Re the Gamestop flap

[Ex Lurker]

I made this comment on another thread but I don't want it to get lost because it's key to the whole thing. For most of these people it's not about trying to get rich. It's not a stock bubble, it's not irrational. They want to destroy the big Wall Street stock manipulators. Whether they make money or lose money is secondary, if it matters at all. If they lose their shirt while taking down a couple of hedge funds, so be it. Beware the fury of someone with nothing to lose.

As someone said on another thread, this is a moment for the Biden administration to decide what it stands for. There are tens of millions of people out there without much in the way of ideology, but they know when they're getting screwed. They'll support whoever they think understands them and is on their side. AOC and Elizabeth Warren understand this, so do Ted Cruz and Donald, Trump, Jr. I hope President Biden does.

[bullimiami]

1. i really have no understanding of it at all. what you wrote is interesting.

[Celerity]

18. here is an actual clear explanation (plus more info on how the hedge funds are illegally trying

Last edited Fri Jan 29, 2021, 01:33 AM - Edit history (1)

to openly, brazenly colluding with sister firms to fuck over all the small investors and illegally get out of tens of billions in LEGAL losses by locking all but the hedge funds)

Link to tweet

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
@AOC
Gotta admit it’s really something to see Wall Streeters with a long history of treating our economy as a casino complain about a message board of posters also treating the market as a casino


my short explanation:

a bunch of small day traders on reddit organised to buy up GME (GameStop) stock as the giant hedge hedge fuds held huge short positions (betting the GME stock would go down). The stock is up (or was) 18,000% from its 52-weel low, meaning the hedge fund shorts are get massacred for billions as they have to cover their short positions. The reddit group and others are moving onto new targets in similar positions as well, like Blackberry, Virgin Galactic, AMC, Koss, Express, etc etc.

It is a war on the hedge funds by thousands of small day traders.

It isn’t just GameStop: Here are some of the other heavily shorted stocks shooting higher

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/here-are-some-of-the-other-stocks-seeing-gamestop-like-short-squeezes-11611687693

Link to tweet

[Iwasthere]

2. Or perhaps it's just the little guy trying to get in on the big profits

LIKE ME. We're Not trying to take down anyone.

[BannonsLiver]

7. Yeah I don't buy the power to the people story either.

[Raastan]

11. This all smells like Putin.

[Celerity]

17. has nothing to do with Putin nt

[Raastan]

29. How can you be sure of that?

Sowing chaos is Putin's game, after all.

More facts are needed... Follow the money...

[Mariana]

31. How did Putin make the hedge fund managers

short more shares of stock than they could buy to cover the sales? Plain old greed made them do that. Follow the money indeed.

[Raastan]

34. How did Putin get people to vote for Trump?

Info wars and social media, and....
Just saying that ideas people choose to follow come from somewhere.
I am sceptical and don't take things at face value, and would love more information.
Why this, and why now, and who ultimately wins/looses?
We will probably learn more about this in time...

[Mariana]

36. You seem to think this kind of thing has never happened before.

I has, many times. Greed is a powerful thing.

[Celerity]

32. because even a cursory knowledge of the entire thing instantly puts paid to that positing

it has zero to do with Putin

[Raastan]

35. You may be correct

I do have a cursory understanding of this, btw...
I'm just not ready to rule out explanations...
See above.

[Celerity]

37. It's is simply a group of people using knowledge of huge short positions held by hedge funds

in certain stocks banding together to force a short squeeze. All the external fundamentals have been around for decades, other than the use of reddit (soon 16 yo as a communicative platform) and then low or no cost trading capabilities, especially the apps. The hedge funds are hardly something that are anti-Putin forces. They disrupt and manipulate financials and help further wealth inequality (and thus social ruptures and conflict). Those are all things that a Putin-type individual would relish in a long wave power game. Like many commentators have said, the only thing surprising about this is that it did not happen sooner.

[Pantagruel]

3. "Whether they make money or lose money is secondary"

I don't think so, these aren't altruists, nor are they poor "with nothing to lose".
Using the power of the crowd they simply figured out a way to move a market.
Once it starts moving, bigger players jump in behind them. They're just gambling, gaming the system, money is the motivation, not altruism.

[Straw Man]

8. Money may indeed be the goal ...

... but the means demonstrate the principle that concerted action by many small players can successfully rival the power of larger players. It's a valuable principle, and it underpins, among other things, labor unions and representative democracy.

[kickitup]

4. Yes, it is war.

[calguy]

5. I respectfully disagree 100%

Anyone who places a stock trade places it for one reason and one reason only. TO MAKE MONEY. That's it. They buy out of greed and they sell out of fear. There is no other reason than that.

[mopinko]

13. disagree. yes, i want to make money

but i also buy my values. if i do well, great. but 1st i want to do good.
i'm not the only one.

[Decoy of Fenris]

15. I'm buying AMC tomorrow out of spite. Fuck the money, greed, or fear. It's about the message.

And you may disagree but there's a message board with 5.5 million people on it that are saying the same thing. People taking multi-million dollar losses off their 10k initial investment, but refuse to sell, because fuck Wall Street.

I fully expect to lose all the money I invest, but if it leads to something bigger, something grander than me, then it's worth it.

[Tommymac]

16. Bravo

[calguy]

24. There's a good chance you'll lose a significant amount of your investment

And no, it won't lead to something grander than you. The market flat out doesn't give a shit about how you feel. AMC may do OK after the pandemic is over. Right now, the fact remains that AMC is operating with huge losses showing movies to empty seats. That fact was reflected in the stock price before the hype began and it will most likely return to those price levels again when the hype is over. And it WILL be over when more and more traders move on to the next stock.
Novice traders like you get eaten for lunch by the market sharks every day. I think those who buy and hold long term at these inflated prices will be sitting on dead money for a long time. AMC was a declining stock before the pandemic hit. AMC is still the same company it was two weeks ago. Nothing has changed in the past two weeks to make it 300% more valuable today.
It's your money, use it as you like.

[Decoy of Fenris]

27. You're still operating under the assumption that this is about money.

It's just not. Win or lose is completely irrelevant to me; It's not an investment in a stock but a statement of solidarity, similar to a political donation. All that matters is the effect, and given the massive amount of litigation already in the works targeting a multitude of hedge funds, I'd say the effect is tangible. Melvin took upwards of a 40% networth loss withdrawing from GME, Robinhood is being examined for corruption charges, and now Citadel LLC is under the microscope in congress for unethical conduct, market manipulation and monopolistic activity. And that's just from one day's activity.

I don't care about the money. I never will; Money comes and goes.

[calguy]

28. Far out man

Trade your heart out.

[OhioBlue]

20. not true. Not in this instance.

Think about the night that RBG passed. How many of us rage donated to senatorial campaigns? Even campaigns that had a slim chance of winning. Especially with almost a $0 entertainment budget, I had a couple hundred that I could donate and did. Same here. I've never had a stock account before but downloaded the app last night and threw a couple hundred. I'm not putting in more than I can afford to lose. Sure - I hope I can make some money, but I also wanted to be part of the crowd sourcing to stick it to the hedge funds trying to run AMC into the ground. I want to go to the movies again when this is over.

[Decoy of Fenris]

21. Glad to see another AMC Brigadier. See you on the battle line come morning, brother. n/t

[OhioBlue]

22. Friday is payday. :)

[Decoy of Fenris]

23. Damn right, and we're getting millions more across the globe to reinforce us. :)

Check those overnight numbers, the rest of the world putting in their weight to undo all the laddering bullshit the hedgies pulled yesterday.

[keithbvadu2]

6. So who is selling? Probably the insiders who hold gazillions of shares.

So who is selling? Probably the insiders who hold gazillions of shares.

Shares that they figured were going worthless and now have the golden ticket.

[Beachnutt]

9. This guy is one of the top guys in the wallstreetbets (link)

[link:https://www.instagram.com/tv/CKmPAc9hQxu/?igshid=1q4vbgs68uqf2|

just google wallstreetbets 4.4 million members of the lil guy traders that are trading stocks of good companies that the crooked hedgefunds have manipulated the price on for years..

Mark Cuban loves it also along with Ted Lieu, AOC, Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders and others

][link:https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/mark-cuban-despite-market-concerns-sees-reddit-crowd-as-great-equalizer-on-wall-street.html|

[tinrobot]

10. It's not about politics. It is simply two different types of investment group.

On one hand, you have the traditional hedge fund. That is simply a group of people who pool their money and ask someone to make decisions about how to invest it. That fund chose to short Game Stop.

On the other hand, you have another group of people that gather on Reddit. Each controls his/her own funds, but ask each other where to invest and do so as a loosely-tied group. That group also chose Game Stop because they saw a flaw in the system and exploited it.

Both, however, are/were very serious about making money.

I frequent /r/wallstreetbets on Reddit mostly for entertainment. The participants aren't talking politics or Wall Street, they just want to score big on the markets. They seem to have found a way.

[joshcryer]

12. The thing is the hedge funds undersold GameStop.

By a lot. GameStop was not going under and wasn't likely to go under. They were adopting Wal-Mart's omnichannel approach to retail and slowly crawling their way back. What happened was the people on /r/wallstreetbets saw a situation where the stock was being shorted far beyond the number of shares that were available, by as much as 140%. This is called naked shorting and is highly illegal and has caused hedge funds in the past to collapse and people running them to go to jail.

[mathematic]

38. That's explicitly not naked shorting

Naked short selling is when a short sell is made without first borrowing the share. The 140% of shares borrowed is literally measuring borrowed shares sold short, thus not naked shorts.

I think the confusion comes from the number being greater than 100%. However a share can be borrowed multiple times. A lends to B who sells to C who lends to D who sells to E. One share, borrowed twice. Shares borrowed rarely goes over 100%. I think gamestop is (or was) the only stock over 100%.

[gulliver]

14. It's really dumb and rotten to rock the boat we're all in.

The stock market's not a toy. You can absolutely bet that if these idiots wreck the market (accidentally, because they're stupid), zillions of innocent, low- or fixed-income people will suffer more than the "hedge fund," mustache-twirling bad guys that populate the fantasies of the silly.

[Celerity]

19. the hedge funds, etc have been systemically destroying the US way of life through a rigged system,

a rigged casino superstructure of financial manipulation and amoral, people-crushing jackal capitalism for decades.

The got called out at their own game and now and crying, wailing, gnashing their teeth, not to mention are in the process of committing the most brazen massive fraud and collusion ever openly seen to try and skip out (illegally) on tens of billion in losses they owe.

Zero fucks to give to or for them.

[Decoy of Fenris]

25. 70 bil in Hedgie losses and counting.

I've got exactly ONE "Fuck" to give to Wall Street.

"Fuck you".

[Celerity]

26. Sherrod Brown laying it down

https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-wall-street-hedge-funds

[Demsrule86]

33. Good all they do is destroy companies and make money out of nothing...and they have gone

after healthy companies too...fuck them.

[Wounded Bear]

30. We really need to start taxing the shit out of speculators and hedgies...