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I don't know anything about WSB, but how does: > It’s a bunch of autistic losers that live in their mom’s basement who are gambling what little money they have

by davidw 6y ago

I don't know anything about WSB, but how does: > It’s a bunch of autistic losers that live in their mom’s basement who are gambling what little money they have to try and become rich to live lifestyles of hedonism square with "These people were involved in very meaningfully moving a stock price around" ?

whymauri 6y ago
It's the same paradox as 4chan /b/ and /pol/ influencing real-world events despite similar stereotypes about the userbase. And /r/wsb is, after all, if 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal.
- jsonne 6y ago
  You get it.
- imesh 6y ago
  The biggest /b/tard I knew growing up now works at a bank and actually has had multiple large windfalls from bitcoin,TSLA stocks and Pokemon cards.
jsonne 6y ago
The former is how they view themselves in a tongue and cheek fashion. The latter has more to do with how much the community has grown and how many people this community apparently resonates with.
- brodouevencode 6y ago
  > Degenerate gamblers Well, they apparently do move markets. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen and there's no telling what sort of action the SEC will take to curtail this. IMO all it will take is one bad day to have something happen. But wsb does understand one thing: the barriers to entry are artificially there - it doesn't take a quant with an MIT education to make and lose money.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    > Well, they apparently do move markets. Seems unlikely. More likely that wsb is a sampling of common knowledge among people who invest in markets, and markets also move based on common knowledge. What is the evidence for this?
    - Bedon292 6y ago
      The movement of stocks they are talking about, like GME recently, defy traditional analysis. There is no reason for GME to be where it is, in a traditional analysis sense, other than WSB talking about them. At some point they move the needle just enough for the algorithmic trading, and FOMO of others to take over. But it still started there. Although now there is probably some level of watching WSB to see what their next move is and just trying to ride that wave.
      - roenxi 6y ago
        > There is no reason for GME to be where it is, in a traditional analysis sense, other than WSB talking about them. It isn't possible to assert that there is no other reason. The world is very large, there are a lot of people in it and strange things happen. Us not being able to think of a reason apart from WSB is different from WSB being a cause of something.
        Bedon292 6y ago
        That is why I said 'in a traditional analysis sense.' It defies all traditional stock / economic analysis. There is nothing significantly better about Game Stop's actual business today compared to say Sept 1st. Sep 1: $7.65 Nov 2: $10.75 Jan 4: $17.25 (125% Gain here already) Jan 25: Intraday high: $159.18 (More than 20x Sep 1), Close $76.79 (Right about 10x Sep 1) There is nothing in any form of business analysis that justifies that. The best explanation that exists is WSB. Its not just WSB doing the trades, they just are a spark that ignites the fire. After that people (and algorithms) are trying to ride a wave of momentum.
whimsicalism 6y ago
If you read like one line further, > On the surface, it seems really weird but it’s mostly a type of gallows humor that permeates a lot of especially young millennials and zennial men. It is a humorous constructed setting that is not necessarily reality. As an aside, I'd never seen the phrase "gallows humor" to describe this sort of ?? post-irony.
- davidw 6y ago
  That line - which I read - doesn't really negate the previous one. And if you keep reading the article mentions a lot of debt and not being able to get ahead and the like. But clearly, there's some money sloshing around there. Is it just a ton of people with a little bit? A few that have a lot? Maybe it doesn't take that much to move one kind of crappy stock? I'm just curious really.
jarboot 6y ago
> The basic surface-level story of WSB is this. It’s a bunch of autistic losers that live in their mom’s basement who are gambling what little money they have to try and become rich to live lifestyles of hedonism. > On the surface, it seems really weird but it’s mostly a type of gallows humor that permeates a lot of especially young millennials and zennial men. The key is "the basic surface-level story" and "it's mostly a type of gallows humor". It's a story or myth, not reality. You'll see a lot of this self-deprecating humor on other 4chan-adjacent communities. Also, I do not think that Jeromy Sonne is speaking from a position of experience with the wsb community. He has an entry-level understanding of internet communities but the article is mostly fluff and speculation instead of first-hand knowledge or research. Plus, a lot of content on wsb is "artistic works of fiction and falsehood", just like 4chan.
jnwatson 6y ago
These days, especially with the pandemic, there are many single folks making over $50k a year living with their parents. That times a few hundred thousand, plus the hangers-on, is definitely enough to move a stock, at least for a little bit.
dahdum 6y ago
Collectively I doubt WSB posters alone moved GME to any large degree, but the media attention, feuds, and popular memes allowed them to punch well above their weight. Attracting attention about GME, a stock with more shares sold short than exist, gave a much larger pool of players a rallying cry to drive a short squeeze.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  What I wonder is how many other shorters in heavily shorted stocks just closed their positions. Any “risk of short-squeeze model” just imploded in the last 96h. Any “guaranteed profit” short positions just exited imo.
Bedon292 6y ago
I try to avoid going there, but from what I have seen its somewhat of a snowball effect. You have someone post about some crazy YOLO move they made and see massive gains on. The next time someone posts something a little crazy more people do it. And a few get real rich again. And eventually you seem to have a lot of folks who have enough money to move the needle. And once it starts moving, the FOMO piles on and it gets out of control. Add on top of that algorithmic / momentum trading following trends. You have stuff like this person, top 3 post of all time on there from Friday (2 days ago): https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l2x7he/gme_yolo_update_jan_22_2021/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l2x7he/gme_... Based on the way things went today, they had to be up over $10M maybe even $15M for a minute there. People see that and get jealous. Say they cashed out. Now they have at least 10x the money as before and can move the needle even more. Also worth noting initial price of what they have now is almost $800k. So while the description is about gambling little money, high stakes gambling pays off for some. Going back in history, this person seems to have started piling in to GMU in June of 2019, and kept going since. But no real indication of how much they had to start with, or anything like that. Did they have some other bet that they played before this? No idea. Edit: Also, forgot to mention if you move the needle enough short sellers end up getting margin calls driving the price further up as they get liquidated. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/gamestop-stock-short-seller-squeeze-losses-reddit-traders-citron-gme-2021-1-1030000080 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/gamestop-sto...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by davidw 6y ago

whymauri 6y ago

It's the same paradox as 4chan /b/ and /pol/ influencing real-world events despite similar stereotypes about the userbase. And /r/wsb is, after all, if 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal.

jsonne 6y ago
You get it.
imesh 6y ago
The biggest /b/tard I knew growing up now works at a bank and actually has had multiple large windfalls from bitcoin,TSLA stocks and Pokemon cards.

jsonne 6y ago

The former is how they view themselves in a tongue and cheek fashion. The latter has more to do with how much the community has grown and how many people this community apparently resonates with.

brodouevencode 6y ago
> Degenerate gamblers Well, they apparently do move markets. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen and there's no telling what sort of action the SEC will take to curtail this. IMO all it will take is one bad day to have something happen. But wsb does understand one thing: the barriers to entry are artificially there - it doesn't take a quant with an MIT education to make and lose money.
- roenxi 6y ago
  > Well, they apparently do move markets. Seems unlikely. More likely that wsb is a sampling of common knowledge among people who invest in markets, and markets also move based on common knowledge. What is the evidence for this?
  - Bedon292 6y ago
    The movement of stocks they are talking about, like GME recently, defy traditional analysis. There is no reason for GME to be where it is, in a traditional analysis sense, other than WSB talking about them. At some point they move the needle just enough for the algorithmic trading, and FOMO of others to take over. But it still started there. Although now there is probably some level of watching WSB to see what their next move is and just trying to ride that wave.
    - roenxi 6y ago
      > There is no reason for GME to be where it is, in a traditional analysis sense, other than WSB talking about them. It isn't possible to assert that there is no other reason. The world is very large, there are a lot of people in it and strange things happen. Us not being able to think of a reason apart from WSB is different from WSB being a cause of something.
      - Bedon292 6y ago
        That is why I said 'in a traditional analysis sense.' It defies all traditional stock / economic analysis. There is nothing significantly better about Game Stop's actual business today compared to say Sept 1st. Sep 1: $7.65 Nov 2: $10.75 Jan 4: $17.25 (125% Gain here already) Jan 25: Intraday high: $159.18 (More than 20x Sep 1), Close $76.79 (Right about 10x Sep 1) There is nothing in any form of business analysis that justifies that. The best explanation that exists is WSB. Its not just WSB doing the trades, they just are a spark that ignites the fire. After that people (and algorithms) are trying to ride a wave of momentum.

whimsicalism 6y ago

If you read like one line further, > On the surface, it seems really weird but it’s mostly a type of gallows humor that permeates a lot of especially young millennials and zennial men. It is a humorous constructed setting that is not necessarily reality. As an aside, I'd never seen the phrase "gallows humor" to describe this sort of ?? post-irony.

davidw 6y ago
That line - which I read - doesn't really negate the previous one. And if you keep reading the article mentions a lot of debt and not being able to get ahead and the like. But clearly, there's some money sloshing around there. Is it just a ton of people with a little bit? A few that have a lot? Maybe it doesn't take that much to move one kind of crappy stock? I'm just curious really.

jarboot 6y ago

> The basic surface-level story of WSB is this. It’s a bunch of autistic losers that live in their mom’s basement who are gambling what little money they have to try and become rich to live lifestyles of hedonism. > On the surface, it seems really weird but it’s mostly a type of gallows humor that permeates a lot of especially young millennials and zennial men. The key is "the basic surface-level story" and "it's mostly a type of gallows humor". It's a story or myth, not reality. You'll see a lot of this self-deprecating humor on other 4chan-adjacent communities. Also, I do not think that Jeromy Sonne is speaking from a position of experience with the wsb community. He has an entry-level understanding of internet communities but the article is mostly fluff and speculation instead of first-hand knowledge or research. Plus, a lot of content on wsb is "artistic works of fiction and falsehood", just like 4chan.

jnwatson 6y ago

These days, especially with the pandemic, there are many single folks making over $50k a year living with their parents. That times a few hundred thousand, plus the hangers-on, is definitely enough to move a stock, at least for a little bit.

dahdum 6y ago

Collectively I doubt WSB posters alone moved GME to any large degree, but the media attention, feuds, and popular memes allowed them to punch well above their weight. Attracting attention about GME, a stock with more shares sold short than exist, gave a much larger pool of players a rallying cry to drive a short squeeze.

Scoundreller 6y ago
What I wonder is how many other shorters in heavily shorted stocks just closed their positions. Any “risk of short-squeeze model” just imploded in the last 96h. Any “guaranteed profit” short positions just exited imo.

Bedon292 6y ago

I try to avoid going there, but from what I have seen its somewhat of a snowball effect. You have someone post about some crazy YOLO move they made and see massive gains on. The next time someone posts something a little crazy more people do it. And a few get real rich again. And eventually you seem to have a lot of folks who have enough money to move the needle. And once it starts moving, the FOMO piles on and it gets out of control. Add on top of that algorithmic / momentum trading following trends. You have stuff like this person, top 3 post of all time on there from Friday (2 days ago): https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l2x7he/gme_yolo_update_jan_22_2021/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l2x7he/gme_... Based on the way things went today, they had to be up over $10M maybe even $15M for a minute there. People see that and get jealous. Say they cashed out. Now they have at least 10x the money as before and can move the needle even more. Also worth noting initial price of what they have now is almost $800k. So while the description is about gambling little money, high stakes gambling pays off for some. Going back in history, this person seems to have started piling in to GMU in June of 2019, and kept going since. But no real indication of how much they had to start with, or anything like that. Did they have some other bet that they played before this? No idea. Edit: Also, forgot to mention if you move the needle enough short sellers end up getting margin calls driving the price further up as they get liquidated. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/gamestop-stock-short-seller-squeeze-losses-reddit-traders-citron-gme-2021-1-1030000080 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/gamestop-sto...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]