So that Reddit Robinhood GameStop Stock Thing

[Mollymews]

i think the greifers are the short-sellers who are able to do this on margin. Short selling on margin is a horrendous practice, has zero redeeming features, and causes companies that are currently experiencing trading difficulties even more grief than they are already experiencing thru sluggish revenue earnings

internationally most stock and money exchanges forbid this practice. Limit Buy and Limit Sell is the mechanism that responsible exchanges employ for price value adjustment . Example Lindex

[Gage Wirefly]

1 hour ago, LibGwen said:

Prokofy Neva's comparison is apt.

Some wealthy guys decided to see if they could influence the stock market and found that they could.  But it caused such a big effect it triggered safeties.  They are claiming those safeties shouldn't apply to them, because, er, rules shouldn't apply to people like them.  Sound familiar?

 

It wasn't rich people. This thread sums it up nicely exactly what happened.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1354517067240771584.html

[roseelvira]

Edited January 30, 2021 by roseelvira

[Qie Niangao]

15 minutes ago, roseelvira said:

,,,,need a fact check

Why?

What's it to ya?

[Harper Held]

[Lindal Kidd]

At first it was the Little Guys vs. the Big Bad Wall Street Hedge Funds.

Now it's Big Bad Wall Street Hedge Funds vs. Other Big Bad Wall Street Hedge Funds.

And the Little Guys, once again, get trampled.

[Qie Niangao]

Although my earlier post was responding to a now-deleted post, maybe I should nonetheless confess my undying fandom for Janet Yellin (not merely in comparison to her cartoonishly villainous predecessor).

Two ways Slate redeems itself (from a very silly headline about Yellin) today:

1. David Plotz' "cocktail chatter" on this week's Slate Political Gabfest: Dessa's "Who's Yellin Now?"
2. A whole episode of Slate Money devoted to what the GameStop event really means to the market, including this beautiful observation:

Quote

Emily Peck: I mean, you got to think that part of the reason this has happened is because Donald Trump left a little bit of a vacuum on the Internet and we’ve been looking for things to fill it. I think for a while it was Bernie Sanders and his mittens sitting in a chair. And we haven’t seen a lot of that lately because now it’s GameStop. And it’s like I was saying earlier, it’s like one of these stories that is both easy to understand and impossible to understand and endlessly interesting because you can come at it from every angle. Whatever your take is, you can find it in the GameStop story. Like we saw the Marxists come in and say, see, this is what Marx has been saying all along. My colleague Zach Carter was like, this is a Keynes thing. He wrote a whole take on that. (Anna Szymanski:  It’s really a Minsky thing, I feel.) Yeah, like Elizabeth Warren. Of course, she has her talking points. It fit for that. So it’s this Trump vacuum. Plus, the palette of GameStop allows us all to inscribe our own theories. And it’s like a Rorschach test basically for the whole Internet at this time.

Felix Salmon: Do you know anyone whose priors weren’t reinforced by this whole thing? [...]

 

[Prokofy Neva]

23 hours ago, Bitterthorn said:

I don't understand how the comparison applies. 🤔

Well, other people get it.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

19 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I applaud the Reddit folks.

 

No comparison to SL griefers at all, or SL anything else.

 

 

Yes, you're tracking my analogy nicely.

[Prokofy Neva]

17 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

At first it was the Little Guys vs. the Big Bad Wall Street Hedge Funds.

Now it's Big Bad Wall Street Hedge Funds vs. Other Big Bad Wall Street Hedge Funds.

And the Little Guys, once again, get trampled.

Despite the involvement of this company called "Robinhood," it is about wealthy people, as you can see, not some poor penny stock traders:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9198589/YouTuber-Roaring-Kitty-disrupted-Wall-Street-Boston-suburban-dad.html

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Despite the involvement of this company called "Robinhood," it is about wealthy people, as you can see, not some poor penny stock traders:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9198589/YouTuber-Roaring-Kitty-disrupted-Wall-Street-Boston-suburban-dad.html

 

First of all, The Daily Mail, Prok? Really? LOL

Secondly, this seems to undercut your initial thesis, which was, as I took it anyway, that this thing was being engineered by a community of online hactivists, techno-communists, or whatever you want to call them.

One thing is definite: however much we may have enjoyed watching hedge fund managers get kicked in the teeth for a while (I know I did), this isn't going to end well for the small investor, and it sure ain't going to lead to the democratization of the stock market, because the whole system -- stock markets, social media, the whole huge, complex corporatized structure of modern capitalism, is built to ensure that that doesn't happen. Ever.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Silent Mistwalker]

18 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

First of all, The Daily Mail, Prok? Really? LOL

Secondly, this seems to undercut your initial thesis, which was, as I took it anyway, that this thing was being engineered by a community of online hactivists, techno-communists, or whatever you want to call them.

One thing is definite: however much we may have enjoyed watching hedge fund managers get kicked in the teeth for a while (I know I did), this isn't going to end well for the small investor, and it sure ain't going to lead to the democratization of the stock market, because the whole system -- stock markets, social media, the whole huge, complex corporatized structure of modern capitalism, is built to ensure that that doesn't happen. Ever.

All the more reason to tear it all down to the bare bones and start over. 

Beam me up!

“The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”
― Jean-Luc Picard

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

All the more reason to tear it all down to the bare bones and start over. 

Just sayin'

[Maryanne Solo]

OMG now they're redditing silver! 🙄
Too late!
I already made twice + the $value$ of my Argentium stock!
  

[ClariceRose]

FYI: I am on reddit and in that sub, wallstreetbets. I did buy stocks from some of the companies. There are in depth reasons for them starting this rally, too much to type here though. There are also people pretending to be on the side of wallstreetbets and giving out false information such as buy this stock now, buy silver now, etc. DO NOT BELIEVE IT. Use caution whenever you buy a stock or whatever, do not just go with what someone says on the internet. Use your discretion and NEVER buy stocks with money that you need for bills and necessities. ONLY invest what you can afford to lose and won't be severely depressed over.

NEVER buy something just because it is trending and you see all these bloated promises of gains/profits, do your research and then if it is a positive analysis forecast, then again, only buy what you can afford to lose.

 

 

[Lucia Nightfire]

21 hours ago, Maryanne Solo said:

OMG now they're redditing silver! 🙄
Too late!
I already made twice + the $value$ of my Argentium stock!
  

Silver is a ruse backed by mainstream media to bolster portfolio buffer stocks. It's low risk as are most precious metals.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Lucia Nightfire

[ChinRey]

On 1/29/2021 at 1:37 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

Reminds me of griefers in SL.

There is at least one crucial difference, the Reddit Gamestop buying doesn't affect innocent bystanders, only people who are participants in the game and willing to play it rough. The loosers in this are investors - funds and individuals - who were shorting the stock. They knew, or at least ought to know, that this was a high risk strategy and they were prepared to take the chance.

For those not familiar with Wall Street terminology, shorting a stock is to sell shares you don't actually own, gambling that you can buy them cheaper before you have to deliver. It's a gamble. If the prices drops in the meantime, you win, if it raises, you loose.

Edited February 4, 2021 by ChinRey

[Mollymews]

49 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

For those not familiar with Wall Street terminology, shorting a stock is to sell shares you don't actually own, gambling that you can buy them cheaper before you have to deliver. It's a gamble. If the prices drops in the meantime, you win, if it raises, you loose.

another thing about this particular market play was that quite a few people had worked out that the number of short positions taken on Gamestock totalled more than the actual number of Gamestock shares. In this case it becomes almost a no-brainer to buy the stock, as not all of the short positions could ever be filled

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

There is at least one crucial difference, the Reddit Gamestop buying doesn't affect innocent bystanders, only people who are participants in the game and willing to play it rough. The loosers in this are investors - funds and individuals - who were shorting the stock. They knew, or at least ought to know, that this was a high risk strategy and they were prepared to take the chance.

For those not familiar with Wall Street terminology, shorting a stock is to sell shares you don't actually own, gambling that you can buy them cheaper before you have to deliver. It's a gamble. If the prices drops in the meantime, you win, if it raises, you loose.

I disagree totally. This isn't a victimless crime. The griefers harassed people they thought should be taken down, and forced their fun guy Robinhood to put a brake on buying and selling. That hurt people like the BarStool guy who does good work raising money for businesses struggling due to COVID, and who lost $700,000 because of these day-old script kiddie equivalents on Reddit.

When institutions are undermined, it harms the whole country. The rolling damage of this is going to go on for ages. Everybody lots to hate on Janet Yellen for getting $800,000 in speaking fees. But Janet Yellen knows what she's talking about and deserves any fee the market will bear. The Redditors don't know what they are talking about, had a half-baked idea about how they could destroy capitalism in a day and substitute it with bitcoin, and found the institutions are more resilient than they think.

 

[ChinRey]

51 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I disagree totally. This isn't a victimless crime.

I didn't say it was a victimless crime, only that it didn't affect innocent bystanders. The loosers in this were all willing and active participants in the game. Some of them may have been ignorant about the risk they took, yes, but that is not an excuse. We can have sympathy for them but at the end of the day they are responsible for their own actions.

 

51 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

When institutions are undermined, it harms the whole country.

The stock market as it is today is already well and truly undermined and very much by those short sellers. I think it's only good for the market that people now see how badly such reckless actions can backfire.

---

I'm not sure if everybody still get what short selling really is so let me use a real life example:

Imagine you're running a grocery store and you've heard rumours that one of your competitors is going to have a huge sale with a 75% discount on potatoes next week. So you launch a campaign, offering potatoes at half price if people by up front and agree to receive next week. The plan is of course to buy up all the potatoes from that other store once their sale starts. This is exactly what short selling is and I think we all can see the risks:

• Maybe the rumours were false and there is no sale coming up
• Maybe some other store had the same idea as you
• Maybe some regular customers buy the potatoes before you can (this is pretty much what happened in the Gamestop case)
• Maybe you pre-sold more potatoes than what the other store had in stock

Is it really neccessary to tell anybody that selling something you don't actually own yet and without knowing what price you have to pay or even if it'll be available at all before you have to deliver, is a gamble?

Edited February 4, 2021 by ChinRey

[Qie Niangao]

Pretty sure most of the volume was from people trying to cash in on a get rich quick scheme, not so much making fine points of political philosophy, except perhaps as post hoc rationale for greed.

If they realized how much money their churn was generating for the same folks they hate. Most hedge funds have high-frequency-trading divisions for whom volatility is bread-and-butter, and that's what pays the bills at RobinHood. As they say, "if the service is free, you're the product not the customer," and those who pay for order flow aren't doing it for charity.

(I don't understand why investors are so happy to pay those rents to network-adjacent algorithms, rather than institute a transaction tax to fund the SEC and maybe a bit more as a disincentive for hyper-volatility.)

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

I didn't say it was a victimless crime, only that it didn't affect innocent bystanders. The loosers in this were all willing and active participants in the game. Some of them may have been ignorant about the risk they took, yes, but that is not an excuse. We can have sympathy for them but at the end of the day they are responsible for their own actions.

Nope. How about people who find themselves tied to the active participants through retirement accounts, business relationships, etc., and who had no say in being associated with those companies in the first place, or even knew that they existed?

[ChinRey]

1 minute ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Nope. How about people who find themselves tied to the active participants through retirement accounts, business relationships, etc., and who had no say in being associated with those companies in the first place, or even knew that they existed?

As I said, ignorance is not an excuse. I do feel sorry for them but if you don't want to risk your money, don't invest it in funds run by reckless traders. If you've been conned, blame the con men, not the people who called their bluff.

Besides, as Mollymews pointed out, the gamestop shorting would have backfired anyway, even without the Reddit gang moving in.

[Theresa Tennyson]

Just now, ChinRey said:

As I said, ignorance is not an excuse. I do feel sorry for them but if you don't want to risk your money, don't invest it in funds run by reckless traders. If you've been conned, blame the con men, not the people who called their bluff.

Besides, as Mollymews pointed out, the gamestop shorting would have backfired anyway, even without the Reddit gang moving in.

What part of "who had no say in being associated with those companies in the first place" did you not understand?

[ChinRey]

8 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

What part of "who had no say in being associated with those companies in the first place" did you not understand?

I did answer that:

10 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

If you've been conned, blame the con men, not the people who called their bluff.

Besides, as Mollymews pointed out, the gamestop shorting would have backfired anyway, even without the Reddit gang moving in.

Edit: When it comes to retirement funds, there is an interesting parallel to the Enron scandal. Enron empolyees lost a lot of money on it because their pension fun had invested heavily in the company. Was that the fault of the people who eventually brought the company down? I think not.

Edited February 4, 2021 by ChinRey