4 ms·

> Plus more people are becoming aware of how rigged the whole financial system is, how its a boys club that will attack any outsider at sight. Are they though?

> Plus more people are becoming aware of how rigged the whole financial system is, how its a boys club that will attack any outsider at sight. Are they though? I mean the idea that hedge funds are rigging the system is so well established in the public psyche it drove the meme stocks in the first place. If people's conclusions from all this are that Melvin Capital lied about unwinding their shorts and Robinhood rigged it for them but those nice people saying BUY AND HOLD YOLO on reddit were fighting their corner, has the state of their knowledge advanced?

me_me_me 6y ago
I am not saying that everyone understands what is happening, but there are a lot of people who took interest and educated themselves on how the stock market works and what is happening. Two of my friends got into trading because of this (and not in fuck the system way).
- notahacker 6y ago
  Oh, I don't doubt some people will inform themselves and some people will make some good decisions as a result. Just unconvinced that it'll be a net improvement in the state of public knowledge
  - me_me_me 6y ago
    Why? Uninformed might have different but still wrong idea, but some people will learn. I don't think you could get net negative in this situation. Or am I missing something?
    - notahacker 6y ago
      If significant numbers of people become deeply committed to beliefs which are clearly incorrect to rationalise being duped into losing money on a meme, I'd argue that was pretty negative.
      - sidibe 6y ago
        This happens in ponzi schemes too, people will find a scapegoat rather than feel their ignorance or greed was the problem. Here it's Robinhood and hedge fund conspiracies and Wall street playing by different rules. When MMM ponzi scheme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_Global https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_Global) peaked everyone was furious about people writing negative editorials and government warnings not to jump in.
        notahacker 6y ago
        I nearly put a reference to MMM true believers actually voting Mavrodi into Parliament to give him immunity from prosecution for defrauding them in my original post. Wonder if any hedge fundies shilling GME on WSB whilst betting big in the opposite direction are bold enough to try that if the SEC comes after them...
- redisman 6y ago
  How much can they have really learned in a few days? Certainly not enough to be "trading".
depingus 6y ago
If those are the only 2 things you've taken away, then you haven't been paying attention. Yesterday's whole "Reddit moves to silver" narrative plastered all over mainstream financial media was a pack of lies. Bots have been flooding the subreddit with misinformation. And today eToro accidentally triggered a massive sell off of their users' $GME by incorrectly setting their stop loss. Sure, we've all seen the movies; "hedge funds cheat" is not new information. But this is all very out in the open and very directly targeted at retail investors. There's a lot of noise being made and everyone has taken notice. I would argue the state of everyone's knowledge has advanced.
- lasagnaphil 6y ago
  This: there's definitely misinformation going on both sides (both on wsb and the media). You can't really trust anyone in a full-fledged war, and I think this is one of those situations. For those who didn't put money on this, let's wait and see how it goes. Although the truth is, retail traders are incredibly disadvantaged due to immense informational asymmetry. Hedge funds probably have access to all the data they want (for example, Citadel having access to Robinhood trade flow), but ordinary people have to first wade through all the misleading information both on mainstream media and on social media, so it's a pretty hard fight. But regardless of the results, I think there would be much more distrust towards financial institutions and mainstream media overall due to this event, and this would be only the beginning of 2021.

me_me_me 6y ago

I am not saying that everyone understands what is happening, but there are a lot of people who took interest and educated themselves on how the stock market works and what is happening. Two of my friends got into trading because of this (and not in fuck the system way).

notahacker 6y ago
Oh, I don't doubt some people will inform themselves and some people will make some good decisions as a result. Just unconvinced that it'll be a net improvement in the state of public knowledge
- me_me_me 6y ago
  Why? Uninformed might have different but still wrong idea, but some people will learn. I don't think you could get net negative in this situation. Or am I missing something?
  - notahacker 6y ago
    If significant numbers of people become deeply committed to beliefs which are clearly incorrect to rationalise being duped into losing money on a meme, I'd argue that was pretty negative.
    - sidibe 6y ago
      This happens in ponzi schemes too, people will find a scapegoat rather than feel their ignorance or greed was the problem. Here it's Robinhood and hedge fund conspiracies and Wall street playing by different rules. When MMM ponzi scheme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_Global https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_Global) peaked everyone was furious about people writing negative editorials and government warnings not to jump in.
      - notahacker 6y ago
        I nearly put a reference to MMM true believers actually voting Mavrodi into Parliament to give him immunity from prosecution for defrauding them in my original post. Wonder if any hedge fundies shilling GME on WSB whilst betting big in the opposite direction are bold enough to try that if the SEC comes after them...
redisman 6y ago
How much can they have really learned in a few days? Certainly not enough to be "trading".

depingus 6y ago

If those are the only 2 things you've taken away, then you haven't been paying attention. Yesterday's whole "Reddit moves to silver" narrative plastered all over mainstream financial media was a pack of lies. Bots have been flooding the subreddit with misinformation. And today eToro accidentally triggered a massive sell off of their users' $GME by incorrectly setting their stop loss. Sure, we've all seen the movies; "hedge funds cheat" is not new information. But this is all very out in the open and very directly targeted at retail investors. There's a lot of noise being made and everyone has taken notice. I would argue the state of everyone's knowledge has advanced.

lasagnaphil 6y ago
This: there's definitely misinformation going on both sides (both on wsb and the media). You can't really trust anyone in a full-fledged war, and I think this is one of those situations. For those who didn't put money on this, let's wait and see how it goes. Although the truth is, retail traders are incredibly disadvantaged due to immense informational asymmetry. Hedge funds probably have access to all the data they want (for example, Citadel having access to Robinhood trade flow), but ordinary people have to first wade through all the misleading information both on mainstream media and on social media, so it's a pretty hard fight. But regardless of the results, I think there would be much more distrust towards financial institutions and mainstream media overall due to this event, and this would be only the beginning of 2021.