5 ms·

I found this ongoing exuberance/push to hold terrifying. All the time posts felling people to hold with weird us vs them narratives - sounds to me like a ponzi

I found this ongoing exuberance/push to hold terrifying. All the time posts felling people to hold with weird us vs them narratives - sounds to me like a ponzi scheme with the most naive left to hold air at the end when all of the early pushers have cashed out.

ycombigator 6y ago
With naked short selling and ladder attacks it absolutely is us versus them.
- dagw 6y ago
  Who is 'us' and who is 'them' in this scenario? Are the people who cashed out at 300 while posting memes about "holding the line to fight The Man" 'us' or 'them'
  - ChainOfFools 6y ago
    it's as if r/bitcoinmarkets metastasized into the stock market at large. all wsb is missing are the "moon" and "HODL" chants
    - dagw 6y ago
      all wsb is missing are the "moon" and "HODL" chants Have you been to WSB recently? Half the posts are "moon" and "HODL" chants
    - TechBro8615 6y ago
      To me the latest activity resembles T_D more than any other subreddit. In particular the desperate “us vs. them” mentality has echoes of recent pro-Trump communities. It’s like someone realized the QAnon energy could be channeled into a pump-and-dump scheme.
      - adriancr 6y ago
        It seemed like someone figured out how to weaponize social media. A lot of things that happened on T_D happened on wsb recently too. - bots spamming 'X from Y, I just put in ZZZ cash' similar to T_D picture comments when Trump got elected with 'I just voted' where it was mostly spam - copy pasta same thing, constantly on the GME thread even though it was outdated and moronic... (usually content is either well thought out, sarcasm/jokes, fresh memes) - An insane amount of bots posting new spam threads visible when reddit ban limits were reached. (good thing for the moderators)
      - ChainOfFools 6y ago
        bitcoin is very much driven by an ideology of us v them, but the "them" is either bankers or the state, or both, depending on the flavor of libertarian LARPing you encounter.
  - ycombigator 6y ago
    THEY are the people that can openly game the market pricing mechanism with no implications. If there are 5 apples in the world, but I can go to the market and sell 10 of them, that market does not reflect the real price of apples. Even more so if after that I can pretend to sell apples at even lower prices back and forth between me and my mate, who's also been selling apples.
    - pelliphant 6y ago
      I think that the problem here is that the group "them" are on both sides. Sure, you can hold some stock to hurt some "them"s, but at the same time, you will help other "them"s.
    - addicted 6y ago
      You’ve got this completely backwards. Short sellers by definition have massive implications. And worse, they have limited upside and theoretically unlimited downside. Unlike the bulls who have limited downside and unlimited upside. And that’s before we get to the fact that the markets are rigged against short sellers (e.g., there are circuit breakers that pause trading activity when prices are plummeting. There is no such circuit breaker when prices are rising steeply). There’s also massive information transparency issues. Pretty much everyone who is charged with making private company information public has extremely significant financial incentives to skew that information to be as positive as possible.
- addicted 6y ago
  How many recessions have been caused by shorts going overboard? On the other hand, a majority of recessions have been the result of assets being overpriced. The idea that attacking shorts is somehow a good things, when the entire financial system is already tilted against shorts and is ridiculously in favor of those wanting to increase stock prices is beyond stupid.
adriancr 6y ago
Long time lurker there I also found it strange and manipulative. It was also strange to see GME pushed since the sub had a no-penny-stock rule which means anything below 5B market cap would get insta delete. Part of the strangeness included all the 'ape' comments and copy-pastas everywhere. (what ever happened to the previous 'autist' 'retard' and so on ...) Even when a huge hedge fund sold massive amounts of stock, the forum was still blaming 'ladder' attacks (not that these didn't probably happen at some point). Alas, the content on non-daily/non-gme thread was fun, the opportunity was there if you knew when to cash out and ignore things.
- Qub3d 6y ago
  The "ape" thing came out of a thread where WSB users were trying to figure out how to explain the GME situation to casual observers. The most popular explanation that came out of it used snakes as the shorts, shorting bananas, and the WSB users as apes[0]. This then was built upon with the "aps together strong" scene from the Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie [1]. But yeah, its a bit overdone. [0]:Not the original, but one example - https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l7jnqw/information_for_the_newbies_who_want_to_join_the/gl74lqf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l7jnqw/info... [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LuSlZT4S4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LuSlZT4S4

ycombigator 6y ago

With naked short selling and ladder attacks it absolutely is us versus them.

dagw 6y ago
Who is 'us' and who is 'them' in this scenario? Are the people who cashed out at 300 while posting memes about "holding the line to fight The Man" 'us' or 'them'
- ChainOfFools 6y ago
  it's as if r/bitcoinmarkets metastasized into the stock market at large. all wsb is missing are the "moon" and "HODL" chants
  - dagw 6y ago
    all wsb is missing are the "moon" and "HODL" chants Have you been to WSB recently? Half the posts are "moon" and "HODL" chants
  - TechBro8615 6y ago
    To me the latest activity resembles T_D more than any other subreddit. In particular the desperate “us vs. them” mentality has echoes of recent pro-Trump communities. It’s like someone realized the QAnon energy could be channeled into a pump-and-dump scheme.
    - adriancr 6y ago
      It seemed like someone figured out how to weaponize social media. A lot of things that happened on T_D happened on wsb recently too. - bots spamming 'X from Y, I just put in ZZZ cash' similar to T_D picture comments when Trump got elected with 'I just voted' where it was mostly spam - copy pasta same thing, constantly on the GME thread even though it was outdated and moronic... (usually content is either well thought out, sarcasm/jokes, fresh memes) - An insane amount of bots posting new spam threads visible when reddit ban limits were reached. (good thing for the moderators)
    - ChainOfFools 6y ago
      bitcoin is very much driven by an ideology of us v them, but the "them" is either bankers or the state, or both, depending on the flavor of libertarian LARPing you encounter.
- ycombigator 6y ago
  THEY are the people that can openly game the market pricing mechanism with no implications. If there are 5 apples in the world, but I can go to the market and sell 10 of them, that market does not reflect the real price of apples. Even more so if after that I can pretend to sell apples at even lower prices back and forth between me and my mate, who's also been selling apples.
  - pelliphant 6y ago
    I think that the problem here is that the group "them" are on both sides. Sure, you can hold some stock to hurt some "them"s, but at the same time, you will help other "them"s.
  - addicted 6y ago
    You’ve got this completely backwards. Short sellers by definition have massive implications. And worse, they have limited upside and theoretically unlimited downside. Unlike the bulls who have limited downside and unlimited upside. And that’s before we get to the fact that the markets are rigged against short sellers (e.g., there are circuit breakers that pause trading activity when prices are plummeting. There is no such circuit breaker when prices are rising steeply). There’s also massive information transparency issues. Pretty much everyone who is charged with making private company information public has extremely significant financial incentives to skew that information to be as positive as possible.
addicted 6y ago
How many recessions have been caused by shorts going overboard? On the other hand, a majority of recessions have been the result of assets being overpriced. The idea that attacking shorts is somehow a good things, when the entire financial system is already tilted against shorts and is ridiculously in favor of those wanting to increase stock prices is beyond stupid.

adriancr 6y ago

Long time lurker there I also found it strange and manipulative. It was also strange to see GME pushed since the sub had a no-penny-stock rule which means anything below 5B market cap would get insta delete. Part of the strangeness included all the 'ape' comments and copy-pastas everywhere. (what ever happened to the previous 'autist' 'retard' and so on ...) Even when a huge hedge fund sold massive amounts of stock, the forum was still blaming 'ladder' attacks (not that these didn't probably happen at some point). Alas, the content on non-daily/non-gme thread was fun, the opportunity was there if you knew when to cash out and ignore things.

Qub3d 6y ago
The "ape" thing came out of a thread where WSB users were trying to figure out how to explain the GME situation to casual observers. The most popular explanation that came out of it used snakes as the shorts, shorting bananas, and the WSB users as apes[0]. This then was built upon with the "aps together strong" scene from the Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie [1]. But yeah, its a bit overdone. [0]:Not the original, but one example - https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l7jnqw/information_for_the_newbies_who_want_to_join_the/gl74lqf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l7jnqw/info... [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LuSlZT4S4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LuSlZT4S4