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Nine investors make $16B on GameStop stock squeeze
- alexpetralia 6y agoNext week: "Nine Investors Instantly Lose $16B on GameStop Stock 'Collapse'"
- imtringued 6y agoLoss porn is a thing. WSB loves losing money.
- paulpauper 6y agoIt is fun seeing other people lose money
- MengerSponge 6y agoSchadenfreude, making me feel glad that I'm not you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCQGQ5qBQTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCQGQ5qBQTA
- MengerSponge 6y agoGuh https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/dyaj4v/whats_the_deal_with_the_guh_meme_from/f7zx5qf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/dyaj4v/whats_...
- Rapzid 6y agoMore like "A disturbance was felt in the force as if 500 thousand investors all cried out 'YOLO' before discovering their GameStop stocks are worthless after giving all their money to 9 other investors."
- wintorez 6y agoThe actual squeeze hasn't started yet.
- krustyburger 6y agoI’ve been surprised to have seen this kind of comment here at HN more and more this week. The specific claim in this comment is one that is being made at /r/wallstreetbets, among many others. Over there, users seem to delight in repeating statements like this and not providing any supporting evidence or adding their own arguments. I think being an echo chamber is meant to be part of the fun of that subreddit at this moment. But why do this on HN also? I can only guess that the users here are personally invested in GME and are hoping to increase their own profits by spreading the word and convincing more investors to join in with them. If this is the case, it seems to be at odds with how Hacker News is generally used and I am surprised to see it being tolerated so much by the administrators.
- metalliqaz 6y ago> I can only guess that the users here are personally invested in GME bingo
- wintorez 6y agoI'm the original commenter. I don't have any of the shorted stocks. I only find the story fascinating. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Tenoke 6y agoBecause it's technically true? Regardless if it's likely to happen or not the actual squeeze - the closing of shorts when there's no available stock to buy - hasn't happened (and maybe never will) yet.
- Aunche 6y agoThat's not something you can know for certain. It's possible that hedge funds closed their early shorts, but now, the mind-boggling valuation has inspired a wave of new shorts.
- kasey_junk 6y agoThese are paper gains. None of these investors have closed their position. Most of them probably can’t so long as GME is part of the index they are pegged to.
- paulpauper 6y agoThis logic needs to die. People said the same about Facebook in 2011 and Amazon in 2010. Nowt saying that this is going to be the same as those, but up is up, gains are gains. This is a hugely liquid market. Someone can liquidate $1 billion of GME or hedge it without too much problems.
- spoonjim 6y agoAn index fund is constrained by its charter, not by market liquidity.
- hyperdimension 6y agoOT, but I've never seen anything autocorrected to `watthour!' Isn't it supposed to be hyphenated?
- jariel 6y agoWow, no. Amazon and FB are massive companies, growing massively every year. They are probably overvalued, but that's due to a P/E ration problem, not a fundamentals problem. Game Stop is straight up a flailing business, not very big to begin with. This is a market stampede and it will come down soon.
- paulpauper 6y ago>Game Stop is straight up a flailing business, not very big to begin with. It was 3 months ago. Things have changed since.
- jariel 6y agoThere's nothing to suggest the underlying fundamentals would change. It's possible the resurgence in interest could save the company, but it's not going to turn into a growth company, and won't ever have anything near a massive valuation relative to it's baseline.
- mikewarot 6y agoThis headline ignores the lesson everyone should have learned by now.... you don't instantly make or lose money in the stock market... it only happens when you open and close positions. Since it was all buy and hold driving up the price... few sold... Billions of stock certainly weren't sold.
- majormajor 6y agoYour first point is very important, but your second is incorrect. Volume of trading has been very high, actually. And remember: you can't buy without someone else selling. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-29/reddit-traders-on-robinhood-are-on-both-sides-of-gamestop https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-29/reddit...
- kasey_junk 6y agoMUST unloaded their position for over a billion: https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20210128440/large-gamestop-shareholder-must-asset-management-sold-off-its-stake https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20210128440/lar...
- roywiggins 6y agoSomebody has to be selling to everyone piling in.
- crazydoggers 6y agoIt’s mind boggling people don’t understand this. Profit taking is what happens when the stock price drops. We’ve yet to see that happen... but my guess is that the institutional whales will tip the scales as soon as they decide they’ve taken enough from the Reddit crowd. There’s already a sell wall... so you know they’re gearing up. As other commenters noted, there were a lot of shares sold that traded hands. But the important thing to look at is not shares, but how much money moved into the security, and who now holds it, and who will be in a position to keep it. And these hedge funds that are supposedly feeling the pain. Most of them have got plenty of capital to manage this. Think if it this way... how many billions of capital was invested by retail investors... and how many of those are “holding” in order to “stick it to the hedge funds.” Those billions are going to go somewhere as the stock price drops.. and I’m going to guess that most of it won’t go back in the pockets of the retail investors when this all ends. So they basically just made a bunch of rich people richer. How can the hedge funds not being laughing?
- anewaccount2021 6y agoApril 1, 2021 - Gamestop announces intention to acquire Apple edit: Jesus folks, this is obviously a joke. Lighten up HN!
- ginko 6y agoThat's unrealistic of course, but I do wonder what GME's CEO is doing right now. Could they use the current high stock value to pay off debt by selling off stock or would that potentially collapse the current market value. Is there some way for them to take advantage of this whole thing?
- Tenoke 6y agoGME is not really profiting or having a direct access to more money unless they issue more stock which is not so easy and unlikely. The ceo has made money as he certainly has stock but that's his personal holdings.
- anewaccount2021 6y agoWell at the very least, you have to assume full-time salaried employees have some sort of equity compensation. So this is basically an awesome lottery outcome for them. Hopefully they give the hourly employees some sort of nice reward for sticking around too. I don't see big opportunities to restructure the business - if the executive team could build a better business, they wouldn't be in this shape to begin with.
- 1-6 6y agoFebruary 1, 2021: GameStop starts preorder of KFC Gaming Consoles.
- hehehaha 6y agoPretty misleading considering that they’re all institutions except for Ryan Cohen which I believe is also not a private stake.
- gruez 6y agoThis just goes to show how absurd some of characterizations in the media were. eg. Reddit's GameStop, AMC surge is the new Occupy movement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25942863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25942863
- jariel 6y agoThis is actually a good variation of 'Occupy'. It's a 'mob protest' against Wall Street, this time by buying stocks. The upward momentum on Game Stop will collapse as surely as the tents eventually evacuated Occupy.
- gruez 6y agoAt least the original occupy was neutral when it comes to wealth inequality. This will likely enrich the few who got in early, at the expense of everyone else who got in late.
- jldugger 6y agoI mean, this is just a list of the largest institutional holders, not like, a list of people who bought out of money options and cashed in.
- paulpauper 6y agoAnd a whole bunch of guys on WSB made a killing too
- ruggeri 6y agoThis story is ridiculous. Like everyone else has said, these are paper gains to (mostly) institutional investors.
- pbreit 6y agoYou might think IBD would understand the difference between realized and unrealized gains. And that it was reporting on very stale data.
- xwdv 6y agoIs anyone on HN here holding GME shares? Today I said fuck it and bought 75 shares and put a sell limit of $1320. If it fills I will make a clean $78k worth of profit. If it goes to zero I lose about $20k.
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- saalweachter 6y agoWhat made you decide to jump in at this point? If I had a time machine I can imagine jumping in last week, or last month, but I feel like I've missed this bubble and it could pop any moment.
- xwdv 6y agoDon’t care if it pops, I’m doing my part.
- timothevs 6y agoYep, holding on to 120 shares, bought at 61.20. A bit late into the game.
- sakopov 6y agoCan someone explain how more than 100% of the float can be shorted? How is this even legal?
- beervirus 6y agoNone of them are selling. This is just silly clickbait.
- albertshin 6y agoFalse. Must already sold - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/large-gamestop-shareholder-must-asset-management-sold-off-its-stake-2021-01-28 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/large-gamestop-shareholder...
- WaitWaitWha 6y agoI wonder if the entire process was "astro-turfed", as in agitators were placed in the right place, right time with the right messaging to generate a mass delusion. That would be fascinating to untangle, just as a psychological experiment and its results.
- justanotherjoe 6y agoThat was my initial reaction when i first saw the reddit threads started popping out. However, I have come to deeply regret my fear of being manipulated, because I could have gotten in very early.
- slivanes 6y agoI got my daughter to buy one GME share in her account using her money. We closed at $130 giving her a profit of $40, easily paying for her copy of Minecraft she wanted. I don't think there was any valuable lesson in this for her or us, just a bit of fun. We are trying to teach her about gains in the long term, i.e. reality.
- JacobSuperslav 6y agobetter teach her about gains over 5-10 years, not gambling on single stocks
- nojvek 6y agoWhy not both. There’s value to learning to take calculated risk. If you put a tiny sum where you are okay loosing to make a quick buck and have a decent model of probability, it works out.
- jobigoud 6y agoWait, she could also have bought the Minecraft copy with the trade money without the risk of loosing it...
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- scarmig 6y agoQuestion for those familiar with the industry: What actually are these large investors in GME doing right now? Like, suppose you're some investment manager at Blackrock. Is that even the title that'd be responding to this? Would there be escalations going up to some VP? Is there some a team figuring out an exit strategy?