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WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

thinkingthrough.substack.com

471–475 of 475 posts

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It failed. 2. It was stupid. 3. It violated the principles of our society. That is the point I’m trying to demonstrate. Solutions come from within, not without.

You have it backwards, change cannot come from within. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

(This is in no way an endorsement of the capitol insurrectionists. They don't want change. In fact, they're upset at change.)

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#472

Once again, this insistence on viewing 'Wall Street' as a monolothic entity. The largest asset management firm on Earth holds over 9 million Gamestop stock, none of the big banks that received bailouts in 08 are affected by this, 99.9% of hedge funds are not affected by this, high frequency traders are probably making a bundle. Institutional money was long Gamestop before this story entered the public consciousness.…

don’t forget the pensioners whose money is in the hedge fund

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#473

Once again, this insistence on viewing 'Wall Street' as a monolothic entity. The largest asset management firm on Earth holds over 9 million Gamestop stock, none of the big banks that received bailouts in 08 are affected by this, 99.9% of hedge funds are not affected by this, high frequency traders are probably making a bundle. Institutional money was long Gamestop before this story entered the public consciousness.…

A lens to look at this through is - "why is short selling allowed?" Advocates cite increased "liquidity." But, does society really benefit? Short-selling really just lets trading firms extract value from the failure of others. In that sense - professional trading firms that participate in short-selling could be grouped into a monolithic "Wall Street" in the sense that they are extracting value without a benefit for s…

because it’s a free country. why would we restrict people from taking loans and who is the government to say the loan has to be denominated in dollars instead of shares?

short sellers have also discovered a lot of fraud companies because they have a monetary incentive

and for society as a whole, we should want the markets to price things accurately. things that are overpriced just means capital that isn’t being used somewhere else efficiently

it may seem ugly but capitalism is creative destruction. it’s an evolutionary system, the weak need to die so the strong can thrive

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#474

As someone who is not very educated in finance, I'm curious how to interpret today's events. Is nasdaq/robinhood/everyone else transparently manipulating the market on behalf of hedge funds? Or are these standard mechanisms in place for preventing the stock market from swinging wildly out of control? I don't know if it's standard to completely block trading on one or more stocks.

WSB has basically recreated a "boiler room", which is an ages old scam where a small group of insiders would encourage people to buy stock, drive them value up, and then the insiders dump the stock. The key insight here is that for every person selling the stock and making millions, somoene has to be buying. There's a narrative about short squeezes forcing a small number of hedge funds to buy stock, but in practice m…

jtmarlin.com says it all

Re: WallStreetBets vs WallStreet: It's not about the money anymore

#475

What's interesting to me is that there is a populist narrative at play, but wouldn't WSB overshort a stock too if they thought they could?

Nobody would be complaining if they lost a ton of money on a stupid trade. In fact they would be posting loss porn on the front page of the subreddit and laughing about it. In fact, some WSBers did short GME and lost a bunch of money. But when the hedge funders get caught then for some reason it's bad and Reddit or Robinhood or the government needs to step in and fix the situation. Instead, we should all be laughing…

How do you know there isn't a russian doll scenario of sock puppets all the way down, and some other hedge fund isn't going to profit in a few months from all of this on a trade we never heard about? After all, the hedge fund industry as a whole does better, not worse, when there is lots of churn, even when that churn means places with names like Melvin every now and then go under. I admit this scenario is not likely, but still, the should statements can be misleading, and I don't recommend them.
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