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The Battle of GameStop

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Re: The Battle of GameStop

#551

Post by whythre »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #486
55555 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve come to think that maybe young person can YOLO a bit against the odds somewhere in life. If something returns poorly on average, but has high payouts at the top it might just work out. Your life won’t be the average case but single sample. This is indeed, after all, a website about founding startups.

The only difference between being a founder and gambling is the social signaling. In both cases, luck is a larger component than grit (lots of amazing folks have failed through no fault of their own). No shame in gambling your way to wealth if you don't care about the social signaling.

I am going to push back on this. Creating something of value is better than gambling, which is why founders have more prestige than lotto winners. Even if luck is a significant component to success, it isn’t the only component.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#552

Post by shicky »

DCF wrote: post #290
hendzen wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy that guy did well. But one guy taking a negative expected value bet and winning big doesn't really help all the other little guys on WSB who got roped in to buying GME at 100+ today or might even be ITM on their calls but will get crushed by insane spreads, theta decay due to halts and don't have the capital to exercise. I'm not spiteful of KG and the other people who are making the real money off all the c…

> But one guy taking a negative expected value bet and winning big doesn't really help all the other little guys on WSB who got roped in to buying GME at 100+ today I don't disagree with your post overall, but do want to give some credit to the particular user being discussed. He had a solid bull value thesis that was well thought out and not at all based on memes, with the short squeeze potential being a mere aftert…

what's his youtube?

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#553

Post by toomuchtodo »

whythre wrote: post #551
toomuchtodo wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference between being a founder and gambling is the social signaling. In both cases, luck is a larger component than grit (lots of amazing folks have failed through no fault of their own). No shame in gambling your way to wealth if you don't care about the social signaling.

I am going to push back on this. Creating something of value is better than gambling, which is why founders have more prestige than lotto winners. Even if luck is a significant component to success, it isn’t the only component.

Value is subjective. Wealth is objective and tangible.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#554

Post by throwaway894345 »

piva00 wrote: post #534
jedmeyers wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> system is designed to give money easily to young people Who exactly designed the system that way? Banks (aka capitalists) were not very keen on doing this exact thing for the risk reasons, and now the government ended up backing most of the educational debt for some reason (aka socialism).

"Who?" is a very loaded question for a process that for happenstance ended up designed this way through the decades. It's not about a single designer, it's about a power structure that has been perpetuated by the elites on this power structure. And I'm sorry, the moment you use "socialism" to describe the government backing private loans from institutions that are privately held you lost me. This is not even close to…

> This is not even close to a semblance of socialism, this is your government trying to live by the ideology of "free market everything" and patching the holes created by this ideology with a more expensive (and dumber) solution.

I'm not an ardent capitalist, but I think education is an area that would have been better off without government tampering, or perhaps with less-clever tampering. The good bit about our student loan program is that it normalized higher education (perhaps too much to the extent that many would have been happier and more successful in the trades). The bad bit is that government put all risk on the students, allowing for students to elect into programs that wouldn't have a good return on investment--something that virtually no bankers would have signed off on. As a result, two things happened: 1. millions of students annually opt into careers with poor job prospects on the other side and 2. the price of higher education inflated (something like tenfold) to meet the availability of student loan money (and without any corresponding increase in value) because the system isn't steering students (and their loan money) toward programs that deliver. I think if we allowed students to default on their loans, we would see loan prices fall 80% or more ($8K instead of $40K).

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#555

Post by throwaway894345 »

DangitBobby wrote: post #533
throwaway894345 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite. I'm from a lower middle class family and that because my parents worked overtime in their blue collar jobs. I went to a public 4 year university. I was successful in college precisely because I didn't have a privileged background. While I also had no idea how to manage that much money, I erred on the side of caution. While my contemporaries lived in dorms, I spent half and rented a house with seve…

Counteranecdote here, I went to a 4 year public university as well, and the students I knew were not living extravagantly.

Is it possible that we have different ideas of what constitutes "extravagantly"? I wonder if anyone has quantified student spending?

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#556

Post by greedo »

mmglr wrote: post #515
ivanech wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody wrote a reply to the above comment saying that people should simply not have student loan debt and then promptly deleted it before I could post the following reply: Big ask to expect teenagers to be able to project the marginal benefit of college education (inherently uncertain and speculative) and to also estimate the real, not nominal, burden of the loans to the future (again, inherently uncertain and spec…

There is certainly a problem with how teenagers are misinformed about college, and that education debit is difficult to discharge. However, I do agree that one should have little to no student loan debt. I am a millennial and was able to graduate without student loan debt. I went to community college then transferred to a state school. I earned a scholarship to do a masters in computer science. Then I found a six fig…

When I went to college, I could earn enough in one summer to pay for my tuition and books. Not my housing or anything else though. In the intervening 40 years, tuition costs have gone through the roof. There's no way that someone can work their way through school. Even community college in my town is expensive. Unless you can get an academic scholarship, or are very low income and get a needs based grant, you're stuck with loans.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#557

Post by greedo »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #494
mbg721 wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A degree from a state school in something reasonably marketable will still provide a decently comfy lifestyle in most of the US, and there are still plenty of single women who aren't spending all their time looking for someone a little bit snazzier on Tinder. Sure, it might not be quite as easy now, but I think the benefits of baby-boomerdom are a little exaggerated.

This attitude is what continues to kill us as a nation. "Everything is fine! remember this!" but if you look deeper most of it is not true. Things are not well for this nation. The capitol was just stormed. Those statistics are easily gamed. For one, salaries aren't that high in the cheap COL areas and there aren't any jobs or room for advancement in Tusla. Sorry, that's just the facts. There are plenty of shitty pla…

>and don't want to marry and have wanton sex all the time?

I'd make the joke about married couples not having sex, but it's too painful. ;)

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#558

Post by Mobleysoft »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #511
Mobleysoft wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm up 180% over the year. Peanuts compared to the WSB people, but I got there with my own intuition. I'm looking into food and entertainment for my next picks. I think the populace will need them over the next year before a general return to the before times mid 2022. We'll see.

Is it worthwhile to buy long-term calls and puts then? Like 6-9 months out?

LEAPS(Long Term Equity Anticipation Securities) calls, 1-2 years out in something too important to fail at a current all time low that the big shorters are ganged-up against is the value bet to look for. My 1/20/23 $3 AMC LEAPS calls that I've been accumulating since the pandemic struck long before wall street bets took notice are up 227% today as of 10 seconds ago for the day, and 822% overall. Granted, I'm benefiting from the commotion going on, but I'm holding until the end, because I believe in the long term fundamentals of AMC and hope to be positioned to exercise rather than sell by the time expiry arrives. (Edit: wording.)

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#559

Post by RhodoGSA »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #486
55555 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve come to think that maybe young person can YOLO a bit against the odds somewhere in life. If something returns poorly on average, but has high payouts at the top it might just work out. Your life won’t be the average case but single sample. This is indeed, after all, a website about founding startups.

The only difference between being a founder and gambling is the social signaling. In both cases, luck is a larger component than grit (lots of amazing folks have failed through no fault of their own). No shame in gambling your way to wealth if you don't care about the social signaling.

Social signaling must come from the person doing the signaling. In my experience people who've made life changing money off crypto this last couple months say they are 'investors' or have a couple of 'business'. Never would they say it was all luck or I gambled my way to the top. They saw a trend, they bet one it and they were payed for voting with their wallet. Although you call it 'gambling' someone else might call it 'insight' or 'Voting with your wallet' in the case of crypto.

Re: The Battle of GameStop

#560

Post by toomuchtodo »

RhodoGSA wrote: post #559
toomuchtodo wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference between being a founder and gambling is the social signaling. In both cases, luck is a larger component than grit (lots of amazing folks have failed through no fault of their own). No shame in gambling your way to wealth if you don't care about the social signaling.

Social signaling must come from the person doing the signaling. In my experience people who've made life changing money off crypto this last couple months say they are 'investors' or have a couple of 'business'. Never would they say it was all luck or I gambled my way to the top. They saw a trend, they bet one it and they were payed for voting with their wallet. Although you call it 'gambling' someone else might call…

All good points. In the end, sentiment is a shared delusion.
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