon, being number 4 overall, is literally the only one on that list that says "e-commerce".

The greatest generation is dying off and the boomers are retiring. If no one seriously challenges amazon, there is going to be a lot of growth in e-commerce.

Re: u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

#413

Post by jjeaff »

blackrock wrote: post #210
pnathan wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you trawl his reddit account, he mentioned 9 months ago there's a possibility of a short squeeze of some sort happening sometime.

It’s possible that when he said that, the short percentage was not greater than 100% of the floating shares, as they are now. It seems like he was investing for the long haul, because of the stock and the company’s fundamentals. But, the phenomenon now is the short squeeze, because of the excessive shorts over the available floating shares.

I believe he has a youtube video from 6 months ago titled something like "> 100% short interest, short squeeze possible".

Re: u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

#414

Post by jewel »

codeisawesome wrote: post #277
fractionalhare wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. When a hedge fund is getting its face ripped off because its shorts are up 50 - 200%, it will liquidate its longs to cover. The rotational dynamics of many funds doing that at once can drive the price down on traditionally stable stocks that everyone owns. In a worst case scenario that could trigger a massive selloff which would crash the market. This is compounded by the fact that funds will defensivel…

After the sell-off, there’s a lot of cash (yes even more) washing around right? It has to go somewhere , and so it will come back into securities in probably a few weeks or max, months. The value represented isn’t exactly disappearing it’s still in the ‘system’. So why is a crash in equities prices such a big deal?

Money isn't conserved in the same way that matter is. Right now the market cap of gamestop is $22B, which is calculated by multiplying the share price times the number of outstanding shares. If some news comes out over the weekend that causes people to value the stock lower, we could see the first trade at $33/share instead of $330/share. $20B of money just disappears. It never really existed in the first place.

Re: u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

#415

Post by wp381640 »

nostrademons wrote: post #161
eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people constantly have to re-invent the wheel? :( Freenet [0] has been providing censorship-resistant, anonymous, decentralized hosting for 20 years - and is still in active development! You could upload it to Freenet without any server whatsoever and it would stay online for as long as it is popular, even if your machine goes offline. And you'd be anonymous while doing so! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr…

I remember when this came out 20 years ago. It was part of the whole wave of P2P filesharing programs that came out between 1999-2002: Napster, Gnutella, Kazaa, Audiogalaxy, etc. Amazing it's still going on. BTW, for folks new in tech - it's amazing how influential that wave of programs were, even though they largely failed in the marketplace. Napster founder Sean Parker later became the first investor and first pres…

Kinda funny small-world stuff that Justin Frankel (Winamp + Gnutella) went onto AOL/TimeWarner and got into a feud with an exec he wrote a passive-aggressive blog post about without naming him. The exec was Chamath Palihapitiya.

Justin was and always will be a legend - he wrote an AOL Messsenger ad blocker and mp3 search plugin _while working at AOL_

Re: u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

#416

Post by pb7 »

whatever1 wrote: post #345

If GameStop issues some million shares on Monday morning to raise capital isn't it game over for every retail player? Shorts will close their positions, RH users will suffer great losses from dilution. Am I missing something?

If they issue a few million shares at the current price, shorts still have to cover at an absurdly high price compared to their entry which will cost them in the single to low double digit billions. It may screw over retail investors but bankruptcy is inevitable.

Re: u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

#417

Post by runarberg »

pb7 wrote: post #409
runarberg wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I’m not joking, nor am I harming my future. I don’t have to make an optimal amount of growth on my savings to afford my retirement. There is no harm in owning less money then if I had used them to swindle more workers out of their profits on the open markets. In fact, every dollar you make as a result of not working is a dollar somebody else worked for and didn’t get. You are harming workers by earning money on th…

Every dollar you make in interest from your savings account at your credit union is $30 that someone had to pay the credit union in interest on their mortgage. You are swindling people out of their hard earned money — people who are struggling to own their home or business — to fund your own retirement.

Do you honestly believe that these are equivalent? Or are you just arguing in bad faith? I’m gonna assume the former and explain the difference.

The interest you are paying when you take out a loan is a) compensating the creditor for money lost because of inflation, and b) paying for a service. The bank/credit union at the same time will at the same time a) compensate for inflation and b) reward savings accounts for injecting money into the bank/credit union.

This is fundamentally different from shareholders buying stocks from a business siphoning parts of the profits from the workers to the shareholder.

People taking loans need the people that open the saving account, and get something of value (money they need). Workers don’t need the shareholders, and they get nothing in return (except lower salaries).

I’m sorry if I sound like I’m talking down to you. It is just that the different is so obvious I don’t know how to explain it differently.

Re: u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

#418

Post by whatever1 »

pb7 wrote: post #416
whatever1 wrote: post #345

If GameStop issues some million shares on Monday morning to raise capital isn't it game over for every retail player? Shorts will close their positions, RH users will suffer great losses from dilution. Am I missing something?

If they issue a few million shares at the current price, shorts still have to cover at an absurdly high price compared to their entry which will cost them in the single to low double digit billions. It may screw over retail investors but bankruptcy is inevitable.

Pardon my ignorance, I have no expertise in the field. When you issue new shares, do they have a fixed price or are they sold at market value (whatever market decides the price to be)? If the latter happens, I expect that the price of the [edit:GME] stock will collapse immediately.

Re: u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

#419

Post by runarberg »

Alupis wrote: post #279
runarberg wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I’m not joking, nor am I harming my future. I don’t have to make an optimal amount of growth on my savings to afford my retirement. There is no harm in owning less money then if I had used them to swindle more workers out of their profits on the open markets. In fact, every dollar you make as a result of not working is a dollar somebody else worked for and didn’t get. You are harming workers by earning money on th…

You do understand where the "interest" comes from on your savings account right? The bank doesn't just invent it... And largely speaking, when you make money on the stock market it comes from a multitude of sources, including the hedge funds you seem to despise. Not to mention, just because you made a profit on the market doesn't mean someone was screwed over. The stock is worth whatever it's worth when you sold it.…

idk. I simply don’t like the fact that people are gambling with my workplace. And I especially don’t like it when shareholders pocket parts of the profit that I made them without bringing anything of value to the company.

I don’t despise hedge funds any more then I despise the stock market as a whole. We don’t need it. In fact I would argue that the existence of the stock market is actively harmful. I would go so far as stating the stock market is partially to blame for the current climate crisis. That is, if it wasn’t for the stock market, perhaps people would have acted sooner and prevented the climate emergency.

But fundamentally the stuck market is an idiotic idea. If we didn’t have stock markets, and someone pitch the idea of the first stock market here on HN, I don’t see how any businesses would subject them self to being bought and sold like that.

Re: u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania

#420

Post by nostrademons »

wp381640 wrote: post #415
nostrademons wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when this came out 20 years ago. It was part of the whole wave of P2P filesharing programs that came out between 1999-2002: Napster, Gnutella, Kazaa, Audiogalaxy, etc. Amazing it's still going on. BTW, for folks new in tech - it's amazing how influential that wave of programs were, even though they largely failed in the marketplace. Napster founder Sean Parker later became the first investor and first pres…

Kinda funny small-world stuff that Justin Frankel (Winamp + Gnutella) went onto AOL/TimeWarner and got into a feud with an exec he wrote a passive-aggressive blog post about without naming him. The exec was Chamath Palihapitiya. Justin was and always will be a legend - he wrote an AOL Messsenger ad blocker and mp3 search plugin _while working at AOL_

And Gnutella, too. I still remember hurrying to download it when it came out because I knew that Justin worked at AOL/TimeWarner and it was going to get taken down on Monday as soon as the powers that be realized someone had written a piracy app. Luckily people had mirrored it, and eventually ended up reverse-engineering the protocol.
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