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“WSB veterans know that they're making a suicide charge for the memes”

220 points by throwaway5752 6y ago

throwaway5752 6y ago
The full comment, should it be edited or removed later: "I don't work on the trading floor, but I'm an attorney who services a variety of financial institutions, including broker/dealers. This isn't the exciting, hilarious answer you want, but a lot of people had no idea it was even happening until the past 48 hours, and even now, it's mostly just a funny news article about some internet trolls making a bubble. This is a big deal to the shorting community, but to the other 99% of the financial world, nobody gives a shit. As much as young people on the internet like to imagine this as an epic, David vs Goliath, Wall Street vs Main Street showdown for the history books, from a bird's eye view it's actually just a brief dumpster fire where a couple hedge funds lost their shirts betting on one little small cap stock. It has happened before, and it will happen again. In 6 months, nobody will remember or care, except that (maybe) it will become more difficult for retail investors to trade options. And not because the greedy hedge fund oligarchs forced the SEC to crack down on retail investors. But rather because, when this is all said and done, there is going to be a black hole where most of these retail investors' brokerage accounts used to be, and the SEC and brokerage community will be lambasted for failing to protect unsophisticated investors from a bubble. I have been monitoring the WSB threads, and while the WSB veterans know that they're making a suicide charge for the memes, they have brought thousands of naive, new investors with them - who predominantly think that they're going to somehow come out on top, not realizing that they're cannon fodder for the more savvy WSB users to exit with gains. Redditors never seem to stop and think about why the WSB guys know so much about derivatives trading. Or how they seem to know how to access and read from a Bloomberg terminal. Or why there are so many users there that can seemingly drop tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on complicated meme plays. How do you think that WSB knew that GME was open to a short squeeze and a gamma squeeze play? WSB's power users are younger finance bros. It's 30-something investment bankers and portfolio managers memeing with each other and cosplaying as "autists." If you didn't know what a gamma squeeze was 48 hours ago, you are their exit strategy and the down payment on their next Porsche."
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  In the beginning everyone on wsb was saying they would hold the stock until it went 0 just to mess with the hedges. Then it got over 100$ and the narrative changed to holding until it hit 10k$. Quite the difference
  - ajross 6y ago
    For reference: it's at $120 now and still dropping, down from a peak of $469. Needless to say it's not getting to $10k.
    - jaywalk 6y ago
      BURN THE NON-BELIEVER!!111
- medium_burrito 6y ago
  What kind of peasant finances a porsche?
  - gruez 6y ago
    with 0% financing offers, why wouldn't you? Especially when you can get more % returns in the stock market.
  - tejtm 6y ago
    All of them, just not their own.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - blackearl 6y ago
    Back in 2008 it was VW shorts
    - bluGill 6y ago
colllectorof 6y ago
I don't understand why so many people feel the urge to psycho-analyze a publicly available subreddit that currently has 8.2m million subscribers. I can just read it an make up my own mind. It would be one thing if they provided specific links, but most of the time it's just wild generalization. As far as coverage, I liked this explanation of internal mechanics of stock trading: https://rumble.com/vdf437-gamestop-and-short-squeezes-with-andrew-wang-and-chris-wang-of-runnymede-ca.html https://rumble.com/vdf437-gamestop-and-short-squeezes-with-a... I also enjoyed watching Rossmann's take on the whole thing: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a Reddit is just one small piece of the system that this even is occurring in.
- ajross 6y ago
  > I don't understand why so many people feel the urge to psycho-analyze a publicly available subreddit that currently has 8.2m million subscribers. Because we're genuinely curious how such a large and seemingly well-connected community could have been so mind-bogglingly wrong about something ("how short trading works") that should have been an unambiguous truth. Even now I'm still seeing people screaming about "hold the line" and inserting endless rocket emojis as the stock drops below 35% of its peak. People are still arguing on this very site that all that is needed is for the WSB community to refuse to sell to cause some kind of magical short call that isn't coming. People still insist that short leverage greater than 100% means an infinite price spike at some point in the indefinite future. People still think that the short leverage staying high (on a very clearly inflated stock!) means that the early players didn't exit positions. This was a scam. I mean, we don't know exactly by who yet, but it's abundantly clear that all these people were lied to to get them to buy a security that was just obviously a target of a pump and dump.
  - amoitnga 6y ago
    what is the truth though? As someone who only knows about stocks from 'big short' film and 5min video on youtube and wsb thread. I genuinely curious what are the ways this could play out. is there a deadline on short sellers to close their positions? what is reasonable limit for the stock to go to? what happens if hypothetically nobody of wsb would sell their stocks?
ve55 6y ago
For a comment that is this cynical, I think it's largely correct. I've been struggling to communicate how a million retail clients are going to lose their life savings (or more) in this (and what comes after it) and get burnt badly, ending with devastation and even suicides, but it appears to fall upon deaf or otherwise indifferent ears continually, so it seems like the cycle simple cannot be helped.
- armagon 6y ago
  I hesitate to ask -- do we really think people are stupid enough to gamble away lots of money they can't afford to lose? I'm hoping that instead there are hundreds of thousands of people who only bought a couple of stocks, understanding that they were likely to lose the money.
  - ericbarrett 6y ago
    If you assume that half the posts on WSB are true, and then assume the usual 100:1 poster:lurker ratio, that’s thousands of retail traders who’ve dumped student loans, college funds, retirement, life savings, etc. into the stock. Obviously this is not a precise or highly accurate estimate, but it is an estimate.
    - hervature 6y ago
      I think you want to say 1:100 poster to lurker ratio right? For every poster, there are 100 lurkers?
  - walshemj 6y ago
    Yes you can see horror stories in the UK press of well of people (100's of k) putting all their life savings into a single boiler room stock scam.
  - multjoy 6y ago
    Yes. That’s why its called gambling. The gamification of trading masks the fact that you’re betting real money.
  - 6y ago
nr2x 6y ago
The issue here is the motivations have diverged from what is in the extant model of the market. There is no economics textbook that accounts for market participants buying stocks to watch them crash as a form of entertainment, which is true for a non-trivial subset of people holding GME right now. So if you need to model the market you now have to account for a very non-rational force, which is a big deal as it won't go away. If everybody who crowd-funded Bernie Sanders figures out they can punish a publicly-traded company who just laid off a few thousand workers, shit will get weird.
- cat199 6y ago
  > There is no economics textbook that accounts for market participants buying stocks to watch them crash as a form of entertainment, which is true for a non-trivial subset of people holding GME right now. same modulo motivation holds for the irrational and allegedly illegal shorts these people are claiming to be calling out ...
  - nr2x 6y ago
    Not really, they still want to profit, I figured the money I spent on GME was a 100% loss just for lulz.
- zoomablemind 6y ago
  > ...So if you need to model the market you now have to account for a very non-rational force, which is a big deal as it won't go away... Rational or non-rational force is irrelevant, as long as it brings liquidity onto the market. The democratization of the market we all witnessed in the past decades injects more liquidity into the good old zero-sum play. In a somber way, it's a "savings squeeze" strategy.
- diehunde 6y ago
  This. I've been reading a lot of WSB posts lately and the main sentiment doesn't seem to be "let's get rich" but "let's make them bleed". Many people don't care about losing that money too much and the whole situation is probably funny and entertaining.
mabbo 6y ago
The key point is at the end: > WSB's power users are younger finance bros. It's 30-something investment bankers and portfolio managers memeing with each other and cosplaying as "autists." > If you didn't know what a gamma squeeze was 48 hours ago, you are their exit strategy and the down payment on their next Porsche.
- kiliantics 6y ago
  weird that the wikipedia page for "gamma squeeze" was deleted just yesterday...
  - tuankiet65 6y ago
    Straight from the page: > This page does not exist. The deletion, protection, and move log for the page are provided below for reference. > 02:43, 2 February 2021 ST47 deleted page Gamma squeeze (G12: Unambiguous copyright infringement of https://www.swfinstitute.org/news/83341/what-is-a-gamma-squeeze-in-the-context-of-stock-trading https://www.swfinstitute.org/news/83341/what-is-a-gamma-sque...)
    - paxys 6y ago
      Lol so weird and mysterious. If only there was a reasonable answer on that very page..
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      A conspiracy is started by reading the page for 5 seconds and ended by reading it for 10.
      - im3w1l 6y ago
        You have to click through to the deletion log. And I only found it because I knew beforehand that it was there somewhere. Hint: There is no "View History" tab at the top, it's a link in the middle of the body.
  - deleted 6y ago
wnevets 6y ago
The "memes" and talking points surrounding GME on reddit remind me a lot of the early days of the 2016 trump campaign on reddit. I would not be surprised if there was a large overlap of "influencers" between the two.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  To use the vernacular, I am very bullish on this take. In 2016, the Internet discovered they can mess with politics. In 2021, the Internet discovered they can mess with finance. There are other instances of this, but the general theme is people who traditionally only operate on the Internet occasionally discover ways to have an impact on the "real" world. They get so drunk with power, they do something stupid with it, and the rest of the world sighs as we get to work cleaning up the mess they've made after they get bored.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - babyshake 6y ago
    For the last week, that Captain Phillips meme "Look at me. I'm the captain now." has been coming to mind.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    It will be interesting to see if the Internet can discover how to mess with tech itself. Or to mess with startups.
- rspeele 6y ago
  Yeah. Copying my post from yesterday's thread -- which only looks more and more real today with increasing rationalization leading to explanations like that hedge funds are "short ladder attacking" GME. ------------------------------------------ The claims and the consequences are very different, but I definitely get the same sense I got reading Q stuff when I skim the current WSB page. - The media, government, and elites are conspiring against us. - Info that says short interest has decreased / shorts have covered is propaganda and should be ignored. - Info that says short interest is still sky-high is to be believed without question. - Parties who were on our side of the bet but are now advising caution (e.g. Burry or S3) must be malicious or compromised, can't possibly be genuine. - Mix of facts with misunderstood interpretations thereof: 140% short interest is very high (fact), 140% short interest should not be legally possible (misunderstanding). - The dark truth we are about to reveal (counterfeit stocks?) has been going on for a long time, but now the wool will be lifted from the eyes of the nonbelievers. - Your continued belief in "the plan" is important. You must keep the faith! - "The Event" will take place on X date, but when it doesn't, no problem: it was always going to be Y date that It Happens. - We all KNOW our version of the story is right. What particular pieces of evidence are so rock-solid and convincing? Oh, well, there's SO MUCH, but it's not my job to spoon feed you the facts. If you don't know, you clearly haven't been paying attention and should do your own research. - If somebody published something saying that we're wrong, it means that "They" are scared of us. We must be getting close. I don't know whether WSB's narrative is right or wrong, which is why I am on neither side of this trade and merely watching with interest from the sidelines. They could very well be correct about all of this. I also am not trying to allege that being a "GME to the moon" person makes you a "Q person". They are completely different sets of beliefs. All that I'm observing is that the marketing of the ideas is similar.
f430 6y ago
LMAO sHorT sQuEeZe hasN't haPPened BRo GME is wOrTh $3o,0oo0 edit: seems like quite bit of self-professed geniuses actually bought into the "David vs Goliath" meme, not realizing they just transferred a huge chunk of their wealth to coked up finance bros working remotely in front of their bloomberg terminals, shitposting on r/wsb behind Tor to pass the time and pump up stocks. edit: what are the outcomes? WSB will be banned and its moderators, people who posted DD will be sued in civil court. Retail options trading will be severely limited. People who have been pumping the stock up on social media will be reprimanded.
junippor 6y ago
Anyone else who has no empathy for these people?
- totalZero 6y ago
  Nobody on Wall Street has empathy for the losses of anyone else on Wall Street. It kind of comes with the territory, I think. To state that another way....do you feel sorry for Gabe Plotkin?
  - junippor 6y ago
    It's a given that no one feels sorry for Wall Street. But when I read these sob stories about retail "investors" losing everything, I get the impression I'm supposed to feel bad for them...
bhouston 6y ago
WSB is classic pump and dump wrapped up in memes. The forum deletes any postings that do not align with the current echo chamber that is pushing just a few stocks. It is a bro-filled boiler room that has suckered a lot of people. Brutal. The key insight to why this is pump and dump and nothing more is that there was never a right time to sell for the masses on WSB, it was HLD all the way down.
- WSB_Mod 6y ago
  If you mean that posts that don't align with the hivemind get downvoted to the point of being hidden, then yes, that is true. It's how reddit's voting system works. In the short term, it is possible for mob mentality to take over, but in the long term, you will see this fade and WSB will return to a point where there's a little (but not much) more nuance to the conversation. If you meant that "the forum" as in "the moderators" delete things that do not align with the echo chamber, then you are incorrect. On an absolute basis, more pro-"meme stock" content is removed than anti-"meme stock". You can verify this yourself with PRAW, or simply by refreshing /new.
  - bhouston 6y ago
    SEC may come after you - be warned, there is precedent. For example here is one: https://www.seclaw.com/15messageposter92000/ https://www.seclaw.com/15messageposter92000/
    - f430 6y ago
      yeah that explains why some high profile reddit accounts posting on r/wallstreetbets have started to deactive themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if SEC has been archiving r/wallstreetbets. Actually they might not need to as it is impossible to delete your comment history. I predict that we may see lot of people get penalized and perhaps even jail time for pumping up meme stocks, although it will take years.
      - bhouston 6y ago
lm28469 6y ago
I still don't understand how they successfully managed to make people think buying shares of a bankrupt company for $350 a pop was a good idea. They pitched it as the new BTC or TSLA but it really is just a text book example of pump and dump. They're not "owning wallstreet", at best they're owning a few investors/entities who took way to much risks, and that's it. The smart ones bought their shares at $5 and sold last week at the peak, any one getting in from now is suffering from massive FOMO. Ronbinhood &co enabled this by gamifying trading, people are just one click away from betting their entire savings based on random social media posts amplified by mainstream media over coverage. If you learn about something like this via mainstream medias or your friend who had no idea what trading was 2 days ago you can be 100% sure that you're too late to the party edit: ok, not bankrupt, but clearly not going in the right direction. Either way, not anywhere close to make investors rich quick https://gamerant.com/gamestop-out-of-business-in-digital-age/ https://gamerant.com/gamestop-out-of-business-in-digital-age... https://gamerant.com/is-gamestop-going-out-of-business-dying/ https://gamerant.com/is-gamestop-going-out-of-business-dying... https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/investing/gamestop-store-closures/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/investing/gamestop-store-... https://www.ccn.com/gamestops-ultimate-destiny-buyout-or-bankruptcy/ https://www.ccn.com/gamestops-ultimate-destiny-buyout-or-ban...
- u10 6y ago
  Gamestop isn't bankrupt, in fact I would say they are in a decent position, at least in the short term. Not worth 350 a share but certainly not 0.
  - decafninja 6y ago
    Even if not sticking strictly to fundamentals, I would say their fair share value is a lot closer to 0 than to 350 though.
    - redisman 6y ago
      I don't see what they have going for them. Squeezed by big ecommerce game stores and subscription services and free-to-play games on all sides. Customers seem to hate their meme-rific trade-in policy "Cyberpunk 2077? best I can do is $5".
hogFeast 6y ago
Robinhood accounts were net selling most of last week. All the big holders were already gone by this Monday. Only bagholders left. What is surprising is that this happens in every pump and dump, 100% of the time, and people act like it is a low probability outcome. Brokers are going to make an absolute bomb: I have seen the spread on GME was as much as $1 at times, and the stock was doing 50m/day. In the past year, retail investors have been overtrading as well, big year for brokers. But GME was not really a big battleground stock for hedge funds, it was too small. I don't know what regulators can do but the current situation on wsb is just funnelling cash into the pockets of people who are saying one thing and doing another.
ping_pong 6y ago
If anyone actually thought this was going to be successful, they were caught up in the biggest tulip-bulb delusion in the last 20 years. Melvin Capital may have lost a ton being caught off guard, but I bet they made all their money back shorting at the top. I said a few days ago that retail doesn't have enough power to make a real difference, and it was hedge funds and prop trader that were really moving the stock, especially when new highs were being hit. There's simply not enough money for retail to propel a stock like that. And now retail will lose all their money. Everyone on reddit claiming "Hold the line!" is likely those same hedge fund/prop traders trying to squeeze every dollar from these poor retail suckers.
- JamesSwift 6y ago
  It was _wildly_ successful. The goal posts of an exit were successfully moved several times in the course of the rise. From 100 to 200 to 300. Some of the initial traders successfully exited at the original meme price of $420.69. The fact that it was _so_ successful is why people even then began to beat the drum of a $1000/share exit. Even now the price has has settled around $90 which is probably at least twice its "fair" value of $20-$40. So yeah, some people purely chasing a hype lost but a lot of retail investors that had their finger on the pulse before the hype successfully called their shot and made it out the other end much richer than when they started.
draw_down 6y ago
Just me, but if I bought something at $4 and it got up over $300, I would sell.
kryogen1c 6y ago
my comment from 4 days ago: actually im glad you said this. this is the core problem with this WSB/RH/GME event. a certain percentage of people in WSB only want to light a pile of their money on fire for the sole purpose of bankrupting some hedge funds. they expect no returns and only want to cause pain to people with more money than them that they dont like. another percentage of people (i think this group is much, much larger than the first) think bankrupting the short positions is gonna make them huge returns. they think theyre all david collectively fighting a goliath as the proletariat rises up. most of these people are sorely mistaken and will lose everything, but some will make money. the RH trade halt (EDIT: only buying was halted, a "trade halt" technically means both) is allowing the shorts to unwind more gracefully, making the first group of people angry. theyre not getting their witchburning, or public execution, or lynching - however you want to frame it. the problem is the second group of people think theyre being defrauded out of huge returns by an artificial exit from the short squeeze. these people are wrong to begin with. most of them were never going to make huge returns. even if they successfully bankrupted the shorts, most of them are left holding stock they bought for $100, $200, $300, or $400 a share (WSB was memeing share price was gonna go into the thousands) that is worth <$90. those people were always going to lose, they just didnt know it. but now they have a scape goat, even though they were on the wrong side of the trade to begin with.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  The other big problem is these people are using their own money. The hedge funds are using other peoples money.
  - betterunix2 6y ago
    Now the hedge funds are using WSB's money, because when those redditors lose money, that is who they are losing it to.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      Right - and there’s a big difference between not getting your quarterly bonus and not being able to make rent.
drtillberg 6y ago
WSB is a game ppl lose simply by playing, IMO. When I read these stories I think of Jesse Livermore-- arguably the greatest trader of all times -- who went bankrupt 3 times on the way (including the end)[1]. The only way to win is not to play. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Lauriston_Livermore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Lauriston_Livermore
- tiziniano 6y ago
  Ok, just 'member all winner's had to play.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Play the average. Buy index funds.
10000100001010 6y ago
I made almost a %500 return on GME. AMA.
- mattm 6y ago
  Did you buy low and sell high?
  - 10000100001010 6y ago
    yes, originally bought 18$ calls, averaged up a bit as it rose. Sold some in the high $200's and then some in the mid $100's. I missed the peaks but I'm content with my gains.
- paxys 6y ago
  I made a 3500% return on the roulette table in Vegas. AMA.
  - 10000100001010 6y ago
    I mostly bought in a couple months back because of this https://media.ycharts.com/charts/b63b65ca1a405cd8f10f8afb1ad151b0.png https://media.ycharts.com/charts/b63b65ca1a405cd8f10f8afb1ad... . The two big spikes there are after console releases. I just figured I would be cashing out in April instead of now. So I wouldn't call this a gamble, I didn't buy for the memes, and neither did wallstreetbets (at first)
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  Robinhood gave me a free GME stock when I joined in March 2020, so when I sold I made infinite profit. AMA.
dd_roger 6y ago
I think most legacy users from WSB know very well what they are doing. I've been on this sub for 5 years and it has always been so that everytime the wsb hivemind finds a good deal it gets media attention and the number of clueless users/investors skyrockets. But people who stick around outside of these short periods under the spotlights know very well what they are doing despite the memes. I don't believe in the theory that there are few people manipulating the entire sub for a pump and dump, rather the entire sub (the few tens of thousands regular active users) knew it was a pump and dump. That this story attracted the attention and money of thousands of clueless newbies is to be blamed on people that reported on it carelessly (medias, celebritites, etc.), not on the people who were doing their things on an internet forum expecting nothing out of it.
- 0x426577617265 6y ago
  I like following WSB, been there for years as well. There has been some incredible gains for me -- AMD, NIO, and TLRY to name a few. They were spotted early by the sub, it's up to the individual to decide when they want to exit their trade.
  - zzleeper 6y ago
    Are you two sure WSB hasn't reached an eternal September event? I find that with 8MM subs, the signal-to-noise ratio will likely remain just too high. I've been looking for alternative subs, but besides e.g. theta gang I haven't really found anything useful
    - 0x426577617265 6y ago
      Yes, I think it has too many followers right now. Perhaps it returns to 'normal' after the hype wears off. It has happened before just not to this scale.
      - hhjinks 6y ago
        Subreddits never return to normal after mass subscriber events. The users might not contribute, but so long as a fraction remain active on the same account, WSB posts will stay in their feed, and they will have the power to vote, and therefore dictate the content of the sub. The participating community will always be a minority, and will inevitably grow to disagree with the majority of users, nonparticipants, who simply dictate the content of the sub because of their higher voting power. The number of votes on a post always exceeds the number of unique posters in the post. I've seen it ruin several subreddits already, with easy-to-consume, low effort content swamping the frontpage.
TYPE_FASTER 6y ago
Reading WSB is very similar to reading the BTC-e chat a few years ago.
nowherebeen 6y ago
> Or how they seem to know how to access and read from a Bloomberg terminal That was exactly what I was thinking when I saw the image. I was unaware that anyone can get a subscription from Bloomberg. They cost a couple of thousands of dollars a month.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Honestly, it all seems dangerously nihilistic to me.
Aunche 6y ago
It was always stupid to assume that hedge funds were all in a giant conspiracy with brokers and the media. WSB assumed that hedge funds operate with the same "autistic" (in their words) mindset that WSB does. To WSB, the GME surge was the most important event in their lives. For the hedge funds, it was just another day, albeit a bad one. They don't require you to learn stochastic calculus just so they could fall for the sunk cost fallacy.
joshxyz 6y ago
Imo RH and other trading platforms are the real winners here. Nothing juicier than trading fees and margin-lending fees combined with high trading volume. The memes are hella great tho.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  They now have to contend with a lot of lawsuits though. I wouldn't be surprised that this spells their demise.
  - gruez 6y ago
    Is that a serious threat? Or are they going to get tossed? eg. Analysis: Robinhood protected from lawsuits by user agreement, Congress (reuters.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25971125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25971125
kgin 6y ago
This is a phase of every bubble: the shaming phase. I personally think we will experience many shaming phases of various bubbles this year.
bargl 6y ago
Anyone who's curious about this should just go to the the sub reddit and just read 10 posts. Seriously it's not that complicated. You've got a bunch of gamblers over there who basically treat this as if they're going to a casino. Then someone got a lucky break and everyone there swarmed around it. Some of them got rich taking money from hedge funds. That's where it got main stream. The main stream media is responsible for the blood in the water feeding frenzy around this. WSB subreddit went up from 2 million to 8 million in like 1 week. Anyone who's been on the internet knows, as a community gets popular, the quality of that community changes. Anyone who's paid any attention to the news at all, knows that the quality and depth of reporting by a lot of people is garbage and misleading. You add that all together and if you want to know anything about this, it's easier to form your own opinion, just go to r/wallstreetbets and see what you think. I personally, don't like it, I'm not a gambler. I'm also sure I'm wrong on some of my take in here, I'm continuing to learn and read more. For instance I was all upset at RobinHood, but they have a pretty good reason for disallowing buys. Hopefully the core of that reason gets investigated and looked at by someone, but I will state that I think there is no clear outcome I'd expect from that investigation, that's what an investigation is for. You pay someone who you can, hopefully, trust to take the time to investigate because we've also seen that crowdsourced investigation is awful.
- paxys 6y ago
  > The main stream media is responsible for the blood in the water feeding frenzy around this Every single mainstream media host has been talking non-stop about the danger to the little guys who will lose everything from this, and how blind fanaticism on sites like Reddit & Twitter and popular celebrities are to blame for propping up the bubble. They all get called Wall Street shills for it. The mere mention of regulation risks getting them death threats. All of the frequent guests (Cuban, O'Leary, Chamath, Elon and many more) just dodge this question and continue with the "power to the people" talk. Heck Mark Cuban was on Reddit today asking people to buy more GME stock, and then defended it on CNBC right after when the host grilled him on it.
- mewpmewp2 6y ago
  I don't like to call this gambling or casino because it's got a poor reputation. It's simply having fun while learning about the world and doing all of this together as a community. I really hate that it's judged or talked about so negatively.
Havoc 6y ago
>why the WSB guys know so much about derivatives trading >access and read from a Bloomberg terminal Those are very much the exception rather than the rule on WSB, even before the influx of green clueless redditors. Sure there were definitely a couple of clued up people that spotted an opportunity initially, but it still feels genuinely grass roots. Author is right though...valuation is way above it's true value & the exit is going to be a bloodbath. (And conversely some money to be made for brave new shorts)
chickenpotpie 6y ago
Please stop sharing your opinion on this topic if you don’t know what a short squeeze is. This thread is full of so much misinformation.
fukmbas 6y ago
There's a lot of butthurt comments in this thread lol. GME is far from over no matter what you think. Plus we are given 3k in capital loss tax breaks every year. It's a free gamble
senectus1 6y ago
It feels like 4Chan decided to punk Reddit readers... its all just so toxic
RickJWagner 6y ago
CNN carried an article yesterday where they interviewed two participants. One was a college student, using student loan money to fund the stock purchases. The other was a low wage-earner, using federal stimulus money. My question: Why was CNN spinning the article this way? I'm cynical enough to suspect it was not a straight-up news story.

220 points by throwaway5752 6y ago

The full comment, should it be edited or removed later: "I don't work on the trading floor, but I'm an attorney who services a variety of financial institutions, including broker/dealers. This isn't the exciting, hilarious answer you want, but a lot of people had no idea it was even happening until the past 48 hours, and even now, it's mostly just a funny news article about some internet trolls making a bubble. This is a big deal to the shorting community, but to the other 99% of the financial world, nobody gives a shit. As much as young people on the internet like to imagine this as an epic, David vs Goliath, Wall Street vs Main Street showdown for the history books, from a bird's eye view it's actually just a brief dumpster fire where a couple hedge funds lost their shirts betting on one little small cap stock. It has happened before, and it will happen again. In 6 months, nobody will remember or care, except that (maybe) it will become more difficult for retail investors to trade options. And not because the greedy hedge fund oligarchs forced the SEC to crack down on retail investors. But rather because, when this is all said and done, there is going to be a black hole where most of these retail investors' brokerage accounts used to be, and the SEC and brokerage community will be lambasted for failing to protect unsophisticated investors from a bubble. I have been monitoring the WSB threads, and while the WSB veterans know that they're making a suicide charge for the memes, they have brought thousands of naive, new investors with them - who predominantly think that they're going to somehow come out on top, not realizing that they're cannon fodder for the more savvy WSB users to exit with gains. Redditors never seem to stop and think about why the WSB guys know so much about derivatives trading. Or how they seem to know how to access and read from a Bloomberg terminal. Or why there are so many users there that can seemingly drop tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on complicated meme plays. How do you think that WSB knew that GME was open to a short squeeze and a gamma squeeze play? WSB's power users are younger finance bros. It's 30-something investment bankers and portfolio managers memeing with each other and cosplaying as "autists." If you didn't know what a gamma squeeze was 48 hours ago, you are their exit strategy and the down payment on their next Porsche."

thatguy0900 6y ago
In the beginning everyone on wsb was saying they would hold the stock until it went 0 just to mess with the hedges. Then it got over 100$ and the narrative changed to holding until it hit 10k$. Quite the difference
- ajross 6y ago
  For reference: it's at $120 now and still dropping, down from a peak of $469. Needless to say it's not getting to $10k.
  - jaywalk 6y ago
    BURN THE NON-BELIEVER!!111
medium_burrito 6y ago
What kind of peasant finances a porsche?
- gruez 6y ago
  with 0% financing offers, why wouldn't you? Especially when you can get more % returns in the stock market.
- tejtm 6y ago
  All of them, just not their own.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- blackearl 6y ago
  Back in 2008 it was VW shorts
  - bluGill 6y ago

colllectorof 6y ago

I don't understand why so many people feel the urge to psycho-analyze a publicly available subreddit that currently has 8.2m million subscribers. I can just read it an make up my own mind. It would be one thing if they provided specific links, but most of the time it's just wild generalization. As far as coverage, I liked this explanation of internal mechanics of stock trading: https://rumble.com/vdf437-gamestop-and-short-squeezes-with-andrew-wang-and-chris-wang-of-runnymede-ca.html https://rumble.com/vdf437-gamestop-and-short-squeezes-with-a... I also enjoyed watching Rossmann's take on the whole thing: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a Reddit is just one small piece of the system that this even is occurring in.

ajross 6y ago
> I don't understand why so many people feel the urge to psycho-analyze a publicly available subreddit that currently has 8.2m million subscribers. Because we're genuinely curious how such a large and seemingly well-connected community could have been so mind-bogglingly wrong about something ("how short trading works") that should have been an unambiguous truth. Even now I'm still seeing people screaming about "hold the line" and inserting endless rocket emojis as the stock drops below 35% of its peak. People are still arguing on this very site that all that is needed is for the WSB community to refuse to sell to cause some kind of magical short call that isn't coming. People still insist that short leverage greater than 100% means an infinite price spike at some point in the indefinite future. People still think that the short leverage staying high (on a very clearly inflated stock!) means that the early players didn't exit positions. This was a scam. I mean, we don't know exactly by who yet, but it's abundantly clear that all these people were lied to to get them to buy a security that was just obviously a target of a pump and dump.
- amoitnga 6y ago
  what is the truth though? As someone who only knows about stocks from 'big short' film and 5min video on youtube and wsb thread. I genuinely curious what are the ways this could play out. is there a deadline on short sellers to close their positions? what is reasonable limit for the stock to go to? what happens if hypothetically nobody of wsb would sell their stocks?

ve55 6y ago

For a comment that is this cynical, I think it's largely correct. I've been struggling to communicate how a million retail clients are going to lose their life savings (or more) in this (and what comes after it) and get burnt badly, ending with devastation and even suicides, but it appears to fall upon deaf or otherwise indifferent ears continually, so it seems like the cycle simple cannot be helped.

armagon 6y ago
I hesitate to ask -- do we really think people are stupid enough to gamble away lots of money they can't afford to lose? I'm hoping that instead there are hundreds of thousands of people who only bought a couple of stocks, understanding that they were likely to lose the money.
- ericbarrett 6y ago
  If you assume that half the posts on WSB are true, and then assume the usual 100:1 poster:lurker ratio, that’s thousands of retail traders who’ve dumped student loans, college funds, retirement, life savings, etc. into the stock. Obviously this is not a precise or highly accurate estimate, but it is an estimate.
  - hervature 6y ago
    I think you want to say 1:100 poster to lurker ratio right? For every poster, there are 100 lurkers?
- walshemj 6y ago
  Yes you can see horror stories in the UK press of well of people (100's of k) putting all their life savings into a single boiler room stock scam.
- multjoy 6y ago
  Yes. That’s why its called gambling. The gamification of trading masks the fact that you’re betting real money.
- 6y ago

nr2x 6y ago

The issue here is the motivations have diverged from what is in the extant model of the market. There is no economics textbook that accounts for market participants buying stocks to watch them crash as a form of entertainment, which is true for a non-trivial subset of people holding GME right now. So if you need to model the market you now have to account for a very non-rational force, which is a big deal as it won't go away. If everybody who crowd-funded Bernie Sanders figures out they can punish a publicly-traded company who just laid off a few thousand workers, shit will get weird.

cat199 6y ago
> There is no economics textbook that accounts for market participants buying stocks to watch them crash as a form of entertainment, which is true for a non-trivial subset of people holding GME right now. same modulo motivation holds for the irrational and allegedly illegal shorts these people are claiming to be calling out ...
- nr2x 6y ago
  Not really, they still want to profit, I figured the money I spent on GME was a 100% loss just for lulz.
zoomablemind 6y ago
> ...So if you need to model the market you now have to account for a very non-rational force, which is a big deal as it won't go away... Rational or non-rational force is irrelevant, as long as it brings liquidity onto the market. The democratization of the market we all witnessed in the past decades injects more liquidity into the good old zero-sum play. In a somber way, it's a "savings squeeze" strategy.
diehunde 6y ago
This. I've been reading a lot of WSB posts lately and the main sentiment doesn't seem to be "let's get rich" but "let's make them bleed". Many people don't care about losing that money too much and the whole situation is probably funny and entertaining.

mabbo 6y ago

The key point is at the end: > WSB's power users are younger finance bros. It's 30-something investment bankers and portfolio managers memeing with each other and cosplaying as "autists." > If you didn't know what a gamma squeeze was 48 hours ago, you are their exit strategy and the down payment on their next Porsche.

kiliantics 6y ago
weird that the wikipedia page for "gamma squeeze" was deleted just yesterday...
- tuankiet65 6y ago
  Straight from the page: > This page does not exist. The deletion, protection, and move log for the page are provided below for reference. > 02:43, 2 February 2021 ST47 deleted page Gamma squeeze (G12: Unambiguous copyright infringement of https://www.swfinstitute.org/news/83341/what-is-a-gamma-squeeze-in-the-context-of-stock-trading https://www.swfinstitute.org/news/83341/what-is-a-gamma-sque...)
  - paxys 6y ago
    Lol so weird and mysterious. If only there was a reasonable answer on that very page..
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    A conspiracy is started by reading the page for 5 seconds and ended by reading it for 10.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      You have to click through to the deletion log. And I only found it because I knew beforehand that it was there somewhere. Hint: There is no "View History" tab at the top, it's a link in the middle of the body.
- deleted 6y ago

wnevets 6y ago

The "memes" and talking points surrounding GME on reddit remind me a lot of the early days of the 2016 trump campaign on reddit. I would not be surprised if there was a large overlap of "influencers" between the two.

TameAntelope 6y ago
To use the vernacular, I am very bullish on this take. In 2016, the Internet discovered they can mess with politics. In 2021, the Internet discovered they can mess with finance. There are other instances of this, but the general theme is people who traditionally only operate on the Internet occasionally discover ways to have an impact on the "real" world. They get so drunk with power, they do something stupid with it, and the rest of the world sighs as we get to work cleaning up the mess they've made after they get bored.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- babyshake 6y ago
  For the last week, that Captain Phillips meme "Look at me. I'm the captain now." has been coming to mind.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  It will be interesting to see if the Internet can discover how to mess with tech itself. Or to mess with startups.
rspeele 6y ago
Yeah. Copying my post from yesterday's thread -- which only looks more and more real today with increasing rationalization leading to explanations like that hedge funds are "short ladder attacking" GME. ------------------------------------------ The claims and the consequences are very different, but I definitely get the same sense I got reading Q stuff when I skim the current WSB page. - The media, government, and elites are conspiring against us. - Info that says short interest has decreased / shorts have covered is propaganda and should be ignored. - Info that says short interest is still sky-high is to be believed without question. - Parties who were on our side of the bet but are now advising caution (e.g. Burry or S3) must be malicious or compromised, can't possibly be genuine. - Mix of facts with misunderstood interpretations thereof: 140% short interest is very high (fact), 140% short interest should not be legally possible (misunderstanding). - The dark truth we are about to reveal (counterfeit stocks?) has been going on for a long time, but now the wool will be lifted from the eyes of the nonbelievers. - Your continued belief in "the plan" is important. You must keep the faith! - "The Event" will take place on X date, but when it doesn't, no problem: it was always going to be Y date that It Happens. - We all KNOW our version of the story is right. What particular pieces of evidence are so rock-solid and convincing? Oh, well, there's SO MUCH, but it's not my job to spoon feed you the facts. If you don't know, you clearly haven't been paying attention and should do your own research. - If somebody published something saying that we're wrong, it means that "They" are scared of us. We must be getting close. I don't know whether WSB's narrative is right or wrong, which is why I am on neither side of this trade and merely watching with interest from the sidelines. They could very well be correct about all of this. I also am not trying to allege that being a "GME to the moon" person makes you a "Q person". They are completely different sets of beliefs. All that I'm observing is that the marketing of the ideas is similar.

f430 6y ago

LMAO sHorT sQuEeZe hasN't haPPened BRo GME is wOrTh $3o,0oo0 edit: seems like quite bit of self-professed geniuses actually bought into the "David vs Goliath" meme, not realizing they just transferred a huge chunk of their wealth to coked up finance bros working remotely in front of their bloomberg terminals, shitposting on r/wsb behind Tor to pass the time and pump up stocks. edit: what are the outcomes? WSB will be banned and its moderators, people who posted DD will be sued in civil court. Retail options trading will be severely limited. People who have been pumping the stock up on social media will be reprimanded.

junippor 6y ago

Anyone else who has no empathy for these people?

totalZero 6y ago
Nobody on Wall Street has empathy for the losses of anyone else on Wall Street. It kind of comes with the territory, I think. To state that another way....do you feel sorry for Gabe Plotkin?
- junippor 6y ago
  It's a given that no one feels sorry for Wall Street. But when I read these sob stories about retail "investors" losing everything, I get the impression I'm supposed to feel bad for them...

bhouston 6y ago

WSB is classic pump and dump wrapped up in memes. The forum deletes any postings that do not align with the current echo chamber that is pushing just a few stocks. It is a bro-filled boiler room that has suckered a lot of people. Brutal. The key insight to why this is pump and dump and nothing more is that there was never a right time to sell for the masses on WSB, it was HLD all the way down.

WSB_Mod 6y ago
If you mean that posts that don't align with the hivemind get downvoted to the point of being hidden, then yes, that is true. It's how reddit's voting system works. In the short term, it is possible for mob mentality to take over, but in the long term, you will see this fade and WSB will return to a point where there's a little (but not much) more nuance to the conversation. If you meant that "the forum" as in "the moderators" delete things that do not align with the echo chamber, then you are incorrect. On an absolute basis, more pro-"meme stock" content is removed than anti-"meme stock". You can verify this yourself with PRAW, or simply by refreshing /new.
- bhouston 6y ago
  SEC may come after you - be warned, there is precedent. For example here is one: https://www.seclaw.com/15messageposter92000/ https://www.seclaw.com/15messageposter92000/
  - f430 6y ago
    yeah that explains why some high profile reddit accounts posting on r/wallstreetbets have started to deactive themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if SEC has been archiving r/wallstreetbets. Actually they might not need to as it is impossible to delete your comment history. I predict that we may see lot of people get penalized and perhaps even jail time for pumping up meme stocks, although it will take years.
    - bhouston 6y ago

lm28469 6y ago

I still don't understand how they successfully managed to make people think buying shares of a bankrupt company for $350 a pop was a good idea. They pitched it as the new BTC or TSLA but it really is just a text book example of pump and dump. They're not "owning wallstreet", at best they're owning a few investors/entities who took way to much risks, and that's it. The smart ones bought their shares at $5 and sold last week at the peak, any one getting in from now is suffering from massive FOMO. Ronbinhood &co enabled this by gamifying trading, people are just one click away from betting their entire savings based on random social media posts amplified by mainstream media over coverage. If you learn about something like this via mainstream medias or your friend who had no idea what trading was 2 days ago you can be 100% sure that you're too late to the party edit: ok, not bankrupt, but clearly not going in the right direction. Either way, not anywhere close to make investors rich quick https://gamerant.com/gamestop-out-of-business-in-digital-age/ https://gamerant.com/gamestop-out-of-business-in-digital-age... https://gamerant.com/is-gamestop-going-out-of-business-dying/ https://gamerant.com/is-gamestop-going-out-of-business-dying... https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/investing/gamestop-store-closures/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/investing/gamestop-store-... https://www.ccn.com/gamestops-ultimate-destiny-buyout-or-bankruptcy/ https://www.ccn.com/gamestops-ultimate-destiny-buyout-or-ban...

u10 6y ago
Gamestop isn't bankrupt, in fact I would say they are in a decent position, at least in the short term. Not worth 350 a share but certainly not 0.
- decafninja 6y ago
  Even if not sticking strictly to fundamentals, I would say their fair share value is a lot closer to 0 than to 350 though.
  - redisman 6y ago
    I don't see what they have going for them. Squeezed by big ecommerce game stores and subscription services and free-to-play games on all sides. Customers seem to hate their meme-rific trade-in policy "Cyberpunk 2077? best I can do is $5".

hogFeast 6y ago

Robinhood accounts were net selling most of last week. All the big holders were already gone by this Monday. Only bagholders left. What is surprising is that this happens in every pump and dump, 100% of the time, and people act like it is a low probability outcome. Brokers are going to make an absolute bomb: I have seen the spread on GME was as much as $1 at times, and the stock was doing 50m/day. In the past year, retail investors have been overtrading as well, big year for brokers. But GME was not really a big battleground stock for hedge funds, it was too small. I don't know what regulators can do but the current situation on wsb is just funnelling cash into the pockets of people who are saying one thing and doing another.

ping_pong 6y ago

If anyone actually thought this was going to be successful, they were caught up in the biggest tulip-bulb delusion in the last 20 years. Melvin Capital may have lost a ton being caught off guard, but I bet they made all their money back shorting at the top. I said a few days ago that retail doesn't have enough power to make a real difference, and it was hedge funds and prop trader that were really moving the stock, especially when new highs were being hit. There's simply not enough money for retail to propel a stock like that. And now retail will lose all their money. Everyone on reddit claiming "Hold the line!" is likely those same hedge fund/prop traders trying to squeeze every dollar from these poor retail suckers.

JamesSwift 6y ago
It was _wildly_ successful. The goal posts of an exit were successfully moved several times in the course of the rise. From 100 to 200 to 300. Some of the initial traders successfully exited at the original meme price of $420.69. The fact that it was _so_ successful is why people even then began to beat the drum of a $1000/share exit. Even now the price has has settled around $90 which is probably at least twice its "fair" value of $20-$40. So yeah, some people purely chasing a hype lost but a lot of retail investors that had their finger on the pulse before the hype successfully called their shot and made it out the other end much richer than when they started.

draw_down 6y ago

Just me, but if I bought something at $4 and it got up over $300, I would sell.

kryogen1c 6y ago

my comment from 4 days ago: actually im glad you said this. this is the core problem with this WSB/RH/GME event. a certain percentage of people in WSB only want to light a pile of their money on fire for the sole purpose of bankrupting some hedge funds. they expect no returns and only want to cause pain to people with more money than them that they dont like. another percentage of people (i think this group is much, much larger than the first) think bankrupting the short positions is gonna make them huge returns. they think theyre all david collectively fighting a goliath as the proletariat rises up. most of these people are sorely mistaken and will lose everything, but some will make money. the RH trade halt (EDIT: only buying was halted, a "trade halt" technically means both) is allowing the shorts to unwind more gracefully, making the first group of people angry. theyre not getting their witchburning, or public execution, or lynching - however you want to frame it. the problem is the second group of people think theyre being defrauded out of huge returns by an artificial exit from the short squeeze. these people are wrong to begin with. most of them were never going to make huge returns. even if they successfully bankrupted the shorts, most of them are left holding stock they bought for $100, $200, $300, or $400 a share (WSB was memeing share price was gonna go into the thousands) that is worth <$90. those people were always going to lose, they just didnt know it. but now they have a scape goat, even though they were on the wrong side of the trade to begin with.

nemo44x 6y ago
The other big problem is these people are using their own money. The hedge funds are using other peoples money.
- betterunix2 6y ago
  Now the hedge funds are using WSB's money, because when those redditors lose money, that is who they are losing it to.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    Right - and there’s a big difference between not getting your quarterly bonus and not being able to make rent.

drtillberg 6y ago

WSB is a game ppl lose simply by playing, IMO. When I read these stories I think of Jesse Livermore-- arguably the greatest trader of all times -- who went bankrupt 3 times on the way (including the end)[1]. The only way to win is not to play. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Lauriston_Livermore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Lauriston_Livermore

tiziniano 6y ago
Ok, just 'member all winner's had to play.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Play the average. Buy index funds.

10000100001010 6y ago

I made almost a %500 return on GME. AMA.

mattm 6y ago
Did you buy low and sell high?
- 10000100001010 6y ago
  yes, originally bought 18$ calls, averaged up a bit as it rose. Sold some in the high $200's and then some in the mid $100's. I missed the peaks but I'm content with my gains.
paxys 6y ago
I made a 3500% return on the roulette table in Vegas. AMA.
- 10000100001010 6y ago
  I mostly bought in a couple months back because of this https://media.ycharts.com/charts/b63b65ca1a405cd8f10f8afb1ad151b0.png https://media.ycharts.com/charts/b63b65ca1a405cd8f10f8afb1ad... . The two big spikes there are after console releases. I just figured I would be cashing out in April instead of now. So I wouldn't call this a gamble, I didn't buy for the memes, and neither did wallstreetbets (at first)
TameAntelope 6y ago
Robinhood gave me a free GME stock when I joined in March 2020, so when I sold I made infinite profit. AMA.

dd_roger 6y ago

I think most legacy users from WSB know very well what they are doing. I've been on this sub for 5 years and it has always been so that everytime the wsb hivemind finds a good deal it gets media attention and the number of clueless users/investors skyrockets. But people who stick around outside of these short periods under the spotlights know very well what they are doing despite the memes. I don't believe in the theory that there are few people manipulating the entire sub for a pump and dump, rather the entire sub (the few tens of thousands regular active users) knew it was a pump and dump. That this story attracted the attention and money of thousands of clueless newbies is to be blamed on people that reported on it carelessly (medias, celebritites, etc.), not on the people who were doing their things on an internet forum expecting nothing out of it.

0x426577617265 6y ago
I like following WSB, been there for years as well. There has been some incredible gains for me -- AMD, NIO, and TLRY to name a few. They were spotted early by the sub, it's up to the individual to decide when they want to exit their trade.
- zzleeper 6y ago
  Are you two sure WSB hasn't reached an eternal September event? I find that with 8MM subs, the signal-to-noise ratio will likely remain just too high. I've been looking for alternative subs, but besides e.g. theta gang I haven't really found anything useful
  - 0x426577617265 6y ago
    Yes, I think it has too many followers right now. Perhaps it returns to 'normal' after the hype wears off. It has happened before just not to this scale.
    - hhjinks 6y ago
      Subreddits never return to normal after mass subscriber events. The users might not contribute, but so long as a fraction remain active on the same account, WSB posts will stay in their feed, and they will have the power to vote, and therefore dictate the content of the sub. The participating community will always be a minority, and will inevitably grow to disagree with the majority of users, nonparticipants, who simply dictate the content of the sub because of their higher voting power. The number of votes on a post always exceeds the number of unique posters in the post. I've seen it ruin several subreddits already, with easy-to-consume, low effort content swamping the frontpage.

TYPE_FASTER 6y ago

Reading WSB is very similar to reading the BTC-e chat a few years ago.

nowherebeen 6y ago

> Or how they seem to know how to access and read from a Bloomberg terminal That was exactly what I was thinking when I saw the image. I was unaware that anyone can get a subscription from Bloomberg. They cost a couple of thousands of dollars a month.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Honestly, it all seems dangerously nihilistic to me.

Aunche 6y ago

It was always stupid to assume that hedge funds were all in a giant conspiracy with brokers and the media. WSB assumed that hedge funds operate with the same "autistic" (in their words) mindset that WSB does. To WSB, the GME surge was the most important event in their lives. For the hedge funds, it was just another day, albeit a bad one. They don't require you to learn stochastic calculus just so they could fall for the sunk cost fallacy.

joshxyz 6y ago

Imo RH and other trading platforms are the real winners here. Nothing juicier than trading fees and margin-lending fees combined with high trading volume. The memes are hella great tho.

Dirlewanger 6y ago
They now have to contend with a lot of lawsuits though. I wouldn't be surprised that this spells their demise.
- gruez 6y ago
  Is that a serious threat? Or are they going to get tossed? eg. Analysis: Robinhood protected from lawsuits by user agreement, Congress (reuters.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25971125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25971125

kgin 6y ago

This is a phase of every bubble: the shaming phase. I personally think we will experience many shaming phases of various bubbles this year.

bargl 6y ago

Anyone who's curious about this should just go to the the sub reddit and just read 10 posts. Seriously it's not that complicated. You've got a bunch of gamblers over there who basically treat this as if they're going to a casino. Then someone got a lucky break and everyone there swarmed around it. Some of them got rich taking money from hedge funds. That's where it got main stream. The main stream media is responsible for the blood in the water feeding frenzy around this. WSB subreddit went up from 2 million to 8 million in like 1 week. Anyone who's been on the internet knows, as a community gets popular, the quality of that community changes. Anyone who's paid any attention to the news at all, knows that the quality and depth of reporting by a lot of people is garbage and misleading. You add that all together and if you want to know anything about this, it's easier to form your own opinion, just go to r/wallstreetbets and see what you think. I personally, don't like it, I'm not a gambler. I'm also sure I'm wrong on some of my take in here, I'm continuing to learn and read more. For instance I was all upset at RobinHood, but they have a pretty good reason for disallowing buys. Hopefully the core of that reason gets investigated and looked at by someone, but I will state that I think there is no clear outcome I'd expect from that investigation, that's what an investigation is for. You pay someone who you can, hopefully, trust to take the time to investigate because we've also seen that crowdsourced investigation is awful.

paxys 6y ago
> The main stream media is responsible for the blood in the water feeding frenzy around this Every single mainstream media host has been talking non-stop about the danger to the little guys who will lose everything from this, and how blind fanaticism on sites like Reddit & Twitter and popular celebrities are to blame for propping up the bubble. They all get called Wall Street shills for it. The mere mention of regulation risks getting them death threats. All of the frequent guests (Cuban, O'Leary, Chamath, Elon and many more) just dodge this question and continue with the "power to the people" talk. Heck Mark Cuban was on Reddit today asking people to buy more GME stock, and then defended it on CNBC right after when the host grilled him on it.
mewpmewp2 6y ago
I don't like to call this gambling or casino because it's got a poor reputation. It's simply having fun while learning about the world and doing all of this together as a community. I really hate that it's judged or talked about so negatively.

Havoc 6y ago

>why the WSB guys know so much about derivatives trading >access and read from a Bloomberg terminal Those are very much the exception rather than the rule on WSB, even before the influx of green clueless redditors. Sure there were definitely a couple of clued up people that spotted an opportunity initially, but it still feels genuinely grass roots. Author is right though...valuation is way above it's true value & the exit is going to be a bloodbath. (And conversely some money to be made for brave new shorts)

chickenpotpie 6y ago

Please stop sharing your opinion on this topic if you don’t know what a short squeeze is. This thread is full of so much misinformation.

fukmbas 6y ago

There's a lot of butthurt comments in this thread lol. GME is far from over no matter what you think. Plus we are given 3k in capital loss tax breaks every year. It's a free gamble

senectus1 6y ago

It feels like 4Chan decided to punk Reddit readers... its all just so toxic

RickJWagner 6y ago

CNN carried an article yesterday where they interviewed two participants. One was a college student, using student loan money to fund the stock purchases. The other was a low wage-earner, using federal stimulus money. My question: Why was CNN spinning the article this way? I'm cynical enough to suspect it was not a straight-up news story.