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They're not winning. They're just minting a different set of losers and pushing the drawing out by a couple weeks. And Reddit being Reddit you can never reall

They're not winning. They're just minting a different set of losers and pushing the drawing out by a couple weeks. And Reddit being Reddit you can never really be sure whether organic interest is pumping the stock or if they are being manipulated by an astroturfing campaign. If day trading weren't a conflict of interest for me I'd be looking into doing something like that (and consequently not blabbing about it on HN).

vga805 6y ago
the bull thesis has been laid out in detail for months and it's a good one, this is organic interest, Ryan Cohen and others coming over from Chewy was the most recent catalyst
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  People exist who in the past two days paid $150 for a share that most analysts think is worth about $14 — at a company with negative earnings for six of the last seven quarters, and minimal earnings growth over the past few years. I'm sure there was some bull case for the company, and it might have had a snowball's chance in hell around $14 or even $20/share. But at $60+ ? What on God's good earth is supposed to make the company worth that much?
  - vga805 6y ago
    good point, to clarify the bull thesis wasn't bullish to the current absurdity. i think the bull case is a good one but im not going to lay out the case here. check out the user RoaringKitty 's videos on youtube from a few months ago. (the stock was hovering around 4 then) right now though the chaos has nothing to do with the underlying value. now it's all about the squeeze. but that's never been part of the bull thesis
  - oceanplexian 6y ago
    The point of the post is that sentiment drives value, not the other way around. It’s a profound thesis and it makes the opinions of analysts irrelevant. If enough people want GameStop to succeed then it will. Ironically it’s the same thesis that wealthy SV investors go by when they decide to invest in a startup. Except the word invest is usually misleading. Most of the time they’re just looking for a vehicle to inject capital and influence, and the people and product are interchangeable parts used to achieve a a profitable outcome.
    - paxys 6y ago
      > If enough people want GameStop to succeed then it will More like – if enough people want GameStop to succeed then it has a slightly better chance of succeeding than if they didn't. Chances are that it is still a bubble that will eventually pop, like most others before it.
    - fennecfoxen 6y ago
      This is less profound than you think it is. The sentiment story is that if enough people want to pay $150 a share for approximately $0/yr in earnings, they will. What this glosses over is the reason for the sentiment, the question: "why do people want to pay this?" Traditional stories analysts tell would have people pay $150/share because they expect $8-$15/yr. This story is that people will pay $150/share because people want a way to say 'fuck wall street' and 'fuck analysts' and have unreasonable expectations of becoming wealthy. The former sentiment is sustainable in a way that the latter story kinda isn't.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    > most analysts Counterpoint: "Most analysts" are hum-drum Wall Street hacks who cover dozens of companies and don't really have a clue about how the lion's share of them are run. I remember a few years back there was one analyst who kept talking about how NAND keeps getting cheaper and that's hurting memory suppliers...but the analyst's metrics didn't normalize for advancements in NAND speed nor the maturing of capital investments, so the analyst was basically looking at totally expected price declines over time and interpreting it as for some kind of static commodity while claiming it as a bear thesis. A few of them are really clever and knowledgeable. The rest are chumps. It's extremely difficult to judge GME based on regular metrics because their long-term outlook is a function of strategy and their short-term survival is a function of COVID. Sure, the company sells stuff that you can buy online, and sure, they sell it at malls and other places where nobody goes these days, but its stock was over-shorted and this was going to happen sooner or later anyway. Maybe my numbers are off, so correct me if I'm wrong....At today's closing price, GME, which has $6B/yr revenue, is worth a sixth of BBY, which has 43B/yr revenue.
    - hoten 6y ago
      Comparing revenue might make sense if they were in the same slice of retail, but they aren't, so I think you can take zero value from such a comparison.
      - totalZero 6y ago
        Lol. "This is flawed so it is worth zero" is a bad argument even when you present an alternative, but it's downright lazy when you just mail in the criticism without suggesting something else. GME sells consoles and consumer electronics in addition to games, so I'd put BBY on the short list of comps for sure. But if you think the product mix is so different as to make them incomparable, that's ok. Pick a better metric and explain why GME was accurately priced at $260mm market cap when the company does billions in revenue. Then, go back and explain why AMD was worth $2/share in 2014. Then, go to every other heavily shorted name and wave your hands around looking for reasons to justify obviously overshorted valuations.
  - andreilys 6y ago
    It’s a short squeeze. Short selling investors who get margin called have to close their short positions, thus forcing them to purchase GME stock and driving it further up
  - phil_e_delphian 6y ago
    DoorDash has had negative earnings for all but 2 (1?) quarters it has existed, and trades at about $190 a share, despite direct competition from multiple functionally identical competitors. The market is broken, at least retail investors are benefiting for once.
    - tasuki 6y ago
      How much a single share costs really isn't interesting or important.
      - phil_e_delphian 6y ago
        Tell that to the investors holding >$200 GME shares right now
        tasuki 6y ago
        I don't think you understand the point I was trying to make. The point wasn't that share price is completely meaningless, the point was that it's meaningless without more information. A share of AAPL now costs $139, a share of GOOG costs $1860. How would you compare the two companies based on that? How does the price of a single share relate to whether or not the company has positive or negative earnings?
    - fennecfoxen 6y ago
      DoorDash has a growth story that GameStop doesn’t. It’s pure fiction, mind you! But at least it exists. Either stock is terrifying.
      - phil_e_delphian 6y ago
        Agreed. The difference this time is that the gains are socialized this time, not retained in the fraternity of HF, PE, and IB. Which is exactly why Wall Street and financial media is denigrating it. They hate that they don't have the edge, or a monopoly on profits in this case.
  - dash2 6y ago
    One answer is given at gmedd.com, which presents analysis suggesting that even in the “bear case”, GME could be fairly valued at about $40/share. Disclaimer: I don’t know if their analysis is any good, but would like to hear your thoughts.
    - alisonkisk 6y ago
      Gamers is an WSB guy who made the domain to capitalize on the mania. The content is just goofy.
  - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
    Counter Point $AMD was at $0.15, AMD was the only company besides Intel that actually had x86-64 patents. Intel would have never let AMD fail because they would be a monopoly and that is worse than leading a duopoly. Notice the bean counter Intel ceo, the yields getting worse over time, the performance not improving besides a 1-2% year over year and Intel getting complacent, repeatedly to screwing over the customer with requirement of buying a new motherboard with every new release. AMD was a steal for anyone in the know. Counter argument 2: Any price target posted by Citron was wrong. Counter argument 3: Why would any analyst give a proper price target when they can screw you over?
    - fennecfoxen 6y ago
      These remarks are presented for the interest of passerbys, not because the comment I reply to has merit and deserves them. Counterpoint 1: AMD was a chipmaker with skilled engineers on staff and a growth story where they could seize market share with better technology. Gamestop is a retailer with retail clerks on staff and a story where increasing competition from PC and console app stores slowly eats away at their market share. Exact same thing, right? Counterpoint 2: Saying the price target is wrong is one thing, and may in many circumstances be eminently defensible. Saying the correct price is $50-$150 is another. Counterpoint 3: This exemplifies the thinking going on here. "I don't understand the stock market and think someone is screwing us over. Let's define our own alternate reality, and gang up on them for revenge! Revolution!" Last time we saw that show was January 6. For a few people, who get out at the right time, this will be a much more successful revolution, but on the whole, it succeeds only with a transient disruption, and harm the individual would-be revolutionaries the most.
      - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
        > These remarks are presented for the interest of passerbys, not because the comment I reply to has merit and deserves them. Ouff. > AMD was a chipmaker with skilled engineers on staff and a growth story where they could seize market share with better technology. Gamestop is a retailer with retail clerks on staff and a story where increasing competition from PC and console app stores slowly eats away at their market share. Exact same thing, right? Do your due diligence this is just one, https://www.gmedd.com https://www.gmedd.com, there have been many others and they all converge to the same argument. GME is worth much more than the $10 PT given by analysts. > Counterpoint 2: Saying the price target is wrong is one thing, and may in many circumstances be eminently defensible. Saying the correct price is $50-$150 is another. Except citron was wrong in every single price target they have given by more often than not an order magnitude, except for 1. If you pay enough attention, you will see that many of the same 'pages' play both the bull and bear game, if only to come out and say they were correct. > Counterpoint 3: This exemplifies the thinking going on here. "I don't understand the stock market and think someone is screwing us over. Let's define our own alternate reality, and gang up on them for revenge! Revolution!" Had you done your due diligence and paid attention to the situation as it unfolded, you'd have seen that the market made sense, the stock was over shorted and in no way reflective of the actual price targets created by various models and analyses such as the one I linked above. > Last time we saw that show was January 6. For a few people, who get out at the right time, this will be a much more successful revolution, but on the whole, it succeeds only with a transient disruption, and harm the individual would-be revolutionaries the most. We saw that show in every single revolution. This only reinforces the belief that the average proletariat is getting screwed over and manipulated by the same class of people. Hint, it was the proletariat that paid for the greed, not the institutions, the hedge funds or the MMs. It is the proletariat that are stuck between a rock and a hard place, it is the proletariat that are getting manipulated into intra class wars.
  - delaaxe 6y ago
    There's a long term bull price target at $169: https://www.gmedd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/GMEdd-GameStopValuation-20Jan21.pdf https://www.gmedd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/GMEdd-GameS...
    - alisonkisk 6y ago
      > We have rounded the multiple to 15.2x in honor of Tylee, Cohen’s toy poodle and Cohen’s reputation as an aggressive, entrepreneurial founder. OK, I'll pay $300 for a stock that will be worth $169 in 4 years assuming that Ryan Cohen has 100% chance of using is legendary Ryan Cohen powers to seize digital game sale margins from all the walled gardens, because somebody on WSB bought a domain name and used orange and green highlights in a spiffy PDF.
- JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
  Come on, that is what you’ve been trained to say. I heard the exact same phrases from my younger brother.
  - vga805 6y ago
    Trained by who? what are you talking about?
- xiphias2 6y ago
  It works at the start, but the problem is that the people who want to sell their positions need to dump it on the losers and just keep pumping the price and making late comers lose lots of money. The reality of wealth building is that short term it’s always 0 sum game, long term it’s a way to get rich.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    Well sort of... in this case, there are a ridiculous amount of short sellers... more than 100% of all the shares have been sold short. That means that there is in some ways infinite demand... every single share currently owned HAS to be bought by a short seller at some point, in order to return it to the borrowed actual owner... so as long as all the current owners hold fast, they can sell their shares for as high as they can go. It doesn't even matter if the company itself is worthless, the demand is there. You are right about the zero sum in this case, though... it just might be the short sellers who are left holding the bag.
- Noos 6y ago
  I'm not sure if he can do much. Gamestop has the same problem that drove other retailers like suncoast, sam goody, strawberries, and many other ones out of business; you cannot survive the digitalization of your primary products. Gamestop relies on console systems and videogames both new and used to make the core of its primary business. These are what draw people into their locations and to their web site, and allow add on sales like memberships, warranties, collectibles, and accessories to be sold. They generally go to malls, either interior or open. The problem is the decrease in physical games over digital kills the primary reason to go into their stores, and also prevents middlemen from existing; there is no value add to getting a digital code from gamestop as opposed to steam, ps store, etc. It also murders the high value used game and console sales because now there is less product to trade in. That just leaves them with collectibles, which they've always been low quality and too expensive, accessories, and a tiny assortment of physical games that now they barely even have stock of. They "advertise" the top 100 games or so in their store, yet don't have stock of many of them ,and their used games are barely a shelf of them. The problem with being an internet retailer is amazon already does what they do better; it's an uphill battle where they have no real value add. Even Amazon seems to have less and less new physical games, and they have an infinite amount of chinese sellers dramatically lowering the price of game accessories. I don't see any way to be bullish on them because of their actual business. edit: its not just them. There's a regional game store chain where I live, and they suffer the exact same problems. They are desperately trying to carry anything and everything geek related just to fill the store with inventory; records, collectible card games, comics, manga, crt tvs, used movies, anime accessories, model kits, etc. They actually are losing the game store focus, as used product even in the retro market is dead now...very few retro systems and games.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    If this is correct, then why did Chewy succeed against Amazon? Granted, dogfood is waaaay different than selling digital games outside a walled garden. No one can lock you out of your dogfood.
trap_chateau 6y ago
I think I'm convinced of manipulation. The memeing and the gameifying investment, calling each other retards (because you, user, you don't know _anything_) and the long obscure unfalsifiable ramblings about predictions or valuable investments hitting the top of the page, it all just seems a little fishy to me.
- electriclove 6y ago
  No, it really is just random people rallying together. What is fishy is who is on the other end of the play and getting a black eye for once.
- doggosphere 6y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/user/DeepFuckingValue/ https://www.reddit.com/user/DeepFuckingValue/ A bit of luck, a bit of smarts. Build it and they will come?
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  /r/wsb has always struck me as being an offshoot of 4chan, with their self-labelling as autists and retards. And 4Chan a) isn't dumb, but they like doing dumb shit and b) they love brigading. Pool's closed etc. But what's interesting is how the institutional outrage is merely fuelling the brigading. The institutional investors crying in the media only confirms WSB's beliefs that they've found a weak spot in the institutions, so they're going to stick it in harder. I admire their attitude, but not enough to put my money in to what feels like an giant troll.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    The tagline for WSB is "It's like if you gave 4chan a Bloomberg terminal." Personally, I'm buying in the money puts expiring in 2023. No way Gamestop is doing better now, or has a better future now, than it did five or ten years, yet their stock's at an all time high? These hijinks may continue for some time, but I doubt it'll last years, price will settle and I'll hopefully make a modest profit.
dannyw 6y ago
Melvin capital has been forced to take multiple capital injections and bail outs, to avoid being margin called. Short sellers have mark to market losses of over $6 billion, and should the momentum continue, they will be forced to sell at the worst times (infinity short squeeze). Wall St are looking like they will be the losers.
- electriclove 6y ago
  Oh I wish but Wall St creates the rules so I wouldn't be surprised if they find a way to save their butts on a short squeeze.
  - alexeldeib 6y ago
    Isn't that what's happening? Melvin Capital sold a share of their revenue stream for billions in cash to avoid being margin called. That's not exactly "winning" but it's a way to save their butt at a lower loss, perhaps. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/first-casualty-big-short-squeeze-melvin-capital-gets-275bn-bailout-citadel-point72-after https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/first-casualty-big-short-s...
    - electriclove 6y ago
      Yup. It looks like several of their other short holdings have been feeling the squeeze as well: FIZZ, AMC, SPWR, etc https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/here-are-all-melvin-capitals-crushed-put-positions https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/here-are-all-melvin-capita...
- thepasswordis 6y ago
  Good.
- kasey_junk 6y ago
  Melvins “bail outs” were agreements with other firms. “Wall St” is doing fine on this. Citadel must be loving their Robinhood order flow right now.
oceanplexian 6y ago
Is Melvin Capital winning with their short position? When they’re contractually obligated to repurchase millions of shares and there are no shares left to purchase, what do you think is going to happen? There are winners and losers, but in this case the loser could very well be an investment firm with 12B in assets. Some wealthy investors are about to have that wealth redistributed. I think that’s the point.
- thefreeman 6y ago
  "no shares left to purchase". what?? 160 million shares changed hands today. there will never be no shares left to purchase.
  - jaycroft 6y ago
    Flow and stock are different.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    They shorted more GME shares than the amount that currently exist. That's what "no shares left to purchase" is referring to.
pmorici 6y ago
They essentially drove one of wall streets very successful hedge funds of recent years to near failure they had to make a deal for an emergency investment today to stay afloat. I’d call that winning.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  They will probably use the infusion of money to just ride out this raid and make a mint when the wsb bubble pops, which it inevitably will. To say that the hedge fund is "near failure" is the same as saying they did not fail. If they bridge this gap they win double.
  - aerique 6y ago
    I don't know. Just making the hedge fund managers shit their pants is good fun.
  - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
    They need to buy the stock back and pay interest. They shorted the stock at say 20, or 30. Now they will have to buy it back at 90 and pay interest on it. They have repeatedly resorted to market manipulation to drive the price down and cut their losses, but people are not selling, there do not exist enough shares for them to close their position. They screwed up royally, they doubled down, from 128% shorted stock to 140% shorted stock, then they resorted to blatant market manipulation, using the media and painting a false narrative.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Why do you think they need to close their position? They need to meet margin requirements, which they can do by raising cash. Closing their position is the worst of their options and I don’t see why they would take it. Everyone who is short has to pay the vig every day, so that hasn’t changed.
      - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
shouldiquitamzn 6y ago
They are winning. That’s what people don’t get. This whole dumb money never wins mantra is what’s driving WSB. It’s a bucking of that false narrative. People working on Wall Street aren’t gods, but it’s their job to convince you they are
- tom-_- 6y ago
  There is no "they". WSB is a public subreddit. Traders, pms, hedge fund guys all participate and win often bigger because they have more to play with. They pump and dump and ride the emoji rockets like everyone else. There are only the winners, which include the $60k/yr nurse, the $600k/yr FAANG principal, and the $6M/yr Senior PM who timed their call options right. And the losers which include the same but timed it wrong. The engineers and finance folks who lost will have a bad week. The lower-middle income earners will have a bad year.

vga805 6y ago

the bull thesis has been laid out in detail for months and it's a good one, this is organic interest, Ryan Cohen and others coming over from Chewy was the most recent catalyst

fennecfoxen 6y ago
People exist who in the past two days paid $150 for a share that most analysts think is worth about $14 — at a company with negative earnings for six of the last seven quarters, and minimal earnings growth over the past few years. I'm sure there was some bull case for the company, and it might have had a snowball's chance in hell around $14 or even $20/share. But at $60+ ? What on God's good earth is supposed to make the company worth that much?
- vga805 6y ago
  good point, to clarify the bull thesis wasn't bullish to the current absurdity. i think the bull case is a good one but im not going to lay out the case here. check out the user RoaringKitty 's videos on youtube from a few months ago. (the stock was hovering around 4 then) right now though the chaos has nothing to do with the underlying value. now it's all about the squeeze. but that's never been part of the bull thesis
- oceanplexian 6y ago
  The point of the post is that sentiment drives value, not the other way around. It’s a profound thesis and it makes the opinions of analysts irrelevant. If enough people want GameStop to succeed then it will. Ironically it’s the same thesis that wealthy SV investors go by when they decide to invest in a startup. Except the word invest is usually misleading. Most of the time they’re just looking for a vehicle to inject capital and influence, and the people and product are interchangeable parts used to achieve a a profitable outcome.
  - paxys 6y ago
    > If enough people want GameStop to succeed then it will More like – if enough people want GameStop to succeed then it has a slightly better chance of succeeding than if they didn't. Chances are that it is still a bubble that will eventually pop, like most others before it.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    This is less profound than you think it is. The sentiment story is that if enough people want to pay $150 a share for approximately $0/yr in earnings, they will. What this glosses over is the reason for the sentiment, the question: "why do people want to pay this?" Traditional stories analysts tell would have people pay $150/share because they expect $8-$15/yr. This story is that people will pay $150/share because people want a way to say 'fuck wall street' and 'fuck analysts' and have unreasonable expectations of becoming wealthy. The former sentiment is sustainable in a way that the latter story kinda isn't.
- totalZero 6y ago
  > most analysts Counterpoint: "Most analysts" are hum-drum Wall Street hacks who cover dozens of companies and don't really have a clue about how the lion's share of them are run. I remember a few years back there was one analyst who kept talking about how NAND keeps getting cheaper and that's hurting memory suppliers...but the analyst's metrics didn't normalize for advancements in NAND speed nor the maturing of capital investments, so the analyst was basically looking at totally expected price declines over time and interpreting it as for some kind of static commodity while claiming it as a bear thesis. A few of them are really clever and knowledgeable. The rest are chumps. It's extremely difficult to judge GME based on regular metrics because their long-term outlook is a function of strategy and their short-term survival is a function of COVID. Sure, the company sells stuff that you can buy online, and sure, they sell it at malls and other places where nobody goes these days, but its stock was over-shorted and this was going to happen sooner or later anyway. Maybe my numbers are off, so correct me if I'm wrong....At today's closing price, GME, which has $6B/yr revenue, is worth a sixth of BBY, which has 43B/yr revenue.
  - hoten 6y ago
    Comparing revenue might make sense if they were in the same slice of retail, but they aren't, so I think you can take zero value from such a comparison.
    - totalZero 6y ago
      Lol. "This is flawed so it is worth zero" is a bad argument even when you present an alternative, but it's downright lazy when you just mail in the criticism without suggesting something else. GME sells consoles and consumer electronics in addition to games, so I'd put BBY on the short list of comps for sure. But if you think the product mix is so different as to make them incomparable, that's ok. Pick a better metric and explain why GME was accurately priced at $260mm market cap when the company does billions in revenue. Then, go back and explain why AMD was worth $2/share in 2014. Then, go to every other heavily shorted name and wave your hands around looking for reasons to justify obviously overshorted valuations.
- andreilys 6y ago
  It’s a short squeeze. Short selling investors who get margin called have to close their short positions, thus forcing them to purchase GME stock and driving it further up
- phil_e_delphian 6y ago
  DoorDash has had negative earnings for all but 2 (1?) quarters it has existed, and trades at about $190 a share, despite direct competition from multiple functionally identical competitors. The market is broken, at least retail investors are benefiting for once.
  - tasuki 6y ago
    How much a single share costs really isn't interesting or important.
    - phil_e_delphian 6y ago
      Tell that to the investors holding >$200 GME shares right now
      - tasuki 6y ago
        I don't think you understand the point I was trying to make. The point wasn't that share price is completely meaningless, the point was that it's meaningless without more information. A share of AAPL now costs $139, a share of GOOG costs $1860. How would you compare the two companies based on that? How does the price of a single share relate to whether or not the company has positive or negative earnings?
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    DoorDash has a growth story that GameStop doesn’t. It’s pure fiction, mind you! But at least it exists. Either stock is terrifying.
    - phil_e_delphian 6y ago
      Agreed. The difference this time is that the gains are socialized this time, not retained in the fraternity of HF, PE, and IB. Which is exactly why Wall Street and financial media is denigrating it. They hate that they don't have the edge, or a monopoly on profits in this case.
- dash2 6y ago
  One answer is given at gmedd.com, which presents analysis suggesting that even in the “bear case”, GME could be fairly valued at about $40/share. Disclaimer: I don’t know if their analysis is any good, but would like to hear your thoughts.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    Gamers is an WSB guy who made the domain to capitalize on the mania. The content is just goofy.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  Counter Point $AMD was at $0.15, AMD was the only company besides Intel that actually had x86-64 patents. Intel would have never let AMD fail because they would be a monopoly and that is worse than leading a duopoly. Notice the bean counter Intel ceo, the yields getting worse over time, the performance not improving besides a 1-2% year over year and Intel getting complacent, repeatedly to screwing over the customer with requirement of buying a new motherboard with every new release. AMD was a steal for anyone in the know. Counter argument 2: Any price target posted by Citron was wrong. Counter argument 3: Why would any analyst give a proper price target when they can screw you over?
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    These remarks are presented for the interest of passerbys, not because the comment I reply to has merit and deserves them. Counterpoint 1: AMD was a chipmaker with skilled engineers on staff and a growth story where they could seize market share with better technology. Gamestop is a retailer with retail clerks on staff and a story where increasing competition from PC and console app stores slowly eats away at their market share. Exact same thing, right? Counterpoint 2: Saying the price target is wrong is one thing, and may in many circumstances be eminently defensible. Saying the correct price is $50-$150 is another. Counterpoint 3: This exemplifies the thinking going on here. "I don't understand the stock market and think someone is screwing us over. Let's define our own alternate reality, and gang up on them for revenge! Revolution!" Last time we saw that show was January 6. For a few people, who get out at the right time, this will be a much more successful revolution, but on the whole, it succeeds only with a transient disruption, and harm the individual would-be revolutionaries the most.
    - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
      > These remarks are presented for the interest of passerbys, not because the comment I reply to has merit and deserves them. Ouff. > AMD was a chipmaker with skilled engineers on staff and a growth story where they could seize market share with better technology. Gamestop is a retailer with retail clerks on staff and a story where increasing competition from PC and console app stores slowly eats away at their market share. Exact same thing, right? Do your due diligence this is just one, https://www.gmedd.com https://www.gmedd.com, there have been many others and they all converge to the same argument. GME is worth much more than the $10 PT given by analysts. > Counterpoint 2: Saying the price target is wrong is one thing, and may in many circumstances be eminently defensible. Saying the correct price is $50-$150 is another. Except citron was wrong in every single price target they have given by more often than not an order magnitude, except for 1. If you pay enough attention, you will see that many of the same 'pages' play both the bull and bear game, if only to come out and say they were correct. > Counterpoint 3: This exemplifies the thinking going on here. "I don't understand the stock market and think someone is screwing us over. Let's define our own alternate reality, and gang up on them for revenge! Revolution!" Had you done your due diligence and paid attention to the situation as it unfolded, you'd have seen that the market made sense, the stock was over shorted and in no way reflective of the actual price targets created by various models and analyses such as the one I linked above. > Last time we saw that show was January 6. For a few people, who get out at the right time, this will be a much more successful revolution, but on the whole, it succeeds only with a transient disruption, and harm the individual would-be revolutionaries the most. We saw that show in every single revolution. This only reinforces the belief that the average proletariat is getting screwed over and manipulated by the same class of people. Hint, it was the proletariat that paid for the greed, not the institutions, the hedge funds or the MMs. It is the proletariat that are stuck between a rock and a hard place, it is the proletariat that are getting manipulated into intra class wars.
- delaaxe 6y ago
  There's a long term bull price target at $169: https://www.gmedd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/GMEdd-GameStopValuation-20Jan21.pdf https://www.gmedd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/GMEdd-GameS...
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    > We have rounded the multiple to 15.2x in honor of Tylee, Cohen’s toy poodle and Cohen’s reputation as an aggressive, entrepreneurial founder. OK, I'll pay $300 for a stock that will be worth $169 in 4 years assuming that Ryan Cohen has 100% chance of using is legendary Ryan Cohen powers to seize digital game sale margins from all the walled gardens, because somebody on WSB bought a domain name and used orange and green highlights in a spiffy PDF.
JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
Come on, that is what you’ve been trained to say. I heard the exact same phrases from my younger brother.
- vga805 6y ago
  Trained by who? what are you talking about?
xiphias2 6y ago
It works at the start, but the problem is that the people who want to sell their positions need to dump it on the losers and just keep pumping the price and making late comers lose lots of money. The reality of wealth building is that short term it’s always 0 sum game, long term it’s a way to get rich.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  Well sort of... in this case, there are a ridiculous amount of short sellers... more than 100% of all the shares have been sold short. That means that there is in some ways infinite demand... every single share currently owned HAS to be bought by a short seller at some point, in order to return it to the borrowed actual owner... so as long as all the current owners hold fast, they can sell their shares for as high as they can go. It doesn't even matter if the company itself is worthless, the demand is there. You are right about the zero sum in this case, though... it just might be the short sellers who are left holding the bag.
Noos 6y ago
I'm not sure if he can do much. Gamestop has the same problem that drove other retailers like suncoast, sam goody, strawberries, and many other ones out of business; you cannot survive the digitalization of your primary products. Gamestop relies on console systems and videogames both new and used to make the core of its primary business. These are what draw people into their locations and to their web site, and allow add on sales like memberships, warranties, collectibles, and accessories to be sold. They generally go to malls, either interior or open. The problem is the decrease in physical games over digital kills the primary reason to go into their stores, and also prevents middlemen from existing; there is no value add to getting a digital code from gamestop as opposed to steam, ps store, etc. It also murders the high value used game and console sales because now there is less product to trade in. That just leaves them with collectibles, which they've always been low quality and too expensive, accessories, and a tiny assortment of physical games that now they barely even have stock of. They "advertise" the top 100 games or so in their store, yet don't have stock of many of them ,and their used games are barely a shelf of them. The problem with being an internet retailer is amazon already does what they do better; it's an uphill battle where they have no real value add. Even Amazon seems to have less and less new physical games, and they have an infinite amount of chinese sellers dramatically lowering the price of game accessories. I don't see any way to be bullish on them because of their actual business. edit: its not just them. There's a regional game store chain where I live, and they suffer the exact same problems. They are desperately trying to carry anything and everything geek related just to fill the store with inventory; records, collectible card games, comics, manga, crt tvs, used movies, anime accessories, model kits, etc. They actually are losing the game store focus, as used product even in the retro market is dead now...very few retro systems and games.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  If this is correct, then why did Chewy succeed against Amazon? Granted, dogfood is waaaay different than selling digital games outside a walled garden. No one can lock you out of your dogfood.

trap_chateau 6y ago

I think I'm convinced of manipulation. The memeing and the gameifying investment, calling each other retards (because you, user, you don't know _anything_) and the long obscure unfalsifiable ramblings about predictions or valuable investments hitting the top of the page, it all just seems a little fishy to me.

electriclove 6y ago
No, it really is just random people rallying together. What is fishy is who is on the other end of the play and getting a black eye for once.
doggosphere 6y ago
https://www.reddit.com/user/DeepFuckingValue/ https://www.reddit.com/user/DeepFuckingValue/ A bit of luck, a bit of smarts. Build it and they will come?
EdwardDiego 6y ago
/r/wsb has always struck me as being an offshoot of 4chan, with their self-labelling as autists and retards. And 4Chan a) isn't dumb, but they like doing dumb shit and b) they love brigading. Pool's closed etc. But what's interesting is how the institutional outrage is merely fuelling the brigading. The institutional investors crying in the media only confirms WSB's beliefs that they've found a weak spot in the institutions, so they're going to stick it in harder. I admire their attitude, but not enough to put my money in to what feels like an giant troll.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  The tagline for WSB is "It's like if you gave 4chan a Bloomberg terminal." Personally, I'm buying in the money puts expiring in 2023. No way Gamestop is doing better now, or has a better future now, than it did five or ten years, yet their stock's at an all time high? These hijinks may continue for some time, but I doubt it'll last years, price will settle and I'll hopefully make a modest profit.

dannyw 6y ago

Melvin capital has been forced to take multiple capital injections and bail outs, to avoid being margin called. Short sellers have mark to market losses of over $6 billion, and should the momentum continue, they will be forced to sell at the worst times (infinity short squeeze). Wall St are looking like they will be the losers.

electriclove 6y ago
Oh I wish but Wall St creates the rules so I wouldn't be surprised if they find a way to save their butts on a short squeeze.
- alexeldeib 6y ago
  Isn't that what's happening? Melvin Capital sold a share of their revenue stream for billions in cash to avoid being margin called. That's not exactly "winning" but it's a way to save their butt at a lower loss, perhaps. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/first-casualty-big-short-squeeze-melvin-capital-gets-275bn-bailout-citadel-point72-after https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/first-casualty-big-short-s...
  - electriclove 6y ago
    Yup. It looks like several of their other short holdings have been feeling the squeeze as well: FIZZ, AMC, SPWR, etc https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/here-are-all-melvin-capitals-crushed-put-positions https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/here-are-all-melvin-capita...
thepasswordis 6y ago
Good.
kasey_junk 6y ago
Melvins “bail outs” were agreements with other firms. “Wall St” is doing fine on this. Citadel must be loving their Robinhood order flow right now.

oceanplexian 6y ago

Is Melvin Capital winning with their short position? When they’re contractually obligated to repurchase millions of shares and there are no shares left to purchase, what do you think is going to happen? There are winners and losers, but in this case the loser could very well be an investment firm with 12B in assets. Some wealthy investors are about to have that wealth redistributed. I think that’s the point.

thefreeman 6y ago
"no shares left to purchase". what?? 160 million shares changed hands today. there will never be no shares left to purchase.
- jaycroft 6y ago
  Flow and stock are different.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  They shorted more GME shares than the amount that currently exist. That's what "no shares left to purchase" is referring to.

pmorici 6y ago

They essentially drove one of wall streets very successful hedge funds of recent years to near failure they had to make a deal for an emergency investment today to stay afloat. I’d call that winning.

jeffbee 6y ago
They will probably use the infusion of money to just ride out this raid and make a mint when the wsb bubble pops, which it inevitably will. To say that the hedge fund is "near failure" is the same as saying they did not fail. If they bridge this gap they win double.
- aerique 6y ago
  I don't know. Just making the hedge fund managers shit their pants is good fun.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  They need to buy the stock back and pay interest. They shorted the stock at say 20, or 30. Now they will have to buy it back at 90 and pay interest on it. They have repeatedly resorted to market manipulation to drive the price down and cut their losses, but people are not selling, there do not exist enough shares for them to close their position. They screwed up royally, they doubled down, from 128% shorted stock to 140% shorted stock, then they resorted to blatant market manipulation, using the media and painting a false narrative.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Why do you think they need to close their position? They need to meet margin requirements, which they can do by raising cash. Closing their position is the worst of their options and I don’t see why they would take it. Everyone who is short has to pay the vig every day, so that hasn’t changed.
    - PartiallyTyped 6y ago

shouldiquitamzn 6y ago

They are winning. That’s what people don’t get. This whole dumb money never wins mantra is what’s driving WSB. It’s a bucking of that false narrative. People working on Wall Street aren’t gods, but it’s their job to convince you they are

tom-_- 6y ago
There is no "they". WSB is a public subreddit. Traders, pms, hedge fund guys all participate and win often bigger because they have more to play with. They pump and dump and ride the emoji rockets like everyone else. There are only the winners, which include the $60k/yr nurse, the $600k/yr FAANG principal, and the $6M/yr Senior PM who timed their call options right. And the losers which include the same but timed it wrong. The engineers and finance folks who lost will have a bad week. The lower-middle income earners will have a bad year.