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> The same emotion that caused us to root for the thieves in Ocean’s 11 is what makes Wall Street Bets so enticing. Put frankly, Millennials are tired of gettin
by dvt 6y ago
> The same emotion that caused us to root for the thieves in Ocean’s 11 is what makes Wall Street Bets so enticing. Put frankly, Millennials are tired of getting fucked by the man. When you’re underemployed with $100,000 in student loan debt, your financial situation feels overwhelming. You really don’t want to take the advice of your parents or CNBC talking heads [5] to invest 10% of your salary for a 4% annual return. At that point, what’s another $5,000? Might as well buy some short-dated GME calls.
Well put. I was explaining to a friend of mine a few weeks ago why cynicism is so prevalent in our generation: we graduated in 2008 where banks, not our parents, got the bailouts; we got stuck with thousands in student debt; the dream of marrying a pretty wife and having a few kids, working for a company for 40 years, and retiring in Cabo is a relic of the 1950s; we lived with our parents until our 30s, and in spite of being so "connected," we are more lonely, have less friends, and are having less sex than previous generations; unless, I guess, you count the COVID shutdowns screwing young people yet again.
It's a never-ending shit-show. At least some of us are getting rich in /r/wallstreetbets.
- gruez 6y ago>It's a never-ending shit-show. At least some of us are getting rich in /r/wallstreetbets. This is sad because most of what you've said can be applied to lotteries as well, which historically has been criticized as being a "tax" on the poor. The end result is the same: people putting themselves in a worse place financially (on average), just so they can cope with their bleak existence.
- pmorici 6y agoI wouldn’t compare what happened with GME to the lottery at least not for the people who understood why they were doing what they were doing.
- viraptor 6y agoIt's still a lottery. They didn't know if there would be enough real following or if most people were just trolling. Even if they estimated that well, they still had no idea where the peak was.
- tomc1985 6y agoExactly this. Many of us have been WSB for a while and it is really hard to know whether all this GME buzz would amount to anything material until it actually happened
- pmorici 6y agoA typical lottery in the USA has odds of like 1 in 300 million. The fact alone that more than 100% of float was shorted put the odds of this happening way above any chance you have of winning the lottery. Suggesting that just because there was an aspect of chance involved that it is on par with a lottery is ridiculous.
- viraptor 6y agoWith 1/300M you're likely thinking of a jackpot. Winning anything is much lower. Powerball is 1/38 for the lowest payout. And in the same way, there will be a lot of people around breakeven point in the GameStop lottery, some small winners and some people who are now set for life.
- esperent 6y ago> Powerball is 1/38 for the lowest payout I'm not familiar with the Powerball, but I'm guessing that's for a prize of somewhere around $5 for a ticket price of $2. Hardly relevant, is it?
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoAll those small wins fuel buzz / conversation, and likely increase participation.
- 8note 6y agoDo lottery entrants have influence on their probability of winning?
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- christophilus 6y agoExactly. I first heard the bull thesis from Michael Burry. Hardly a gambler. GME was comically over shorted in a console release year. Burry predicted a short squeeze way before WSB picked it up.
- gruez 6y ago>Exactly. I first heard the bull thesis from Michael Burry. Hardly a gambler. The problem with this argument is that there's always an "expert" that can justify your speculative positions.
- strulovich 6y agoBut we’re comparing it to a lottery. We can find plenty of experts rationalizing some stocks or history, all with convincing narratives. But can you find a expert explaining the numbers which came up in lottery last night with such a believable narrative (wrong or right)?
- gruez 6y ago> But can you find a expert explaining the numbers which came up in lottery last night with such a believable narrative (wrong or right)? Isn't that what fortune tellers are? The only difference is that most people know that trying to predict the lottery is bullshit, but most don't think that's the case for stocks despite evidence to the contrary (eg. that actively managed funds underperform passive funds on average).
- rokobobo 6y agoExcept, if a whole generation YOLOs hard enough, maybe the government will actually choose to bail them out for once.
- edoceo 6y ago2k stimmy incoming! GME PLTR BB NOK to the moon! Get iN! BEars R fuk :rocket-emoji: (20x) - am I doing it right?
- willis936 6y agoA whole generation is not YOLOing. We’re just trying to keep a roof over our heads.
- throwaway894345 6y agoThe argument is that we’re working to keep a roof over our heads now because we YOLOed through college. And while that doesn’t describe me, I had a lot of peers who partied through college, skipped classes, hardly worked, majored in women’s studies / art history / literature / etc and still managed to live in the dorms, buy daily lattes, have the latest iPhones, etc.
- willis936 6y ago>The argument is that we’re working to keep a roof over our heads now because we YOLOed through college. And while that doesn’t describe me Nor me. I worked throughout all of undergrad. My work paid for my grad degree. I have an MSEE and am looking at $50k of student debt. My income is such that I expect the only way my debt will go away in the next ten years is through PSLF. Owning a house before I’m 40? I’m not so sure. Where exactly is the YOLO? The generation didn’t piss anything away. We’re getting shafted.
- sokoloff 6y agoYou have an advanced degree in EE, paid for by work who valued that enough to pay for it, and don't expect to be able to clear $50K in student loans in 10 years. Are you still working in a job requiring that degree, because if so, that does seem like you're getting shafted (especially compared to the equivalent on the CS side of EE/CS).
- katbyte 6y agoBut we all know what the lottery is, sadly playing the stock market is glamorized beyond belief rather then shown for what it is:gambling
- fsckboy 6y ago"diversified" "buy and hold" investing in the stock market is not gambling.
- 8note 6y agoIt's lightly better than gambling, since you still end up with ownership of something
- gruez 6y agoThese people are most likely buying options. Saying that they end up with ownership of something is a stretch.
- justsid 6y agoEh, owning debt is always a possibility with options. But I agree, especially the people who YOLO large amounts of money on dailies. But honestly, that’s what makes WSB fun. There’s a mix of everything, serious traders, reckless gamblers. It’s insanely entertaining, even just from the sidelines.
- thrwyoilarticle 6y agoBets is in the name.
- ollifi 6y ago/r/wsb is kind of insanity, but I’ve come to think that maybe young person can YOLO a bit against the odds somewhere in life. If something returns poorly on average, but has high payouts at the top it might just work out. Your life won’t be the average case but single sample. Lottery is too improbable but some other things ”no rational person would do” can be ok. Main thing is to get over with it soon and protect the downside. Of course if you get lucky you need to be contempt with the nice head start and switch strategy to doing the boring rational things. Not sure if these qualities are often found in one person.
- 55555 6y ago> I’ve come to think that maybe young person can YOLO a bit against the odds somewhere in life. If something returns poorly on average, but has high payouts at the top it might just work out. Your life won’t be the average case but single sample. This is indeed, after all, a website about founding startups.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 6y agoThe only difference between being a founder and gambling is the social signaling. In both cases, luck is a larger component than grit (lots of amazing folks have failed through no fault of their own). No shame in gambling your way to wealth if you don't care about the social signaling.
- kyawzazaw 6y agoI bet there is some sort of positive social signaling in gambling your way to wealth as long as you succeed
- silexia 6y agoAnyone else notice that WSB reads like a religion? And that Trump supporters have faith without evidence, just like religion? Perhaps most humans cannot truly be atheists, but will always be caught by something to believe in.
- chasd00 6y agoIsn’t this an explore/exploit problem? If you have time to recover then do it, if not then better to cash in on a sure thing even if the upside is lower.
- gruez 6y agoNot really. The explore/exploit analogy only works if the higher risk investments have higher returns, as we see with stocks (higher risk, higher returns) vs bonds (lower risk, lower returns). I'm skeptical that speculating on options have higher returns commensurate with their risks.
- the_drunkard 6y ago> This is sad because most of what you've said can be applied to lotteries as well, which historically has been criticized as being a "tax" on the poor. The end result is the same: people putting themselves in a worse place financially (on average), just so they can cope with their bleak existence. Damn. I've never considered the psychological effects of the lottery system, but in a way I think you hit the nail on the head. Anyways, in the GME scenario it appears that most retail investors are actually in a better place financially because of it.
- pas 6y agoCentral banks are printing money. IPOs are hotter than hot. The odds are in favor of WSB for now.
- engineer_22 6y agoThe first rule of Fight Club...
- edgyquant 6y agoExcept everyone knows about that sub and it does little but get the hopes of the working poor up, who then lose what little savings they have on some yolo being pushed by a more well off individual whose just having fun.
- glazyrin 6y agoIf you put forward a theory like this about Wall Street, markets in general, capitalism in general, or the political system we have, you're an 'extremist'. When it comes to a bunch of people goofing around with meme stocks on a subreddit, suddenly lots of people turn into champions of the 'working poor'.
- edgyquant 6y agoPump and dumps have been illegal for decades
- Dirlewanger 6y agoA tale as old as time.
- engineer_22 6y agoOh, I'm just saying the language surrounding WSB sounds a lot like fight club. Sorry, I could've made the connection more explicit.
- mediocre-one 6y ago> It's a never-ending shit-show. At least some of us are getting rich in /r/wallstreetbets. I wonder who will be the actual winners when these shorts end. In the meantime, let's enjoy the show.
- in3d 6y agoGetting rich through a greater fool theory and creating a bubble in a small stock is not something I’d be proud of. You’re sticking it to the least knowledge Johnny-come-latelies who will be left holding the bag. Thinking that you’re screwing Goldman Sachs is delusional.
- edgyquant 6y agoThis is why I absolutely hate Wall Street bets and push back every time it’s brought up. The people usually winning there are people who work in finance and are pushing their stocks onto the unsuspecting folks who visit just for the memes. There is something suspicious about a sub where high ranking users often post there 100k robinhood accounts, and the SEC investing them every few months is proof I’m not the only one who thinks so.
- chronolitus 6y agowell past 100k now, u/WSBgod, u/DeepFuckingValue, and others are showing plays worth millions of $ some of these accounts "Rose up from nothing" by investing an entire portfolio of 50+ thousand dollars into extremely risky options. Either this is suspect or I'm out of touch with the average joe's risk tolerance.
- PartiallyTyped 6y agou/DeepFuckingValue gave his DD, did his analysis and figured out the play. The fact that the shorts shorted 140% of the shares is their fault and nothing to do with insider information, it is all public, except of course for the blatant market manipulation by the same hedge funds, the naked short selling, the ladder naked shortselling, controlling the narrative, all the things people with billions in capital can and will do.
- easton 6y agoIt’s worth noting that u/WSBGod was a scam ran by a corrupt mod to sell investment courses, but so far DFV is legit (given the size of his initial play and the fact he’s gotten his money out I think he’s legit, anyway).
- refurb 6y agoI was explaining to a friend of mine a few weeks ago why cynicism is so prevalent in our generation Where have I heard this before? ” As adolescents and young adults in the 1980s and 1990s, Xers were dubbed the "MTV Generation" (a reference to the music video channel), sometimes being characterized as slackers, cynical, and disaffected.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X
- hinkley 6y agoListen to 80’s music for a bit if you think the current decade has a lock on existential dread. Or just the theme song of “Good Times”, a sitcom from the 70’s.
- mbg721 6y agoGen-Xers have also had a notoriously awful employment economy.
- mywittyname 6y agoMy mom was an Xer and lamented that she was part of the first generation to be worse off than their parents. Our saving grace was the fact that welfare programs had not yet been completely gutted and that the 90s ushered in an era of prosperity that lasted long enough to get us kids through school (just in time for the GFC, yay!).
- 8note 6y agoSo things haven't changed in a while?
- elmomle 6y agoArguably all started in the mid-to-late 70s when leadership in the US essentially threw in the towel on trying to improve the nation and started dismantling the country for profit. Adam Curtis's Hypernormalization does a very good job of illustrating this overall trend as it was reflected in the zeitgeist.
- randmeerkat 6y agoThis is exactly why I become more liberal the older I get. If it’s no longer possible for millennials to have the same economic prosperity as baby boomers did, might as well vote for UBI, universal health care, and free education. One way or another, millennials are going to pull something out of this shit show.
- dionidium 6y agoI think this is a just-so-story meant to explain something that doesn’t require an explanation. It’s just gambling. Gambling is fun and human beings have always done it. You don’t need to posit anything special about Millennials. New forms of gambling come around every once in a while and this is one such event.
- xibalba 6y agoExactly this. It is people rationalizing their gambling, sprinkling in an anecdote here and there about someone paying off their student loans thanks to /r/wsb.
- bilekas 6y agoI cant agree with this more, I think though once the mindset takes over than a nomad lifestyle is also something that can be extremely fulfilling and changing peoples ideals of that 50's relic is key. We will probably be hampered by the extreme inequality of wealth for generations to come but I think our generation is losing patience and finding new ways to live happy. VERY Slowly but surely.
- blackrock 6y agoSo now the new proposal is for people to live in RVs, and wander from town to town? No security. No firm ground to call home. This is a life worse than the medieval ages.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago> No security. No firm ground to call home. I don't see the attraction but when you consider all the overhead costs that come with living traditionally I can see why it makes sense. FWIW a non-trivial minority of people in the residential building trades have been doing this for years. They move north and south with the construction seasons.
- LunaSea 6y agoThat overhead comes with quality of life. As a nomad in an RV you don't have a fridge, a shower and the price of the RV loses value over time compared to a house.
- bilekas 6y agoNo nesccesarily, the options are more broad than just an RV for sure, if you can earn an income remotely you have far better options. For example in germany a huge percentage of the population rent rather than buy : http://www.rentalcal.eu/the-german-rental-market http://www.rentalcal.eu/the-german-rental-market There are good regulations around it there, but there is not the drive to own. Again though it's different folks different strokes.
- blackrock 6y agoIt’s even worse than this. The government feigns that they can’t do anything. And that everything is the result of the market. Meanwhile, they easily pass bills to increase their own pay, or find magic money to pay for their military wars. And then, after screwing up the 2008 crisis, they stopped building homes. And the homes that were foreclosed on, they allowed the rich corporations to buy them up for pennies on the dollar. You call this a real estate market? It’s a god damned scam! So what does that leave us with? Millennials that have a lot of student loans, low pay for decades, and now, they can’t even buy a home. How wonderful it is that a dilapidated entry level home is now $700,000. Good luck paying for that, when you couldn’t even afford to pay for a $500,000 home. Families are delayed. Marriages are delayed. Kids? Good luck even affording to pay for a family, with your $800,000+ mortgage. Thanks America. You f*cked us. But sure, your rich buddies are even richer.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoEntry level homes in non-trendy areas are much cheaper. My home is about $110k.
- engineer_22 6y agoI've got a note for $70k for a 3 bedroom. It's not LA, but it's fine for raising a family.
- mywittyname 6y ago>My home is about $110k. Like, it was worth that when you bought it several years ago? I mean, I live in the midwest too, where it used to be possible to get a modest home in the burbs for about that price. But those homes are now gone, they disappeared over the past few years as they were purchased in all-cash transactions by flippers who threw some paint and flooring in them before selling them for twice the price. Housing in the cheap areas is being hit really hard. Lots of areas are seeing coastal-levels of YoY price inflation. Mine is ~18% YoY according to Zillow.
- MrRadar 6y ago
- glazyrin 6y agoLots of these points hit home - but why blame older people for your generation having less sex? Baby boomers didn't make casual sex illegal, nor have they bought up all the sex. Until covid, if young people wanted to have sex with each other they were perfectly free to. Isn't it simply that masturbation and pornography have become relatively more attractive propositions than they were in the past?
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoBaby boomers didn't have to spend hours in extra curricular activities in HS plus getting 5.0 QPAs to maybe get accepted into a good college so they can have a semi decent chance at a good living. My dad was able to go to a steel mill and make huge amounts of money plus overtime and insanely good benefits. Housing was extremely affordable. Very low debt from trade school. Women wanted to have kids and settle earlier. Women today care about their careers. People don't want to get into relationships with people saddled with debt and making no money. While materially there are a lot of benefits to our modern world, no one is really free. To get sex nowadays, you better be attractive. Because on Tinder there are thousands competing with you instead of 20 in that one bar. Most people get very little likes, get depressed, and give up. I don't blame them. It's soul crushing.
- glazyrin 6y agoNone of these really make much sense. Sex is free and not that time-consuming. You can work hard at college and still find time for sex. You can be in debt and have sex with other people in debt without incurring further debt. Women getting married and having children later should mean more opportunities for casual sex, not fewer. Boomers have not forced younger people to find hookups on tinder. The argument about competition makes no sense. Everyone can't be outcompeted. If a generation has chosen only to have sex with its most attractive members, how did that happen? Why does it leads to less total sex? Why is this the fault of older people?
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoYour entire comment is a strawman. Either way, your first comment is false. Sex is not free. I can't go outside and instantly have sex. I need a partner who is willing - which is, again, not free. > Women getting married and having children later should mean more opportunities for casual sex, not fewer. You're conflating "should" with "What is." You think it "should" mean more opportunities - but you haven't given any evidence that it actually should, and society shows that there is less sex. So this is false. > Boomers have not forced younger people to find hookups on tinder. The argument about competition makes no sense. Everyone can't be outcompeted. The argument makes perfect sense if you would get over your need to protect boomers, which is an odd strawman. People don't want to settle. Now that they see they have potential access to more attractive mates, they are less likely to settle for someone less attractive and in turn others are less likely to settle for them. The benefits of having a partner just aren't there anymore, and the younger generations are far more risk averse (not just with sex: “It’s part of an overall trend toward less risky behavior since 1990, including not only sex but alcohol use, risky driving, and criminal activity,” Dr. Arnett told Healthline.") than the lead fueled baby boomers. Young people can't consent until 18. While boomers aren't forcing anyone to use tinder, society has impressed these things upon youth. It's unfair to say that children and adolescents have free agency. They don't.
- stewx 6y ago> invest 10% of your salary for a 4% annual return Except we have had bull markets for several years now. It has been an excellent time to be in the market. S&P500 returns for the past 5 years: 2016: 9.54% 2017: 19.42% 2018: -6.24% 2019: 28.88% 2020: 16.26%
- obviouspenguin 6y agoExtremely rapid growth in assets when wages are not increasing at the same rate is what hurts younger generations.
- nico_h 6y agoTESLA is up 1707% since january 2020. Apple and Amazon "only" 70%
- bufferoverflow 6y agoMost likely to do with this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1 A bunch of money gets dispensed, mostly to the rich corporations. Instead of helping their employees they dump it into stocks of quality companies.
- kortilla 6y agoThat doesn’t make sense. If it just went to rich corporations, it wouldn’t have gone into Tesla, which is considered massively overvalued by all of these traditional companies.
- garmaine 6y agoSome of it did. But that's missing what he's saying. The Fed injected a shit-ton of money into the economy last year, mostly through PPP forgivable loans. This money was supposed to go to the most vulnerable small businesses, but we now know it largely went to the big guys. They used the money to pay for salaries, as per the requirements of the "loan," but that offset money which they would have used for salaries, which instead got funneled into savings and largely put onto the market. What stocks did people buy last year with this money? TSLA, AAPL, etc. There was also a large amount of stimulus checks and unemployment bonuses that went to the same destination. Hence RobinHood having a record year. That's unrelated and somewhat contrary to the feds-bailing-out-big-business narrative though.
- rickspencer3 6y agoHow many years has it been in the USA since a cohort graduated college into a functioning version of capitalism?
- swiley 6y agoIt's really simple economics: the low interest rates means they're dumping new money into corporations. If you're not getting loans and buying stocks you're missing out and just coping with your savings being devalued.
- dls2016 6y ago> It's a never-ending shit-show. Exactly. Interests rates at 0%, wages stagnating and the system has been setup so that I'm essentially forced to participate in the market (otherwise I miss out on salary). AND these hedge fund idiots are feted as geniuses for their stupid plays. I am basically at 110% cynicism regarding my 401k and would lose but an hour of sleep if it disappeared tomorrow. Fuck it, I'm all in!
- imtringued 6y agoYou know, one would expect inflation to go up because of the aging population. Lots of people leave the work force and they start spending their retirement funds. That should be good for all those few youngsters. Somehow it is not. It will get really ugly once those youngsters enter their mid 30s and still have no job experience.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ivanech 6y agoSomebody wrote a reply to the above comment saying that people should simply not have student loan debt and then promptly deleted it before I could post the following reply: Big ask to expect teenagers to be able to project the marginal benefit of college education (inherently uncertain and speculative) and to also estimate the real, not nominal, burden of the loans to the future (again, inherently uncertain and speculative). And it's tough to make that judgement when many US high schools treat college education like a necessity. Also important to remember that education debt is unique, it's not dischargeable. Unlike any other type of investment debt, borrowers don't have access to bankruptcy, meaning that an investment in education that doesn't work out follows you around for life like an underwater mortgage you can't be rid of.
- mmglr 6y agoThere is certainly a problem with how teenagers are misinformed about college, and that education debit is difficult to discharge. However, I do agree that one should have little to no student loan debt. I am a millennial and was able to graduate without student loan debt. I went to community college then transferred to a state school. I earned a scholarship to do a masters in computer science. Then I found a six figure income job at a medium sized company not FAANG or some startup. All I did was found a degree that had a high ROI by googling which was at the time CS.
- greedo 6y agoWhen I went to college, I could earn enough in one summer to pay for my tuition and books. Not my housing or anything else though. In the intervening 40 years, tuition costs have gone through the roof. There's no way that someone can work their way through school. Even community college in my town is expensive. Unless you can get an academic scholarship, or are very low income and get a needs based grant, you're stuck with loans.
- sershe 6y agoThe narrative that you expect to live better than your parents (controlling for the benefits of technological progress like better medicines or cars), is historically aberrant, especially in the USA given the relative state of the US and world economy in say, 1950 (when everyone else was either woefully underdeveloped or recently bombed out of existence). I think that is the problem... As the US economy shrinks as a percentage of the world economy, you would expect an average life experience in the USA to slowwwly move closer to an average life experience around the world. The latter is moving "up", sure, but there's still a huge gap to move down into. But, they still teach kids in the USA to expect great life for average effort (or frankly as far as I can tell lately, regardless of effort). I don't think any other country in the world has this mindset; I like what appears to me to be the mindset in some Asian countries (I could be wrong but it seems to me like you are expected to try hard to do better but not in any way led to expect you will) is much healthier.
- TurkishPoptart 6y agoHow are people getting rich over this? Buying GME calls and hoping they appreciate?
- elindbe3 6y agoOr just buying 10000 shares at $3 and selling them at $200