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First of all, hedge funds and banks are very different institutions. Banks hold and invest money in more secure ways, hedge funds usually pursue more aggressive
by Anon1096 6y ago
First of all, hedge funds and banks are very different institutions. Banks hold and invest money in more secure ways, hedge funds usually pursue more aggressive strategies in order to hopefully get returns that are uncorrelated with the greater market.
Second, the narrative that Reddit drove the short squeeze is mostly a lie that has been repeated over and over again both because it's cute and because people want to believe they have significant power. In reality, many institutions also saw this coming, and when they saw the WallStreetBets subreddit getting ready to pump (yes they watch Reddit), they also piled on. They've mostly done it quietly so as to not disturb the convenient narrative that this is a David vs Goliath story, but really this was driven by big money. It's just a nice side effect that a lot of early retail investors have made a lot of money as well.
And yes, it is absolutely true that the end result of this will be retail investors getting slaughtered. Especially because of all the hype on WallStreetBets and elsewhere, there is a LOT of dumb money in the market who have no exit plan, and their lunch will get eaten when the large institutions exit at the top and trigger a GME free fall.
- challenger-derp 6y agoWould be interesting if there were evidence suggestive of non-retail entities having a hand in the squeeze. Attempts at correlating the hype of r/wsb comments and stock price movement have, in multiple past instances, shown that the wsb hype is a lagging, rather than leading, indicator -- that is, wsb is being led by one or more other sources' actions. Looking back, wsb hasn't had consistent success with their bets, though one could argue that it's an open community and anyone can join to talk up a bet. Overall, I think wsb is a worthwhile community to have.
- Anon1096 6y agoI highly highly recommend reading Ranjan Roy's latest piece on GameStop [1]. It paints an amazing picture to dispel the narrative that's prevalent in the media of Reddit et al. driving the short squeeze. Just as an example from the article, there was a single buy order for 187 million dollars. When Reddit is hailing a young trader with 50 million in assets as the next coming of Jesus (not to downplay him, great job!), it's pretty obvious no one from WallStreetBets is capable of making that order. Though that example is only from this week, it's evidence of big money being well into this play, and I don't think it's a stretch at all to say much of the short squeeze was engineered by them. [1] https://themargins.substack.com/p/game-stop https://themargins.substack.com/p/game-stop
- Apocryphon 6y agoIt's not a bad article, though there's things that he handwaves (like why exactly $GME falling back to its pre-WSB prices would cause lay-offs). The newer guest article is more recommendable imo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25970538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25970538 That said, both are poor responses to the righteous anger that people feel, and one of the comments on the first article gets it right: > The tone is that of Jeb Bush lecturing Republicans on why they need to elect an establishment, responsible republican. In and of itself it might be true, but it not only falls on deaf ears, it actually reinforces why people were inclined not to do so in the first place.
- Apocryphon 6y agoWrong link, it's this one: https://themargins.substack.com/p/joke-capital https://themargins.substack.com/p/joke-capital
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