20 ms·
Reddit’s profane, greedy traders are shaking up the stock market
- gruez 7y agoWait, people actually go to /r/wsb for investment advice? The entire time I thought it was a mix of posting wins/losses along with some memes/humor.
- Spellman 7y agoWhile it's mostly for jokes, it's also hit r/all enough times and has enough subs that if the sub jumps on a particular meme stock, they are enough to actually make it move. So, it's somewhat ironically become a way to coordinate purchase/selling of a stock by getting enough of the hivemind to go along with a particular stock. It's still a terrible place for general advice though.
- ashleyn 7y agoSo...a pump and dump then.
- xxpor 7y agoIs a pump and dump illegal if everyone's in on the joke though?
- gruez 7y agoI don't think the SEC would buy that excuse. Even on thinly traded stocks there's going to be volume from non /r/wsb participants.
- bobthepanda 7y agoOnly way to find that out is through precedent.
- Spellman 7y agoI mean, there are definitely those who are trying to exploit r/WSB to do that I'm sure. But at the same time, it's not like there's defacto leaders. It's more once the zeitgeist takes hold mobs of people will, for whatever reason, follow along. I'm sure there are a lot of very smart people trying to figure out how to weaponize this and have their positions locked in before the mobs move the market and time their exits.
- outworlder 7y agoIt is exactly that. Sometimes there's actual, solid, investment advice hidden in posts. Sometimes.
- rapsey 7y agoWsb is in the honey moon stage of a subreddit where you find a ton of amazing humor and and an occasional deeply insightful comment.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- leetcrew 7y agounless you already know what you're doing (ie, not me), it's hard to tell the solid investment advice from intelligent-sounding bs. in general, it serves as a good example of what not to do.
- Infinitesimus 7y agoIt's mostly what you said but as the sub got more popular, a lot of people started treating it as sage advice to get rich quickly without understanding what they were doing. There were a few posts by people pumping their stocks and the like but I think the current market correcrion/recession bell tolling will scare most people off
- nitwit005 7y agoEven if they don't take it too seriously, I'm sure people pick up ideas there. If you see people talking about buying Tesla options every day, you'll probably consider it far more than you would otherwise.
- gruez 7y agoYou'd think that the screenshots of horrific losses on robinhood, interspersed throughout would have a moderating effect. That, along with the obviously sarcastic investment advice and general crude language makes anything coming out of there less trustworthy than something like Mad Money on CNBC.
- vsareto 7y agoPosting losses gets other people more comfortable with losing, keeping folks interacting with the market longer. If you're Robinhood, you'll benefit either way.
- thisisnico 7y agoI follow other subreddits like /r/investing /r/personalfinance /r/financialindependence that basically send people like this to /r/wsb.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- partiallypro 7y agoIt definitely is mostly memes, but if you're a momentum trader...it's probably not a bad sub to follow for ideas. It can also act as an inverse indicator when everyone starts showing massive gains. I wouldn't be surprised if some hedge funds or algos monitor the sub.
- aaron-santos 7y agoYes, that's why you can be sure that data is vacuumed up, and fed into a model which can exploit that behavior.
- thih9 7y ago> You're in private mode. Subscribe to continue reading in private mode. I didn't realise that Bloomberg blocks private mode too. Messages like this assume that tracking is the default and make sure that we keep losing privacy. I really dislike this trend.
- svnpenn 7y agoI didnt get that, I tried with Firefox 72. Note I am also using uBO 1.25.0.
- TACIXAT 7y agoFF 73 and uBO 1.24.4 I still get it in a private window.
- judge2020 7y agoEven happening with a second Chrome profile, so it might be more heuristic-based than the previous tricks[0]. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20670596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20670596
- toohotatopic 7y agoWhy is that behavior in agreement with GDPR? Don't they have to provide their information without people having to share private data?
- probably_wrong 7y agoIt's not, but that's the one big problem (IMHO) with GDPR: that it doesn't allow individuals to sue. If I want to force them to either fall in line with the GDPR or get out of Europe, I need to find my local responsible agency, send them an email, and pray that they have the will and resources to act on it.
- danieka 7y agoIt does allow individuals to sue, and our right to justice is set out in article 79. It allows you to bring a suit to court in your (European) country of residence. You can sue for compensation for immaterial or material damages as set out in article 82. You should/might be able to sue for other things as well, such as forcing a company to delete data or provide you with a copy of data under processing. In Sweden there is case law where a claimant has received compensation for damages. So at least in Sweden court can be expected to award compensation when the case merits it. I have myself brought two cases to court in Sweden, but settled before verdict. The reason I was able to settle is the verdict would probably have gone my way. I agree with you that your local DPA is toothless. There are way to many cases for them to handle, that’s why we need to turn to the courts and not to our DPA to protect our rights. Lastly, most claims will be small claims, that is, less than 1000 EUR. In small claims you’re only liable for a small portion of lawyers fee should you lose. IANAL.
- jborichevskiy 7y agoRelated: r/pennystocks https://twitter.com/packyM/status/1229910436184756225?s=20 https://twitter.com/packyM/status/1229910436184756225?s=20
- 52-6F-62 7y agoI can't tell if they're being serious or not. One of the commenters was right. It's almost exactly Stratton Oakmont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont
- safog 7y agoCome on man, there's no where near enough volume there to move anything but the most low volume of stocks. All they trade in is meme stocks like TSLA, NFLX, MSFT, AAPL etc., and a few 100k on calls here or there won't budge the price in the slightest. On top of that, it's not even a P&D group, people there are just trading against each other, you have both bears and bulls and thetas. There's never been a concerted effort to pump SPCE for instance.
- rantwasp 7y agohmm... what about MU, AMD, BYND, SHOP. you’re not paying attention. imho, robinhood gets the most out of it. the number if issues this reddit sub has found with RH is mind-boggling
- metalliqaz 7y agoinfinite money!
- rantwasp 7y agocannot literally go... sideways what about box spreads? it’s foolproof!
- blaser-waffle 7y agoI mean didn't the dude come out ahead? To the tune of like $10K?
- rantwasp 7y agobox spreads? nah. he lost 60K
- cbHXBY1D 7y agoThey've definitely moved MVIS before.
- 7y ago
- cdiamand 7y agoHey! I'd like to shamelessly plug my new project here: https://topstonks.com https://topstonks.com We're writing about this speculative culture emanating from WSB and 4chan in a daily email. We send out a list of the most mentioned stocks, and do a longer form commentary, with quotes from those communities a few times a week. It's just an email now, but we're going to roll out options analysis and a few other goodies in the coming weeks :) (The language can be a bit crude, so this might not be for you, if that is a concern.)
- Spellman 7y agoThere's already a vehicle to invest on "buzz" actually. The BUZZ ETF is traded and invests based on how often particular stocks get mentioned in social media and new reporting. I'm sure they're monitoring r/WSB as well. http://buzzindexes.com/ http://buzzindexes.com/ Disclosure, do not hold or have any affiliation with Buzz Index products. Just heard about it before.
- cdiamand 7y agoCool! We were actually recently talking about how well an ETF that inversed WallstreetBets would do.
- sigstoat 7y agowhat's the inverse of WSB look like? holding for the long term? it's the only thing none of them are doing.
- strbean 7y agoSeems like they are just an index now, with no ETF? All I can find for ETFs is "BUZ ceased trading on 03/01/19"[1]. [1] https://www.etf.com/BUZ https://www.etf.com/BUZ
- anon9001 7y agoIf it's easy enough to start an ETF, maybe someone should start $WSB that yolos some % of the total fund into far OTM options on meme stocks every day.
- throwaway3157 7y agoI recall there's a way to sign up to an email subscription of Matt Levine's writing, without Bloomberg and their pop-ups. Anyone know how to do that?
- derivagral 7y agoMaybe this? [0] I had an issue where I was sub'd for a while, "lost" emails, then it shows up fine again. [0] http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-signup&hash=54223001ca3ffcf40f2629c25acea67a http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-s...
- sgreenlay 7y agohttp://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-signup http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-s...
- somurzakov 7y agojust block Cookies on bloomberg.com website in chrome and voila
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoA very prescient XKCD (which as afar as I can tell, was released before the article was published): https://xkcd.com/2270/ https://xkcd.com/2270/
- alexpotato 7y agoBack in the early 2000's I worked for a company that was was hired (via intermediary law firms) by publicly listed companies to investigate pump and dump schemes on Yahoo message boards (you might call that the "Reddit of the early 2000's"). It involved a lot of web scraping Yahoo with Perl (specifically LWP) and then lots of analysis by humans with some help from automated tools. For example, if you plotted a histogram of each user's posts, you could clearly see when someone was at work (posted between 9am and 5pm with a drop off around noon) and at home (posts between 6pm and 2am with a peak around 10pm). The analysts would often find a piece of information from a 2 year old post, e.g. 'Go Cubs!', and a one week old post "I just attended my 20 year UofI reunion" and quickly be able to narrow down on who the person might be. Coupled with Lexis Nexis (which was just coming online at the time), we routinely narrowed down individuals to just one possible person. Given that this was done back in the early 2000's using ancient servers (by today's standards) and basic statistical analysis with a lot of legwork, I would be surprised if there weren't companies also trying to find the people on Reddit today.
- bdcravens 7y ago> Coupled with Lexis Nexis (which was just coming online at the time) Lexis Nexis has been around a lot longer than that. By "online" do you mean web accessible?
- alexpotato 7y agoCorrect, web accessible is what I was referring to.
- godelski 7y agoBut was P&D happening?
- endorphone 7y agoP&D happens with penny stocks, where a small amount of interest can yield very real change. You can't P&D with any big cap. And the best part with P&D is that most everyone involved knew what was happening, but they played along hoping to get out before it peaks. And it was very real. You could get the emails pimping whatever the OTC stock was and watch as it pumped up, pumped up, pumped up, and then crashed to nothing.
- PragmaticPulp 7y agoNever underestimate the survivorship bias in public stock picking forums. Reddit is no exception. There are a few honest stories of losses and failure in WSB, but the majority of loss stories or bad picks quickly fade into obscurity or are deleted by their original posters. What remains are the highly-upvoted success stories.
- saagarjha 7y ago…and massive losses.
- buzzkillington 7y ago1 million in losses makes you a mod. If anything wallstreetbets loves massive loses more than massive gains.
- sdinsn 7y agoIt sounds like you've never been to WSB- the loss stories are always the highest upvoted
- neonate 7y agohttps://archive.md/GncCZ https://archive.md/GncCZ
- dang 7y agoRelated column: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22425390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22425390
- Traster 7y agoThis article doesn't seem to address 3 big issues: Firstly, most of the stuff on /r/WSB is talking about massive market cap companies like TSLA and AMD. Some punter putting his life savings in AMD puts is not going to actually move the market. I would love to see numbers on this but my gut says that reddit posters posting about their $50k investment in a company that is worth several billion is just retail noise. It's not moving stocks. Secondly, maybe there are some people genuinely attempting to use the forum to pump and dump but frankly, they're probably not succeeding and even if they are, that's exactly the sort of person the SEC is actually interested in prosecuting. But literally there is no evidence it's happening at all, let alone at any scale or is profitable. Finally, I love the idea that market makers are just sitting there going "sure is weird that we've seen a lot of retail flow on MIK, better continue straight forwardly hedging using the future and not exploit this predictable market pattern"
- zpwe 7y agoSo I was one of the first people on Wallstreetbets to post options YOLO around 2015, back then it was nothing but rainbow dick banners and penny stocks. I had previously interned at a brokerage and had just graduated college with a degree in physics(I understood the math behind options). Not hearing back from quant trading firms because I guess BSc is not enough for them, I said fuck it and started taking speculative bets on my own, lost half before I went all in on what I believed to be a fraudulent stock that was getting crushed, bought really far OTM weekly puts and was lucky that the CEOs collateral was liquidated which further tanked the stock. I then just bought AMD SQ when it IPOd and put the rest into ETFs and only traded small amounts on options the side. Just funny to see how far people ran with it. I tried warning people that while I wasn't a "pro" and I was playing up a degenerate trader/4chan character I was aware of the risk I was taking but we know how that turned out.
- ggm 7y agoI wouldn't want to degenerate this into the morals part behind this, but I do wonder how you feel about this now looking back: To be +ve you had to exist in a world watching people go -ve, in a very direct way. I only have managed funds for my pension, I appreciate its not holier-than-thou its just indirectly filthy instead of mired in the pigpen. Total system? its mostly a zero sum outcome against normal incremental gains. Individuals? huge swings. Many snakes and few ladders. Feels like you got onto a ladder but (if I read this right) also got off on a higher cloud, than you entered.
- zpwe 7y agohmm, I take it you mean +ev and -ev ? not sure if I'm revealing too much, but as someone who is not white, or one of the "model minority", who grew up in what many would consider the "hood", attended one of the worst high schools in the country, I have felt my life has been inherently -ev due to the zipcode I grew up in / the color of my skin, who sees the many anti-AA views on this forum (advantages gained from AA are way overstated, if anything it helps rich URM more than those who are poor) and has been discouraged from pursuing a job in traditional tech given all the bullshit about inclusion and diversity that is spewed while their actions say otherwise, I consider the stock market the great equalizer. The barrier to entry is lower than most tech jobs and the color of your skin or your background doesn't change the potential outcome when a trade is placed, getting a job in the industry is a different story though. I've had a hard time hearing back from quant firms (quant from bb that rhymes with oldman slacks said my cv had too many "red flags" to be considered). When talking to universities about grad school, they really didn't give a shit that I was a URM like a lot of people will have you believe, they just wanted money. This bought me time to pursue independent study, where I've been teaching myself stochastic calc, math behind ML, additional programming in hopes of landing a jr quant role where performance is more objective with less layers of abstraction when it comes to value provided, people don't really care how you look if you you can point directly at how much money you made them. So given that most my life has been inherently -ev, I'm not going to lie it feels great for a change and I plan to run with this. Given where I grew up, dog eat dog is what I know, I thrive under pressure and stay rational in chaos, growing up I've had to hyper-analyze situations to anticipate any worst case scenarios that might occur and gtfo before shots are fired. I guess if I were a character from Peanuts, I'd be Pig-pen.
- cityzen 7y agoCouldn't you replace this headline with, "Wall Street's profane, greedy traders are shaking up the stock market" and have it be as valid, if not more, than talking about people on reddit?
- jobseeker990 7y agoCan anyone explain the strategy it's talking about?
- JakeTheAndroid 7y agoThe WSB strategy: Buying call or puts instead of individual stocks. Calls are when you think a stock is going to go up, puts are when you think it's going to go down. Instead of having to buy an individual stock, you can simply buy a call because you think the stock price will go up. If it does go up like you project, then you will make money. If instead it goes down, you lose money. This is generally a non-standard type of trade for the common investor. It's easy enough on the surface to understand, but much harder to actually execute, because you generally do want some deeper understanding of market trends and how stocks move. That barrier of entry hasn't slowed down most people on WSB, because the loss porn was kind of the point of the subreddit. They didn't really care if they guessed right, they cared about having the most daring bet.
- henryfjordan 7y agoA lot of the craziness is from exactly what bets they are making. The cool thing to do is to buy "Out of the Money" options (where $TSLA might cost $420/share but the options are for $450), sometimes with borrowed money. These options are dirt cheap, so you can buy a ton of them. Usually you lose your whole investment when the options expire, but if the stock jumps over the price of the option you can make a ton of money.
- traeregan 7y agoSomeone started a cryptocurrency version of WSB recently as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/SatoshiStreetBets/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SatoshiStreetBets/
- holychiz 7y agoThis is giving wayyyy too much credit to a sub-reddit that's all about poking fun at the trading game, and each others. Please don't throw your money away following them.
- razster 7y agoFor those interested in r/WSB's reactions... https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/f9sx9d/congrats_autists_the_cover_of_bloomberg/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/f9sx9d/cong...
- bitxbit 7y agoPeople dismiss wsb but gambling is a big issue here in the US. This is exactly what happened during dotcom.
- Exuma 7y agoYes people are "greedy" who trade stocks. GTFO of here with that hype shit.
- strbean 7y agoHow dare these filthy peasant redditors profane our sacred and pure institution of derivatives trading with their foul lust for social mobility?
- TheRealPomax 7y agoWow, this title sure got changed to something far more inflamatory than it was an hour ago, when it was something closer to "reddit picks your stock". Nice one, bloomberg. Oh wait, Bloomberg's trying to run for president? Owning one of the authoritative news outlets feels like maybe that's an illegal conflict of interest, there, then.
- ra5 7y agoAs a regular of WSB, this article is just absolutely absurd. Which I guess is the regular for Bloomberg these days (seemingly the Buzzfeed of business news it appears). All you'll find on WSB is a bunch of homophobic bored desk workers. The idea that subreddit of only a few thousand guys (mostly) with an extra $500 to blow on meme stocks can move a stock in _any_ significant way is laughable.
- tozeur 7y agoI agree. I used to frequent it years ago and from what I can still it’s still mostly memes...
- omegaham 7y agoYeah, I was under the impression that ~95% of posters on WSB don't actually day trade and are just there to meme and laugh at the trolling/idiocy. The other 5% are the fools YOLOing their college loans. The charm of the subreddit is that it's hard to figure out who's who.
- jb775 7y agoNew side-project idea: WSB sentiment analysis tracker linked to RobinHood API
- remote_phone 7y agoAs someone who was a very early member of /r/wallstreetbets: 1) /r/wallstreetbets and /r/wsb are two different subreddits. /r/wsb are for those that got banned from wallstreetbets 2) When wallstreetbets first started it wasn’t as crazy as it was today. There were some aggressive gamblers but there was opportunity for real due diligence and decent conversation. I contributed more than a few posts back in the early days. After it got crazy I unsubscribed until recently. Robinhood and the options trading and margin trading has really made things crazy. I see absurd bets made on there that make me both jealous and glad I’m not 25 with too much money to gamble. 3) those who say it’s likely too small to make a difference go check out the timing of the Lumber Liquidator due diligence post and the subsequent jump in price. I don’t know what the difference is between pump and dump vs posting due diligence but there definitely was a correlation. I wish I still had my data account because I would love to see the exact correlation of options trading and stock trading to the posts. 4) the memes and gifs are hilarious if not vulgar and bigoted. But if you have thick skin some of the memes are very well made.
- yhoneycomb 7y ago“If you have a thick skin” classic hacker news. Never fails to disgust me.
- xiaoxiae 7y agoCare to explain?
- denkmoon 7y agor/wallstreetbets is not politically correct. It is shitposting of a magnitude not seen since the heyday of 4chan. (Their motto is "if 4chan got a bloomberg terminal") In other words, he's upset because people put mean words on an imageboard.
- sarakayakomzin 7y ago>In other words, he's upset because people put mean words on an imageboard. that's a lot to infer from a single sentence. do you offer a better warranty than Best Buy? I'm looking for a new projector.
- m3kw9 7y agoUsually if you think you are fcking someone in the stock market, you are usually the one being fcked
- m3kw9 7y agoWall Street will catch on and come around to set a trap
- OJFord 7y agoMatt Levine's take: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-02-26/money-stuff-reddit-posters-pick-the-stocks-now https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-02-26/money-... I'd really recommend subscribing (free, email, don't think there's RSS) if you don't already (I got the recommendation on HN). He's prolific though, rarely a day without an email, and often two or three - it wasn't long before I couldn't keep up; I just skim and read more thoroughly those that grab my attention now.
- austhrow743 7y agoPretty sure he does one per weekday unless he's off work. Don't recall ever receiving multiple in the one day.
- throwawaynothx 7y agodocument.getElementById('graphics-paywall-overlay').remove();document.body.style = 'overflow: auto;'
- sombremesa 7y agoIn other news, Vegas' profane, greedy gamblers are shaking up the economy.
- rjbwork 7y agoI've never gambled before in my life. I've always been a very conservative indexer, but... I've got some spare dough. I have always been quite interested in the finance side of things, having worked under and been good friends with a dude with a graduate degree in Quantitative Finance, I spent years learning about random bits of finance stuff from him - enough that I knew a good bit about of some of /r/wallstreetbets' favorite investments, options. I've been having a pretty good time perusing the forum and making bets of my own, even making a decent profit (relative to the money put in). I don't risk more than I'm willing to completely lose though. Some people on that forum are a quite reckless.
- sombremesa 7y agoI'm curious why you chose to reply to me specifically with this. I assume you agree that there are both kinds of people in Vegas, and the analogy still stands?
- goldmanballsack 7y agoJoke Your head
- chrischattin 7y agoI have a pet conspiracy theory that WSB is used by insiders to signal trades to each other disguised as sh*tposts and hidden among the rest of the overwhelming noise. I love WSB, though. It's been a constant source of laughter and entertainment over the past few years. Now that it's hit the mainstream, I hope the wild culture doesn't dilute down too much.
- cycrutchfield 7y agoIf anything, the larger audience is making it even more ridiculous
- rantwasp 7y agoit’s not insider trading if the info is public /s
- girishso 7y agoWhat's wrong with ordinary traders taking advantage of the flaws in dealers and big money bots? Aren't they (dealers and such) the ones who have been doing it forever?
- synaesthesisx 7y agoExactly. As someone who has made substantial profits over the years (including a six-figure profit on the recent TSLA and SPCE rally) thanks to WSB, it brings me great joy knowing I’m pocketing money straight off Wall Street institutions. WSB tends to celebrate losses (aka “loss porn”) and it’s well-deserved - many tend to do really stupid things (like “YOLOing” 100% of their portfolio into a single position). But if you know how to manage risk effectively (Kelly’s criterion etc) it’s possible to consistently make profits. Amidst the chaos of shitposts and degenerate gambling there is often quality DD hidden throughout. The odd thing is I suspect WSB has reached critical mass to the point where it’s achieved feedback loops and can actually move markets, thanks to algorithms misidentifying unusual options volume caused by wild speculation & shameless gambling.
- girishso 7y agoInteresting you mentioned "Kelly criterion", I have been interested in it for some time and the articles I read seemed to point out that it works "best" only after the fact (after the trade has been executed). How do you deal with this?
- synaesthesisx 7y agoThis is a common way to implement it: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/04/091504.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/04/091504.asp It’s not foolproof, but generally the idea is to keep positions small (relative to portfolio size) and quickly take profits - which is critical when dealing with something as insanely volatile as options. With options one can also improve their odds with intermediate strategies (such as call debit spreads, straddles/strangles during earnings). I often will temporarily buy calls on something like TECS (-3X Inverse Technology ETF) when I’m speculating on multiple tech earnings plays within the same week - that way if my calls on Apple or Microsoft don’t pan out it’ll be offset by the inverse ETF gains. Options can be an incredible tool, and used properly can be excellent for managing risk effectively.
- c0nsilienc3 7y agoThe article's opening paragraph might have been a somewhat accurate depiction of reddit 12-13 years ago, but it's changed a lot since then. It's hard to take the author that seriously when the bias against reddit is that clear in the lede.
- burgerquizz 7y agoAre the effect of the coronavirus on the stock market could be opportunity for investing? The SP500 went down 8% this past 5 days. I'm wondering if that will go lower those next days. I have a bit amount of money on the side, I didn't know where to invest. Would now be a good opportunity to lump sum all the money, or would you Dollar Cost Average? Anyone else with the same dilemma, and would have more arguments? Or maybe an other perspective on that?
- glouwbug 7y agoBuy the dip. Something like VGRO if you're Canadian or XGRO if you're American. Hold it for 30 years. They are both low EMR and self balancing. I am putting 2k in tomorrow morning for VGRO. If it dips another 5% I am doing 2k more.
- flashman 7y agothis seems like a conversation to have on wallstreetbets rather than HN
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago/r/wallstreetbets is one of those strange communities that provides nearly limitless comedy. Best watched from a distance.
- nelsondev 7y agotl;dr the wallstreetbets hive mind has the purchasing power of a mid size hedge fund if there’s roughly 1000 upvotes on a piece of content, and assuming only 1% of lurkers ever up vote; that means there are roughly 100,000 people taking investment info from this sub. let’s say they have an average portfolio size of $10k, then 100,000 users * $10,000 = $1 billion dollars. assuming they split the portfolio by meme %, so like 1/3 TSLA, 1/3 SPCE, 1/3 AMD; then we’re looking at like $330 million in trading volume going into SPCE. when you look at the last couple days of trading volume on SPCE, about 30million shares traded daily, was previously around $10 a share , it about equals out, that like $300million dollars of meme money did a pump and dump on SPCE
- technotony 7y ago> After years of indifference, individual investors seem to be finding their way back to stocks, for better or worse. There's an old adage in London that it's time to sell when the retail buyers start entering the marketing...
- econcon 7y agoI use Robinhood app to gamble on options, most of the times I lose and sometimes I won big to cover all losses. I don't understand options, other than a few things about them which help me trade them It's ok to ignore the big picture. Not everything has to have a profound meaning behind and similar are the stock moves. I believe most of the movements are irrational, so studying fundamentals or anything is going to offer nothing other than wasted time. I love the crazy vibe of that subreddit which motivates me to take crazy positions which I'd have never taken if I carried on with my risk averse friends. Even if probability of becoming double digit millionaire from a single digit millionaire is small through options trading. It's well worth it because once you've saved enough to retire, why not bet on random positions? You never know when you'll fall on the long tail end of the game and experience the Black Swan event which changes your life forever. Then I am also doing other things which people might consider crazy like steroids to maintain Greek god physique - considering neither I am model, atheletic or body builder. YOLO is not bad way to live if it gives you the highs you need move out of sorrows and sufferings.
- vijucat 7y agoSince you work out: you must have seen that results accumulate (such as being able to lift more). The problem with the WSB style of trading is that the knowledge doesn't accumulate. It's just gambling all the way down. And you still end up spending time on it! If you'd like an easy-to-read + thin first book on options, I'd recommend Frans De Weer's "Introduction to Options Trading": https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Options-Trading-Frans-Weert/dp/0470029706 https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Options-Trading-Frans-We...
- econcon 7y agoLook into Green Lumber Fallacy.
- vijucat 7y agoGood one! This actually does apply to options trading. Pricing quants may need to be masters of stochastic calculus, Ito's lemma, et al, but if you're trading and not pricing them, this analogy applies: even riding a bicycle, when described with physics equations, probably involves higher-order calculus that would put 2nd order options greeks to shame, but one does not need to understand the maths to learn cycling or even be the world's best cyclist! Similarly, if you trade the same instrument enough, you build "muscle memory" for how it moves, i.e., you get a feel for vega, vanna, et al which is almost visceral. The practitioner may use informal descriptions like, "uh oh, I can feel it bend now" rather than calculus to refer to a gamma-based acceleration of option price, but it is perfectly good enough.
- justlexi93 7y agoSo subreddits are either echo chambers or hopelessly conflicted? I'm not defending WSB but isn't the entire point of internet forums / reddit discussion to argue about things? I absolutely hate any subreddit where only one train of thought is allowed and everything else downvoted.
- vernie 7y agoOh my God they're using swears?
- hoseja 7y agoOK, Boomerberg.
- jokoon 7y agowhat if it's just HFT with some natural language AIs posting on reddit?
- jasonmunro 7y agoSentiment analysis is not new, and I would imagine it's ancillary at best to a proper trading outfit. Well equipped market makers and HFTs make money on price movement (and exchange rebates). A flurry of out-of-the-money calls is unlikely to adjust an underlying equity price significantly enough to be statistically important.
- yCloser 7y agoPaywalled site, T$DR.
- fabioborellini 7y agoI can't even scroll the page on my computer using Safari. It just freezes immediately. Is a Core i5-6500 already too old for Web browsing?
- pietrovismara 7y agolol at "greedy" used as a slur by a capitalist source like Bloomberg.
- samirillian 7y agoInteresting parallels w Bernie bro story: we can't tell if they actually have any influence, and we can't tell if they did have an influence whether or not that would be a good thing. All we really know is that the old school whales like Bloomberg find them annoying.
- stevespang 7y agoSeems like the author has an "issue" with this group using the adjectives in his title "greedy" and "profane" ?
- TurkishPoptart 7y agoHow is anything WSB does worse than say, high-frequency trading?